As digital ad prices keep climbing across the platforms most South Jersey businesses rely on, Strativera co-founder Janae Tanner spent National Night Out proving a different kind of marketing math, one built around a folding table, a paintbrush, and more than a hundred kids’ faces.
Why a Cherry Hill Agency Chose Face Paint Over Facebook Ads This Summer
While plenty of South Jersey businesses spent this summer bidding against each other for increasingly expensive space on Google and Meta, one Cherry Hill marketing agency spent a Tuesday evening at a folding table instead. Janae Tanner, co-founder and vice president of growth at Strativera, personally staffed a free face painting station at the Evesham Township Police Department’s National Night Out celebration in Marlton, working from the event’s opening straight through the closing fireworks and painting more than a hundred children’s faces along the way.
National Night Out itself is a genuine local institution, part of a nationwide community policing initiative that began in 1984 and now brings together tens of millions of participants across thousands of communities each August. Evesham’s version of the event, hosted at police headquarters, has grown into a full scale community block party over the years, featuring K-9 demonstrations, live music, food trucks, fireworks, and a lineup of local business vendors looking to connect with residents in a setting built around trust and neighborhood goodwill rather than a sales pitch.
The Math Behind the Face Paint
Strativera’s decision to show up with paintbrushes rather than a booth full of branded flyers was not just a feel good community gesture, it was framed as a deliberate rebuttal to where digital advertising costs have been heading. Pay per click advertising on platforms like Google and Meta has grown meaningfully more expensive for small and mid sized businesses in the past year, with the agency pointing to double digit percentage increases in customer acquisition costs as digital ad space gets more crowded and more competitive. For a growth stage business trying to reach a defined local audience, that kind of rising cost curve makes a single well placed evening of genuine community presence look considerably more attractive by comparison.
Tanner’s presence at the booth also doubled as a live demonstration of exactly the kind of work Strativera does for its own clients. The agency describes itself as a growth and execution partner for companies ranging from early stage startups to enterprises valued at half a billion dollars, building what it calls unified revenue systems that connect business strategy, marketing campaigns, CRM software, and performance data into a single coordinated engine rather than a set of disconnected tactics. Tanner herself brings a track record in exactly that kind of hands on growth work, having previously led growth for J.Andre, a cosmetics brand known for its patented biodegradable beauty sponge technology, before co-founding Strativera to bring that same growth discipline to a broader range of clients across South Jersey and the greater Philadelphia region.
A Broader Shift Back Toward Physical Presence
Strativera’s National Night Out booth fits into a wider pattern that regional business consultants have increasingly pointed to as digital advertising costs climb, professional services and B2B firms building genuinely interactive, experiential community touchpoints rather than falling back on standard trade show tables or another round of paid social spend. Rather than a folding table stacked with brochures, the more effective version of this strategy tends to solve a real, immediate problem for the people walking by, which is precisely what gives it staying power as a marketing channel that a bigger competitor’s ad budget cannot simply outbid.
The Tech “Petting Zoo”
IT and cybersecurity firms running hands-on, kid-friendly robotics or “ethical hacking” stations at town fairs, reaching parents who are often local business owners themselves.
Free Document Shredding
Accounting firms and community banks sponsoring shredding trucks at local recycling days, solving a real chore while opening natural financial conversations.
Community Hydration Stations
Real estate brokerages and law firms funding branded water kiosks or ice water stands at road races and block parties instead of print flyers.
Face Painting at the Booth
Strativera’s own approach: a genuinely useful, kid-focused activity that turns a marketing booth into something families actually want to visit.
What ties all of these approaches together is a fairly simple insight that Strativera’s own booth put into practice directly, that attention earned by actually being useful to a family standing in front of you carries a kind of durability that a scrollable ad impression never quite manages, however well targeted that impression might be. As digital acquisition costs continue climbing across the platforms most small and mid sized businesses depend on, agencies like Strativera betting on an evening of face paint over another round of paid search spend may be making a more calculated decision than it first appears, one grounded less in nostalgia for old fashioned marketing and more in a genuinely updated read on where local attention is actually still available at a reasonable cost.
