Nature Boy Agency markets to baby boomers


 Nature Boy Agency markets to baby boomers

By Tia Carol Jones
Public Relations professionals Clarence Williams and William Penn have joined together to create Nature Boy Agency. The agency offers lifestyle marketing, urban influencer engagement, promotion brand marketing, public relations, and mobile tours.

Penn started his own business, Penn Square and Associates, to work on a project.   Later he went to do “event” work with Carol H. Williams Advertising Agency. He met Clarence Williams the senior event business manager while working there.  Williams specialized in business-to-business and business-to-consumer promotions.  They decided to venture out on their own to start a marketing agency.

Nature Boy markets to Baby Boomers, the generation born between 1946 to 1964 and refers to the post-World War II baby boom. While that age group is the second largest in spending, they aren’t being targeted for marketing.   “Baby Boomers spend money more consistently on tried-and-true products, unlike younger generations, who tend to spend money on trends and more sporadically Penn said”.

When it comes to providing event services for clients in the midst of COVID-19, a lot of the conferences have moved from in-person to Zoom, or a hybrid of in-person for the first 100 people and the rest online.

Penn believes COVID-19 has allowed entrepreneurs to start businesses with very little money or upkeep, because a lot of the business is being done online.

Nature Boy has worked with Northwestern Hospital and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, as well as other companies to bring social engagement and coordinate events.
Urban Influencers engagement allows Nature Boy Agency to get its clients’ products in the hands of influencers who can promote those products by using their social media profiles. 
Penn mentors’ young people who are interested in public relations from various non-profit organizations. He pulls his cohorts from the advertising and public relations world to speak to them about their careers. He and his contemporaries also engage in workforce development in social engagement where people have to build out events. Those people are learning a skill they can continue to do throughout their lifetime.

Penn said the marketing landscape in Chicago has changed for the better. Before there were African American marketing agencies, there were general agencies trying to market to African Americans. There is a new groundswell of smaller agencies doing the work and they are beginning to blossom, not just in Chicago, but across the country.

“You just need very little to get started and once you do well for one client, they tell other people and it just grows by word of mouth,” he said.

Penn said with marketing, entrepreneurs should be thorough, very engaged to be successful.

“Really the big thing is to shut your mouth, listen to the client, listen to the people and what they’re saying they need, understand that and be able to expound on that and give them back exactly what they said,” he said. “It’s not about you, it’s about the product and it’s about how they want it. They give us a playbook and it’s our job to execute it.”

Latest Stories

Latest Podcast

STARR Community Services International, Inc.