Jeff Price's Innovative Approach at Jaxport & AI's Impact on Transportation Marketing

I'm Jennifer Karpus-Romain , Executive Director at the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association , which is a trade nonprofit educating and connecting marketing and sales professionals in transportation and logistics , and today I have on the show Jeff Price , who is the Marketing Director at Jaxport . How are you doing today , Jeff ?

We are focused on our events and all the current events that affect the port business , and this year is no different 2025 shaping up to be a really incredible year .

And so 25-year veteran of the port and the business , and I started out in public relations , and so a couple of my first duties were handling employee communications kind of doing internal communications at the port and helping with media outreach , and so did that for a few years .

Then transitioned to government affairs at Jack's Port and worked in that area for a few years , and over the last 11 years now have been working in marketing at Jack's Port and have risen to the state of director of marketing .

This year , that's Feb 16th through 19th . Before that , however , in just a few days , we will host one of the alongside the Propeller Club of Jacksonville , which is kind of like a maritime chamber of commerce . We will host one of the alongside the Propeller Club of Jacksonville , which is kind of like a maritime chamber of commerce .

We will host one of the largest events that we that we participate in in northeast Florida related to maritime transportation , and we call it State of the Port because it has a conversation with our CEO , Eric Green , a dynamic leader who has led us to really new heights , leading us to deepening the harbor to 47 feet and really growing the business internationally ,

and so Jacksport has been able to become the number one container port by volume in the state of Florida , and so we'll hear from Eric Green , and we'll also hear from a panel of shippers and industry leaders and experts , so I don't want to spoil too much of the fun , but basically it's going to be an epic event .

Hundreds of people will attend and certainly if you're in the Jacksonville area on Feb 6 , then come down and join us . We even have a shipper who's flying in from India to participate on the panel , so it's going to be a big , big deal for us this year .

Um , the other big thing that you know we're preparing for at jacksport is the realignment of the ocean carriers after the dissolution of the 2m breakup . So , for those that may be unfamiliar with this , the ?

Um , the ocean carriers engage in alliances and they share space on vessels and they and they have these agreements so that they go to market in kind of a shared way . And so one of the biggest alliances over the past several years has been the 2M , which has been MSC and Maersk , and so they've decided to go their separate ways .

And Maersk has decided to partner up with HAPAG-Lloyd , which is part of the Gemini Cooperation Network , and MSC is continuing its variety of services . It's one of the largest shipping lines in the world . And then , separately , the Alliance , which is a consortium of several carriers .

They have decided to rebrand and become the premier alliance , and so ONE and Yang , ming and HMM are part of the premier alliance and so , with this realignment of ocean carrier services , there's a lot of different port of call changes , there's a lot of service changes , and so what we've done is we've started to educate the market how Jacksonville , and Jacksport in

particular , is affected by this , all the new routes that we have access to . Now , you know , we've been able to publish on our website and we're publishing on social media , so we have a lot of different campaigns going on about that and we'll be sharing more information , certainly at our trade shows and coming up as well shows and coming up as well .

You did a webinar with TMSA last year on it and we've had multiple touch points throughout last year and we're like , oh , we can do even more , you can do this , you can do that . So what are some of those coolest things that you're seeing for sales and marketers with AI right now ?

So , if you can bear with me , I'd like to revisit some of those predictions , see what I got right , see what I got wrong , and one of the first was that models can see , they can hear , they can speak , basically control a computer . That was just starting to happen in a way this time last year and it's only gotten more since then .

And so you're seeing that these models are being applied to robotics in the real world and so in the near future , you're going to have robots basically that can interact with these LLMs and affect things in the real , physical world , not just even in the digital world that oftentimes , you know , we marketers and salespeople live in . So that's

advancing . In addition , I had mentioned agents and AI agents . You're gonna hear about them . If you haven't heard about them already , you know you're going to get sick of hearing them about them in 2025 . And so last year around this time I couldn't get AI agents to do anything useful .

But just a few months after that speech , I really took a deep dive and , with some of the models that had come out since that time , I was able to create 30 AI agent teams in 30 days . I went home from work 30 AI agent teams in 30 days . I went home from work .

I spent about an hour to two hours building a team each night over the course of May and covering various things from marketing to finance to research . I mean just very , very capable , very kind of proof of concept types of little apps , and it's really remarkable what you can do with AI agents , and so I'll give you an example .

You're familiar with this one , because I built a little app to convert a TMSA YouTube video into a blog post , and so , for those unfamiliar with that , basically it takes a YouTube link , it retrieves the transcript , and the initial version of that app had an AI agent analyze the transcript and decide whether or not you know which type of blog post it should

write Should it be a listicle or a how-to or an FAQ or those types and then another AI agent would then write the blog post based on that style , and so one of the interesting things that I really enjoyed speaking with you and working with you on this , and with Tiffany as well , is that what you guys wanted to do was make that decision about what type of

blog post should the AI write . And that was very instructive for me because , basically , I think as marketers and salespeople , we're going to be making those types of decisions more and more in the future . How much of the human do you want in the loop ? How much of the AI do you want in the loop ?

And those are the AI do you want in the loop , and those are the types of decisions that you ought to be starting to think about this year .

As more and more agent platforms come into the fore , you can start to think about how much and what should I be working on , and then , what can I farm off to the AI to have , say , my digital labor or synthetic workers or AI agents working on ?

And I wanted to be in charge of that and probably because I am a little bit more hesitant of ai to do thinking um than other people , but I and I still want to be in the driver's seat of some of those choices or really be able to think through what do I want this content to be , or what ?

are my members looking for and how do they digest this content and things like that . So I agree , it's definitely . But as you're saying , that I'm like because the other thing was like I don't want six blogs in a row .

That is the same type of blog , but as the AI agent gets more sophisticated , I'm sure that's a prompt you could put in like , okay , give me something else , or give me multitudes , or things like that . So I do think as it gets more sophisticated , we'll have more options there as well .

We gain a lot of purpose through our work and we don't want to give that up . Right , but it's just deciding what it is that we want to do and that offers a certain freedom to us that I don't really know has ever been afforded us .

I mean , if we cast our minds back over 120 years in the industrial revolution and you know the , the labor force did not get to really decide how they worked .

You know you were put on a factory line and you did a very particular task and and management was was engaged in systems thinking you know to , to develop those automobiles or whatever it was that they were manufacturing , Whereas in the future , basically you know each person you're going to have your own little workforce , how much of a part that you want to play

.

It should be enabling your team to be better at what they do , whether that's customer service and it's sentiment analysis or whatever that looks like . It should be helping your team , supporting your team , making the most of the skill set of your humans so that you can move faster , farther , farther , faster . I said those were first .

Instead of doing an A-B test , you could do an A through double Z test . I mean , it's really amazing . You know the speed and the productivity enhancements that you can receive .

But you need to be in that loop making those strategic types of decisions about how you want to work and what is a good output , what is factual and true , and these are all things that you know as people working at companies . You know we need to make those decisions .

But I'll just mention a couple other things that I'm seeing out there in the realm of AI is that HubSpot users you're probably familiar , or you've seen the phrase Breeze that's HubSpot's branding for their AI , co-pilot and agent workflows and then Salesforce is introducing agents in a huge way as well , and Mark Andreessen he calls it digital labor having your basically

your AIs help you do your work , but definitely keeping the people in the loop as well . I think everybody's pretty much on board with that . The other thing that is really intriguing to me is that you know there are so many different AI tools out there . It's hard to keep up .

It's hard to , you know , even unlock all the value out of each tool that you start to use . So what I've really started to do is just build my own tools that help me with a particular problem that I have . So I'm not necessarily going out to the marketplace to just like keep abreast of the latest and greatest just for the sake of doing that .

Otherwise you really wouldn't get any work done . It's just too much going on .

So instead , you know , when I encounter a problem that I feel like maybe this is a part of work that I don't necessarily enjoy too much , or it's maybe it's just data entry type of work that I can easily , you know , maybe it's not even the AI doing it , but it's the AI helping me build a tool that helps me do that job and then I can execute in just

moments , instead of having it , you know , be maybe a data task that takes a couple of days to execute on . Those are the types of things that certainly I'm looking at on a daily basis and would encourage others to do so as well .

Number one there are still a lot of companies that are hesitant to do anything with AI because they're afraid of it . And number two , a lot of the companies that are using it are not creating any kind of structure or policies or procedures around how their teams should be using AI .

And I , even at our executive summit , I asked the room like how many people are , how many people know what your team is putting in a chat GPT , and is it proprietary information that you shouldn't be putting into the public forum and stuff ? So I feel like this is really important to think about too , as we're starting to utilize more and more of AI .

So I'm curious what are some of the risks you're seeing sales and marketing professionals do ? What should they be careful of as they dip their toe into AI and as they go deeper into it ?

off the bat . So , firstly , we at Jaxport we stood up sort of an informal AI council and it was probably in the first half of 2023 . So this was after ChatGPT came out late 2022 . And we had representatives of HR IT marketing training .

So a lot of the major players in the room that would be impacted by this very initially , even though all areas are impacted by this basically . But and we talked about , what policies do we have in place ? How are some best uses of this technology ? And , as a public agency , I mean , everything is public record .

So that was a topic as well , and what we found is that a lot of our existing policies already apply .

So we didn't necessarily need to have a policy around AI specifically , because our other policies in place already govern the use of data , the use of IT resources , the use of sharing information and all of these types of things what to post on social media and those types of things .

So , but it was important to have the conversation and continue the conversation going forward so that you're able to roll that out in a strategic way , in a way that everybody is comfortable doing .

Secondly , it's about having that specialized training so that you understand and knowledge that hey look , if you're using something like a chat GBT , you understand , and knowledge that , hey look , if you're using something like a chat GBT , that company behind that model , openai , will train on your data that you submit .

So just make the basic assumption that those apps that are available for free , especially , are training on your data . So don't share anything that is sensitive , that is proprietary , that would introduce risk into the workplace , and so certainly we're cognizant of that .

We don't ask ChatGPT to analyze customer data specifically , but what we might do is give column header information for a spreadsheet or a SQL database , just the column headers and maybe some dummy data like a couple of rows , and then we'll have ChatGPT write a Python script or a SQL query that then can analyze that data for us on our own local machines , and so

in that way we're not sharing information beyond what you would do by using , you know , word that's installed on your own computer locally .

You just have to be really smart and , as a leader , as the decision maker , you have to be training your team on things like that , because they may just not know what they can or what they shouldn't . You know , having best practices and policies around that is going to continue to be important as we move through time and utilize more and more of AI .

And , generally speaking , when using the models via API , whether it's with OpenAI or Anthropic or Google , et cetera , they do not train on API request data . They do store it for a certain number of days so that they can provide you with that service .

But , generally speaking , if you're using your own API keys , you know and you're paying for that , then they are not training on that data . But of course , the other alternative is to use open source and have it saved on your computer or , you know , have your IT team stand that up on the on-prem .

also building in different type of technology ?

We're just public stewards of these facilities for the citizens and residents here in Jacksonville , so we try to use our dollars most effectively and toward that end , we'll map out our process . So is this an enhancement over our existing process ? And sometimes you have to go through a trial , and a lot of these tools are available for free .

You could try them out and is this an improvement over our existing process ? Or is this kind of cool but it doesn't really add much value ? And so you know . Really think about the types of work that could be enhanced by one of these tools , and oftentimes it's things that either you don't necessarily enjoy doing . It's more data entry type of work .

It might have to do with what we do here all the time is data reformatting .

We just have big databases that we have to reformat and repurpose into another way so that we can execute on some sales and marketing objective , and maybe it's an advertising campaign and we're doing follower lookalikes , or maybe it's inviting people to a particular event and we have to slice and dice that data to make sure we're inviting the right people .

So we're swimming in data all the time at the Port Authority , and so that's where we're able to use AI to kind of build out our tool set and then leverage those types of productivity enhancements .

So I would encourage other people to think about the processes that you have , the types of work that could benefit from some of these tools , and then dedicate a small amount of time to trial and test and , where it makes sense , make an investment and then , just like you've built your VAR tech stack or your sales tech stack over the years , you can take that

same approach with AI .

Purpose is if you have a purpose-driven program , whether it's a sustainability or community-based program . There's so many companies that are doing really , really great work and we'd love , love to highlight that .

And then the Trailblazers are the best of sales and marketing campaigns , and so , as we're kind of getting into this , opening this up , starting to get submissions in , jacksport is a Trailblazer award-winning company . You also have nominated one of your team members , some of your team members for Rising Stars and they won those awards .

And you , of course , are a former member of the year for TMSA , which is not even something you could submit for it's something that you just get picked for based on what we see in our membership .

So I think that I was thinking about oh , who could really speak to the testament of the TMSA award program and what it means for these different categories and thought about like what does it mean to Jack Sport and to you to be able to submit for some of these awards ?

I know that before , long before that , I had very high regard for the TMSA awards program because of the level of expertise that is brought to the entire process , and so I just really thank everybody that participates with the recognition program .

I believe Courtney is still heading that up , and Jen and your efforts and the whole team does a really great job with it . Any awards program that has the caliber of TMSA's awards program is really important to me as a professional because it validates the work that you're doing and it's a real great team motivator as well .

When your team can rally around the work that you're doing and showcase it to your peers and be recognized for it , that's a huge motivator , and so it's something that we really look forward to participating in and we purposefully think , okay , we have so much going on all the time , but is there maybe one campaign or a couple of campaigns per year that we can

just put like a lot of energy and focus and strategy and execution behind that we feel would be worthy of an award , and so that's kind of how we've approached it the past couple of years and so , and in terms of our individuals , I mean it's fantastic to be able to nominate somebody that's a young person or new to transportation and logistics , that you see as

a rising star and it's a tremendous honor to have that bestowed upon that individual and it's again it's just another motivation for that person and it's a real wonderful thing to celebrate . I mean , probably in my stage of my career there's nothing that gives me greater joy than seeing the success of my team and seeing them perform at such a high level .

It's really really awesome to see and I'm just honored to lead the team here , the marketing team here at Jacksport . So I encourage everybody to participate in these awards and take your time , use up the character here .

You know the marketing team here at Jacksport , but so I encourage everybody to participate in these awards it's and take your time , use up the character , count . You know , don't put in fluff , put in real stuff . And when you're able to do that and , if I may , I can offer just a little bit of advice .

You know , as a judge , for some of the Trailblazer campaigns that have been submitted over the past couple of years , one of the things that certainly I look for is what is your business objective right off the bat ? You know , as marketers you're often given a task . Maybe you're working at a marketing ad agency .

You know , and you've just been , this task has been outsourced to you so you just have to execute on it . You might not , right off the bat , be , you know , even aware of the mission of that organization or that marketing team or what's how it fits in that big picture . Or maybe you're a junior member working on a particular task .

You know and you don't have that big picture . So talk with the people who do have the big picture so that you can add that to your entry and ensure that the tactic was supporting a strategy to help you achieve a business objective . And if you work that you know , through business objective strategy , what are the tactics that you use to execute on that ?

And then what were the results ? And certainly , as a judge , you know you want great results but not everything is going to be great . Just the fact that you measured everything is really important to see where you succeeded and where you need some improvement . And , and if you tell that entire story , I mean you will be in like the top .

You know 1% of entries , that that I've certainly seen . So you know , take that take some time and it does take time , but but if you do that , you know you'll , you'll , you'll have a great chance of success .

Obviously , no one ever judges their own submissions or anything like that . Um , we are really stringent . The only people that see all submissions are myself . I typically don't vote ever , um , unless if I haven't seen the submissions and we , like a judge , had to drop out in the last minute or something like that .

But I typically don't do that because I see all things and so I only come in when we really need something .

But we really pay attention to all of those steps , and one thing that I really like is typically for the trouble is we explain , if you didn't , we explain why to like how this can improve , and a lot of it is exactly what you said like tell us what your stats are . Like .

So many people forget to put metrics in , and we're like but we want to know what it did , and so and we do have a button on submission of like , can we share your full story , like if you win , and you can click yes or no . And so I think sometimes people are afraid to put those things in because they don't want to share their secret sauce .

But like you don't have to , people are afraid to put those things in because they don't want to share their secret sauce . But like you don't have to , you can say no to sharing it with everybody else , but share it with the judge , so that way they can get that full picture and really understand .

So I think you hit on a lot of really great points , because I think that's really important .

And if you're looking for more um , like ways to improve your submissions and stuff , I did um interview Courtney at the end of last year , in December , so check out her on the move , because we talked about all of that , what we see , things that we've improved upon and all that kind of stuff . So really great things there .

And if you're curious like , okay , well , if I submit , how do I win ? Where do I win ? So we let everybody know ahead of time whether they won or not . Purpose Awards are now done in a virtual presentation in the end of April , so you would get your award there . Well , you would be able to talk about your award there .

We ship you your award because it's virtual , and then Rising Stars and Trailblazers get announced at the Elevate Conference , which will be June 8th through 10th in Austin , texas , if you would like to join us , whether you win or not , I'm trying to pull the link up , but it's not wanting to work with me today .

But you can go to eventstmsatodayorg and we'll put it in the show notes in case you don't know , but that's how you can register for the show . It's shaping up to be a really , really great lineup . We interviewed Kate DeLeo on the show , who's our keynote speaker , so she was the January 15th episode .

So if you want to check her out , all kinds of stuff going on , really really exciting things happening . So it's going to be a great show and , of course , we love our awards banquet , where we get to see such excellence in sales and marketing in this industry . It's always one of my favorite things to do . So one last question for you , Jeff .

It's the question I ask anyone who comes on the show , and it is if you could go back in time and advise a younger Jeff on anything and this could be personally or professionally when would you go back to and what would you tell him ?

Time pushes back , maybe if you try to change things in the past , and maybe time is just a myth and it's just a human construct that doesn't exist at all , and the past , present and future is all the same . So who's to say ?

There's still a lot of great resources . It's available in the TMSA member portal . If you're a member , you can check that out and any of our other content , whether it's other webinars or conference presentations or all that stuff , is in there Award-winning submissions from last year for the Trailblazer .

So if you're like , oh , what does an award-winning submission look like ? Check all that stuff out . And yeah , thank you for coming on the show today . Thank you everybody for listening and until next time . This is On the Move .