On Oct. 20, Hopewell Valley Central High School inducted Jeffrey Barnhart, Class of 1973 graduate and president of and CEO of West Windsor-based Creative Marketing Alliance as the 46th member of its Distinguished Graduates Hall of Fame. Also inducted that day were Doug Ditmars, Bob Weber and Phyllis Jones.
Barnhart traces his passion for marketing and advertising back to the television show “Bewitched,” whose male character, Darrin Stephens, ran an ad agency. “I got attracted to that and wanted ultimately to do that, and it’s where my career path led me to,” he says, noting that next year his firm will celebrate its 30th anniversary.
Standing successfully at the helm of a marketing and advertising firm requires a combination of strong social skills and a focused work ethic, which Barnhart gained during his childhood in Titusville and Washington Crossing. His parents provided the latter. “When your father is a police officer and you’re in high school, you learn discipline. When your mother is a teacher, you learn education,” he says.
His father was a thermo electronics engineer for Melcor in Trenton before becoming a part-time cop and one of the founding members of the Hopewell Township Police Department. His mother subbed in the Hopewell Valley School District and, when he got to middle school, taught second grade in Hamilton Township.
People have always been central in his life. Although he was an only child, he says, “my friends always came to my place.” Many of his friendships developed through his involvement in water sports in the nearby Delaware River. “We spent most of our early years either fishing or swimming or boating or water skiing, and we were affectionately known as the Titusville River Rats,” he says of his group.
“So I became very interactive in working with people and being with people and being involved socially with everything,” he says.
Barnhart already had in mind the skills he would need to fulfill his dream of owning an advertising agency, and he graduated in 1977 from Rider University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, and a minor in marketing.
While at Rider he interned at WPST radio, 97.5 FM, then the local top 40 rock station. Initially he answered the request lines at night, but he quickly parlayed his journalism background and “started writing and producing radio spots for clients that ultimately went on the air,” he says. After graduation he stayed with WPST for two years as an account executive, mostly in Bucks and Burlington counties, gaining sales experience.
Wanting to be part of a larger enterprise, Barnhart moved to Norelco Lighting, owned by the Dutch conglomerate N.V. Philips, who wanted to create a brand presence in the U.S. marketplace. They also bought Westinghouse Lighting, which gave Barnhart the opportunity to help create the Philips Lighting brand, taking two well-known brands and creating one that no one had heard of.
Staying with Philips for 10 years, he ended up heading their in-house corporate agency, which did advertising, public relations, trade shows, and incentive programs. But when the company built a new facility in Somerset and closed down the Hightstown facility, he realized “now is the time to leave and do what I’ve always wanted to do.” That’s when he started Creative Marketing Alliance.
Because, Barnhart says, “our people are our product, the hiring process is critical, and he needs employees “who are passionate and want to work hard.” To find these people, he says he hires to a set of core values. In addition to being enthusiasm and positive energy, he wants excellence, respectfulness, accountability, a solution orientation, and commitment to teamwork. The atmosphere of his business is “work hard/play hard.”
Barnhart contrasts his business to the many companies in his industry that provide one type of service, be it advertising, website development, or creating a social media presence. “Ours is an integrated approach. We offer all those services under one umbrella,” he says, adding that he has a business unit that manages trade associations.
Firms like Barnhart’s today face a sales cycle changed by technology. On the one hand, people have researched companies via their websites and other online information and are 90 percent sure of who they want to work with by the time they call. Hence, much of marketing involves driving people to the website of a business or organization.
Also, because materials are developed digitally, clients begin to ask to see items still in draft. This “send it now” approach, Barnhart says, “has created more of a sense of urgency.”
Companies also face a marketplace with four different generations, who get their information in different ways. Boomers and the somewhat older “traditionalists,” he says, grew up when all marketing and advertising was through printed media, television and radio, outdoor ads, and direct mail. Gen X and millennials both access most of their information digitally, although Gen Xers grew up as the Internet was developing, whereas millennials “know nothing but the Internet.”
Barnhart and his wife, Susan, have three rescue dogs, a black lab (their fourth); a bijon (their second); and a schnoodle. The couple does not have children, but he says their dogs, like children, “all get along at times and fight at times, but mostly they get along.”
Susan sometimes helps out at the business, but she is especially involved in the couple’s efforts to give back to the community. Often with help from their employees, they have participated in the Susan G. Komen Central and South Jersey Race for the Cure; a back to school drive for Boys and Girls Clubs in Trenton; a Thanksgiving food drive for Homefront; an adopt-a-family holiday program through Robert Wood Johnson Hospital; and the law enforcement torch run for the Special Olympics. Barnhart has served on the board of directors of the American Red Cross of Central New Jersey and was a two-term president of the Central Jersey Regional Chapter of the American Diabetes Association.
Explaining his philosophy of marketing, Barnhart says, “Marketing needs to be an investment, not an expense. Marketing dollars must be spent to get a return on investment.”
One secret of his company’s success is learning from mistakes. “You can’t succeed unless you’re willing to try certain things, and you are not always going to be right,” he says, noting that on occasion a product he tried to bring to market did not work out or an organization that he tried to bring to life failed. “But if your batting average is good, that is what you are measured upon,” he says.
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Hopewell Valley honored three other distinguished graduates in addition to Barnhart. Phyllis Jones is chief financial officer for the Diocese of New Jersey. Robert James Weber is the Frederic E. Nemmers Professor Emeritus of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. And Dr. Douglas D. Ditmars is a noted orthopedic surgeon.
Jones played four sports in her time at CHS, earning team MVP honors in field hockey and tennis. She finished 7th in her class and went on to earn a degree in accounting from Rider College.
After getting her CPA license, she became director of accounting and eventually CFO for Jet Set Sports and its sister company, CoSport. In 2010, she became the CFO for the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey. She was awarded Mercer County’s Women of Achievement Award in 2015 for her extensive charity work.
Jones is married to husband Mick and has two children, Robyn and Gavin.
Bob Weber’s specialty in economics is game theory. He was born in 1947 and adopted later that year from an orphanage in Newark. He attended schools in several North Jersey towns before arriving at Hopewell Valley CHS in the middle of his sophomore year.
While at CHS, Weber acted and sang in school productions, and led the debate team. After graduating in 1964, he enrolled at Princeton, where he won the universitywide mathematics prize his first two years (and sang with the Princeton Footnotes). He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University.
In 1977, he joined the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics to teach at Yale University. In 1979, he accepted an offer to join the game theory research group which was forming in the Managerial Economics and Decisions Sciences department of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. In 1990 he was designated the outstanding professor of the year by the students in Kellogg’s Managers’ Program, and in 2008 he was chosen as Kellogg’s Alumni Professor of the Year.
Doug Ditmars was born in 1946 and grew up on East Franklin Avenue in Pennington. He attended Hopewell Valley schools from grades K-12. In high school, he was inducted into the National Honor Society as a junior. He was an active member of the Key Club and was selected to attend the New Jersey Boys State Citizenship Institute. He was elected class president during his sophomore and senior years.
He played Little League, Babe Ruth, and American Legion baseball and was selected for a number of all-star teams. From seventh grade on, he competed on teams in soccer, basketball, and baseball and has been inducted into the CHS Athletic Hall of Fame.
After graduating from HVCHS in 1964, he went to Princeton University, where he lettered on the freshman soccer and baseball teams. After graduating from Princeton in 1968, he married his high school sweetheart, Jane Warner, and moved to Philadelphia. He attended Temple University School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1972. Ditmars served in the US Navy as a Lieutenant Commander from 1977-79 at the Naval Regional Medical Center in Newport, Rhode Island. While in the Navy, he passed the Orthopedic Board Exams, becoming a board-certified orthopedic surgeon. In July 1979, he entered a general orthopedic practice in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he remained for 28 years. He focused on sports injuries, fractures and arthritis treatments, including total joint replacements.
Doug was always involved with his two children, Annie and Tom, attending their school and extracurricular programs. Ditmars retired in December of 2007 and moved to Stuart, Florida. His children are Annie and Tom.
Jeff Barnhart with his Distinguished Graduates plaque at Hopewell Valley Central High School.,
