By now married with two daughters, he calmed the waters a bit in accepting an offer to join JBL Professional in Northridge, CA, followed a couple of years later by a bit of family-shared culture shock in transitioning to a marketing position with Crown Audio in northern Indiana.
“One daughter was about to go into high school and the other into middle school,” he says. “I knew it was a risk, and the kids probably hated me because I took them away from their friends. That was a real challenge, but my wife and I both felt it was the right thing. I was concerned about the increasing gang influence in the specific area we lived in. Another upside is that we got to take advantage of seasons other than ‘mudslide’ and ‘fire’,” he adds, laughing.
Whelan was going to handle artist relations for Crown, but that suddenly changed to product line manager before he even walked in the door. Though unexpected, the role proved quite beneficial, ultimately leading to the position of VP of marketing, where he was instrumental in substantially raising the profile of both the company and its products.
And in doing so, he came to some conclusions about marketing, the approach he feels companies should take to it, and the importance of engineering and marketing departments carefully listening to others and mining their ideas for better solutions.
It’s a conviction he’s held to during subsequent stints with Telex Communications (Electro-Voice, Midas and Klark Teknik), a role that took him to his current home base of Burnsville, MN, and later as manager of the global relations department for Sennheiser.
“Simply, you can’t forget what the customer is looking for,” he concludes. “I’ve really felt the power of marketing, but it has to be done in such a way where you are actually on the bridge where you can see everything, where you’re working with engineering and manufacturing. When everybody shares a vision, how powerful is that?”
Based in Toronto, Kevin Young is a freelance music and tech writer, professional musician and composer.