A lifetime spent in marketing to Schools and Students alike for Events and Entertainment
The career journey of Jordan St Jacques, culminating in the launch of National Proms.
The Beginnings
I remember my 2nd year at the University of Toronto in 1988-89 (I realize that I’m dating myself here lol) very well. At that time, I had a part-time job as a night manager at the then-famous now-defunct record store near the corner of Yonge & Dundas in Toronto called Cheapies, which was a very enjoyable time of life. Working there 5pm-11pm 4-5 nights a week, taking lunch breaks at the also-defunct Lick’s for burgers and milkshakes…and using my staff discounts far more often than I should have. Being a music lover my whole life, perhaps me being employed at a record store was not a good idea, as my take home pay seemed to dwindle after my staff tab was deducted from my pay cheque lol. Before long however, my music collection was significant.
In the winter of 1989, my music library was large enough that I was asked to start DJing our Residence Parties at Devonshire House, which I enthusiastically agreed to. Taking place in the legendary basement of South House there, the events were always something I looked forward to, not just the DJ part of it, but the production aspects as well. From setting up the audio-visual systems to providing protection for the DJ area and even the preparation of playlists, it was obvious that events were truly in my blood.
Blue Chip Entertainment
Back then, Napster was not a thing yet, so the Mobile DJ industry was lucrative at the time. In the winter of 1991, I launched what was to eventually become Blue Chip Entertainment. We catered to a variety of event types, such as Weddings, Corporate Events, Mitzvahs, Private parties and more. However, our specialties (and what we were best known for) were High School Proms, Homecomings and Dances, as well as College Mega-Events. From 1992 to 2008, Blue Chip Entertainment took care of over 2500 high school dances across Canada and the northeastern USA, including over 1000 Proms, of which I personally DJed over 100 myself.
Nightlife Group feat FX Party
With the onset of Napster in 1999, the high school dance scene suffered for some time, as newly-minted “DJs” (who were finally able to obtain a music collection without incurring the cost) started to offer services at below-market rates. Accordingly, we started to explore other business opportunities, and decided in 2004 to launch an event promotional brand called FX Party (see videos on this page), which promoted and produced Under 21 concerts and clubnights. Starting from our original city in Buffalo NY, FX eventually held over 250 events across 29 cities from 2004-2013, entertaining over 180,000 teenagers overall.
An interesting aspect to our marketing skills took place over this time. In the Fall of 2004, we became a very early adopter of what was later to be called Social Media, learning how to effectively use MySpace to promote events and sell tickets in what was later recognized as one of the worlds first major Growth Hacking efforts on Social Media. A few years later, MySpace lost market share to Facebook, and so we repeated our efforts on this then-new platform in order to promote events effectively (which we have done repeatedly over the years on all social media platforms).
Digitera
In early 2013, FX Party ceased operations, leading to the next phase of my career. Digitera was formed as a digital marketing agency, offering services in Websites, SEO, Social Media, etc…as well as custom programming & development services in Web & Mobile Applications. At the time of this writing, we’ve taken care of over 300 clients from 2013 to present, helping them to achieve their business goals through effective marketing and management of their digital presence. In 2018, we were recognized for our efforts when we won the prestigious Bootstrap Award for Best Marketer in the City Of Ottawa.
During this time, we began to explore developing our own online platforms, and were accepted into Ottawa’s most prestigious technology incubator Invest Ottawa (of which we are still associated with). This was an exciting phase for me, and through more than a few iterations, the vision of what was to eventually become National Proms came to fruition.
National Proms
Looking back on my past experiences and combining an analysis of the current (circa 2020) state of Prom organization, it astounded me that there still was no online prom organizational tool out there to help Prom Committees properly prepare for their big night. Previous to this, we had already conceptualized on a few stand-alone Prom-related platforms (such as Prom Date, Prom Vote, etc), so the topic of helping to optimize the Prom experience through online tools was already on my mind. With the onset of Covid, we were forced to take a deep look at all our efforts of course, and it was during this stage (April 2020) when I decided that we needed to combine all Prom platform concepts into one robust online Prom platform. This effort is what became Prom Planner, which is the core of all the offerings from National Proms.