Today we’d like to introduce you to Jim Harper.
Hi Jim, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Some careers are carefully planned. Mine wasn’t.
Mine has been built one opportunity, one risk, and one great mentor at a time.
I grew up in a family that didn’t have much, but my mother gave me something far more valuable than money. She gave me curiosity. She took me to museums, art classes, libraries, and anywhere creativity could be found. Those early experiences taught me to look at the world differently. Long before I understood marketing, I understood that ideas could change the way people felt. That belief has never left me.
After earning my degree in Media Arts & Design from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, I entered the workforce designing packaging before moving into publishing at The Riverfront Times. Those early jobs demanded speed, discipline, and the ability to produce great work under impossible deadlines. Looking back, they were the perfect training ground.
Everything changed when I joined The Zipatoni Company during the explosion of promotional marketing and the beginning of the digital revolution.
I arrived as the company’s 75th employee during an extraordinary period of growth. Zipatoni was rapidly expanding to support Miller Brewing Company’s national promotional business, and almost overnight I found myself working inside one of the country’s most energetic marketing organizations. We developed campaigns around NASCAR, the NBA, Mardi Gras, concerts, retail promotions, and some of the earliest digital experiences consumers had ever seen. Every week brought another technological leap, another ambitious idea, another reminder that marketing was changing forever. I watched the internet reshape our industry in real time, saw the earliest social platforms introduced to agencies, and learned that the brands willing to embrace change would always have an advantage. That lesson became foundational to everything I’ve done since.
From there I continued leading creative organizations, eventually becoming Creative Director and then Executive Creative Director while helping agencies grow alongside the brands they served. Along the way I worked with companies including Bacardi, Brown-Forman, Miller Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, Adobe, Dickies, Nestlé, Ralph Lauren, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, and many others. Each experience reinforced a simple truth: the best marketing happens when creativity serves business strategy, not the other way around.
Eventually, I became a partner at Boxing Clever, where we grew the agency from a small creative shop into one of St. Louis’ leading independent agencies. Those years taught me that building a company requires far more than making great work. It means recruiting talented people, earning trust, taking financial risks, developing new business, and creating a culture where ideas can thrive. We published books, started a record label, designed skateboards, experimented with new ventures, and embraced projects simply because they inspired us. Not every idea was the safest business decision, but every one of them made us better entrepreneurs and better storytellers.
That willingness to take risks has shaped every stage of my career.
Leaving agency ownership to build Harper’s Bizarre was another leap. I traded the scale of a larger organization for the opportunity to work directly with founders, business owners, and entrepreneurs. Instead of presenting ideas to layers of management, I sat across the table from people whose livelihoods depended on the success of their businesses. That changed my perspective forever. Branding stopped being about logos or advertising campaigns and became about helping people realize their dreams. Since then, I’ve helped launch, reposition, and grow companies across food and beverage, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, financial services, cannabis, consumer products, and retail.
That journey ultimately led me to Clementine’s Ice Cream.
Joining Clementine’s allowed me to bring together every lesson I’d learned over three decades: agency leadership, entrepreneurship, brand building, customer experience, product development, retail marketing, public relations, digital strategy, and business growth. Working alongside founder Tamara Keefe and exceptional leadership and marketing teams, I’ve helped guide the brand through one of the most transformative chapters in its history, supporting expansion into multiple states, strengthening national recognition, preparing for franchising, supporting investor communications, and helping build a company positioned for its next stage of growth.
Today, I don’t think of myself simply as a marketer or creative director.
I think of myself as someone who helps businesses become brands people genuinely care about.
Whether working with a Fortune 500 company, an entrepreneur opening their first storefront, or a founder preparing to scale nationally, the goal has always been the same: create something meaningful, build it with intention, and leave it stronger than you found it.
That’s been the story from the beginning, and it’s the work that continues to inspire me every day.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Looking back, my career hasn’t been defined by a straight line. It’s been shaped by uncertainty, reinvention, and a willingness to keep moving forward even when the path wasn’t obvious.
Marketing is an industry where the rules constantly change. Early in my career, I watched the internet completely transform advertising. I saw the arrival of digital marketing, social media, smartphones, and technologies that rewrote how brands connected with people. Rather than resist those changes, I learned to embrace them. Every new platform became another opportunity to tell better stories and create deeper customer experiences.
Owning businesses brought a different set of challenges.
As an agency owner, I learned quickly that creativity alone doesn’t build a successful company. Every recession seemed to hit marketing budgets first. Great client relationships could disappear overnight because of a corporate reorganization or a new brand manager with different agency relationships. Sometimes outstanding work still failed to survive budget cuts or leadership changes that had nothing to do with the quality of the work. Those experiences taught me not to define success by any single client or project but by continually creating value wherever I could.
Growth sounds exciting until you’re responsible for making payroll. Do you hire people before the work arrives, or wait until you’re already stretched too thin? Every agency owner faces that tension. Those decisions forced me to think less like a designer and more like an entrepreneur, balancing opportunity with responsibility while building a company that could grow sustainably.
The creative profession also teaches humility.
Our work is deeply subjective. You can spend weeks developing an idea you know will connect with consumers, only to watch it get rejected because someone simply doesn’t like it. Over time I learned that resilience matters as much as creativity. You keep listening, keep refining, and keep solving problems without taking every opinion personally.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
It’s the ADHD, Side Hustle, Side Project, Creative Endeavors I’m most proud of. Along with a few key standout success stories.
1.) Helped a Fortune 500 client grow a small brand, with very little growth over 33% in less than a year.
2.) Started Boxing Clever Records, a small, independent record label releasing high-end singles, full-length releases, music videos, and Record Store Day Skateboard Decks. Hardest thing I’ve ever done. Couldn’t keep it going but tried really hard.
3.) Published and did a small book-signing tour with Actor Tony Hale, releasing Archibald’s Next Big Thing, a book that eventually became a 2 season children’s show released by Dreamworks. Saw our book on Letterman, Conan and in amazing publications.
4.) Published Tom Huck: The Devil is in the Details, with bestie Chris Ryan of Once Films under the moniker, Fine Print Small Press. Launched the book at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a signing and have done events in several cities with well-known galleries. Still shopping the book for distribution, but several museums carry it currently.
5.) Getting ready to launch an incredible Olive Oil Brand I re-branded, consisting of high polyphenol, super premium infusions as well as a line of balsamics, all from Greece and Italy. Can’t wait for it to hit the shelves any day.
6.) Working on a project that drops shortly I wish I could talk about, but I will say it’s electronics and I named, branded and helped position the product that is so in my wheelhouse, I can barely contain myself.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Accept that for a while, you’re going to be ok. Not great, but ok. I was kind of terrible for at least a decade. It’s hard because while you can do some things well early on, you need a lot of experience before you’re great and you can shift your career.
Also, meet as many people and creatives as you can and soak in their creativity like a sponge.
Be completely amazing as often as possible.
Lastly, think of stepping stones in your career as investments, not jobs. You need one to get to the next until you land. Take off and land like a plane from one important asset in your portfolio to the next. Use each stage of your career investment as a thing you gain to get the next. Don’t go job to job too fast or you look like a problem.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.harpersbizarre.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harpersbizarreagency
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harpersbizarreagency
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harpersbizarre/
- Other: https://plaidcoffeeroasters.com
