New Adventures for Black Vanilla’s Founder

After over 10 years as founder and co-owner of Black Vanilla, it feels very strange not to be heading into the BV office on The Grange this morning.

I’m exceptionally proud of what Black Vanilla has achieved over the years and it’s great that Nichole will take over sole ownership and continue its growth.

It’s been an amazing 10 years. To be honest it has never felt like a job or a career to me. I’ve had the fortune of meeting and working with some truly amazing people and making a lot of friends, whether they be clients, suppliers, associates or the extended family members and the BV team.

BV has always evolved. In the beginning, a founding client took a chance on a 26-year-old woman to run her own business and provide media planning and buying services to their national brands. I’m truly grateful for the trust they showed in me way back then, and for what they helped me to achieve and build in this wonderful island of Guernsey we call home.

BV built on this success and added PR, events and consultancy to its service offerings by taking a freelance specialist approach for our clients, bringing in experts as and when we needed them for specific campaigns and roles with BV overseeing the management. Over the past couple of years, we’ve successfully grown our PR and communications services in-house under the guidance of Nichole. We are proud to be able to boast a variety of clients from national brands to local charities, from fiduciary big guns to retail favourites. At the heart of this success is a lot of hard work and dedication from the BV family and extended family to whom I will be forever indebted.

I expect that a lot of people are wondering why I’m leaving the company I founded. One of our long-term supporters asked the same question with the words: ‘But you are Jade Black Vanilla?’ I suppose I always will be in some way. I don’t think that when something has been such a big part of your life it ever really leaves you. I’m proud of the culture and ethos that I instilled in the company.
BV has seen a big shift in its service offering over the last two years. We have seen PR playing a much larger part in what we do and during this period I was also drawn to another exciting role outside of BV. This has meant a lot more of my time has been spent away from the company I created. These factors meant that the time was right to take this next step in the company’s evolution.

I will always be proud and take satisfaction in the Black Vanilla brand and the team I created and then developed with Nichole over the last few years.

I wish you all every success for the future.

Jade “Black Vanilla” Isabelle

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