WICHITA — Jajo laid off seven of its employees Friday, which leaves 10 people at the advertising agency.
“We made some hard choices along with some rough decisions today, and we feel we’re back down to our fighting weight,” managing partner Steve Randa says.
“We had a considerable decrease in our billings in the last year,” he says. “We made some adjustments last year, but we tried to retain as much of a team as possible for as long as we could. We had to correct harder today.”
Billings are at $6.8 million. At its peak, Jajo had about 23 employees and $14.1 million in billings.
Randa says there are a number of potential new deals for the agency, but he says, “You can’t run a business on maybes.”
Jajo formed in 2003 and quickly became focused on aircraft work. At one time, that accounted for as much as about 60 percent of its business with clients such as Hawker Beechcraft, for which the agency now does “very, very little” work.
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“My favorite one was they wanted me to finish this campaign so I could get back to actually working.”
– WSU student and Jajo intern Ryan Schafer, who waged a political-type campaign to get a full-time job with the agency (which he’s landed) but not without considerable grief from coworkers
WICHITA — As Ryan Schafer kept getting closer to graduating this May from Wichita State University with a degree in integrated marketing, the tough job market started hitting home.
“I either need to step up my game or the probability of my getting a job is slimmer and slimmer,” he thought.
He’d like to work for Jajo, the advertising agency where he’s been an intern for nine months, so he’s waging a political campaign for the job.
Schafer asked the partners at Jajo if he could hold a press conference there today — but he wouldn’t say why.
“This scares me,” managing partner Steve Randa told him. “I’m putting a lot of trust in you not forcing you to tell me.”
Schafer brought in his own podium, created media kits and actually lured TV stations to cover him.
“It was kind of overwhelming,” Randa says. “It kind of blew me away how original it was.”
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