“It’s become part of most people’s business lives because it makes business easier.” George Brown College
grad Jerry Jarosinski has one of the best (and according to him easiest) jobs in marketing – he keeps BlackBerry users loyal.
Jarosinski is the Senior Marketing Manager of Loyalty and Retention Programs at Research in Motion (RIM), the company that makes the extraordinarily
popular BlackBerry personal communication and organization device. “I run loyalty and retention programs at RIM,” says Jarosinski. “Any
time someone buys a BlackBerry, I engage them and help build brand loyalty and affinity.” According to him, that’s not that hard because “It’s
one of the best products out there.”
The road to RIM started in Jarosinski’s final year in the Business – Marketing diploma at George Brown. “In one of my last
courses we looked at data modeling and segmentation to understand customer behaviour, and put them in the appropriate market segments,” says
Jarosinski. “I was really interested in the idea of getting to know your clients well and marketing directly to them.”
According to Jarosinski, direct marketing – especially in the loyalty and retention segment – is all about how well you can get to
know your clients, what they like and dislike, who they are, how they use your product, and then crafting programs and messages that appeal directly
to them. And at George Brown, for the first time, Jarosinski began to see his career unfold in front of him.
The program gave him those basic principals of direct marketing “We were taught what to look for and how to put together a campaign,” says
Jarosinski who took this knowledge to student competitions in Canada and the United States, competing in the American Marketing Association college
competition, and placing third in the Ontario Colleges’ Marketing Competition in his final year. “This exposed me to other ideas and
gave me a chance to develop my business connections.”
George Brown gave Jerry the skills and experience he needed to immediately transition into the workplace and add value. “The projects at
George Brown were not just theoretical, they gave us a sense of the reality of the working world,” he says. “I was able to bring that
knowledge and apply it immediately to real life experiences.”
Jarosinski credits George Brown with setting him up with the skills and passion he needed to have a successful career. “The way the education
was delivered conveyed the passion of marketing,” he says. “And that helped me a lot, I’m using some of that passion on a day-to-day
basis.”
The passion that he learned is not just for marketing. “My George Brown education also gave me a passion for life-long learning,” he
says. “There’s so much that can be done, it’s great to go back and learn something new – that’s what I got from
George Brown.”
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