About
I started as a college intern at an ad agency in South Carolina and worked my way up to COO. Ten years there, going up against agencies many times our size and winning work we had no business winning.
What I learned in that stretch is that it was almost never the quality of the work that decided it. It was whether the person on the other side could tell.
Buyers aren't being shallow when they pick the other one. They're deciding with limited information, and they go with whoever seems most likely to be good. That's fixable, and it's the most fun problem in this business to fix.
So I built GiddyBrands to work on it directly. Story first, then the look, then the website, then the marketing that runs on top of it. One system, built by the person you're talking to.
You don't need another campaign.
You need a brand worth campaigning for.
Working together
I lead strategy and stay on every project, with a small remote group of designers, developers, and creators behind me. You never get handed off.
Same project, two ways to do it.
“Great service from a bespoke company that won't just put your project into bucket 1, 2, or 3. Everything was custom.”
The mark
Most marketing right now is assembled from what everyone else already said. The things actually worth buying, why you started, what you won't cut corners on, the standard you hold when nobody's watching, don't exist anywhere a machine can go looking for them. That's the part I go after first.
Who you'd be working with
The freedom to use my time on purpose and build work that matters. That's still how I think about brand, as a lever that buys freedom for the founder, the team, and the business.
I grew up between two worlds, a mom with a designer's brain and a dad in the business world, so strategy and creativity were the family language. I took that into a South Carolina agency, went from intern to COO, and started GiddyBrands in Charlotte in 2023.
When I'm not inside a brand workshop you'll find me in the garage gym, chasing my kids, or on the golf course taking several mulligans while convincing myself I've finally fixed my slice.
Jake Gianelli
You can pan every bend in the river, or you can know where the gold sits.
Or call or text 704-457-9132
Branding and marketing for founders who want to be the obvious choice.