Second Half Partners

Second Half Partners gives mission-driven organizations senior-level marketing and AI strategy without hiring an agency or a full-time CMO.

Most engagements start with a short, fixed-price assessment: what is worth doing, what the plan is, and a weekly rhythm behind it so it actually gets done. Scattered activity becomes a clear plan with a scorecard, and a small team knows what to do this week and whether it is working.

Twenty years of marketing, digital, and product leadership stand behind that, ten of them inside the institutional Church. The Church work is where the deepest proof sits, and it is not the boundary. The same problems turn up wherever the mission is the point and the marketing still has to earn its keep.

Strategy and positioning

Channel, tooling, staffing, and spend assessments. Brand positioning and messaging. Roadmaps built to be executed by the team that already exists. Audience and market research, including a nationwide study and a standing client advisory board.

Audience growth and demand generation

Multi market campaign management. Email and lifecycle marketing, including a 305,000 contact database with segmentation and automated programs. Paid acquisition across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and X. Search engine and generative engine optimization embedded in content workflows. Attribution and performance reporting in Power BI. Annual giving and capital campaign marketing.

Product and platforms

Six products taken from concept through pilot to full rollout. More than 150 website launches, a full diocesan site, and a pilgrimage app. Go to market, pricing and packaging, sales enablement, and customer success. Vendor and systems selection, and the marketing technology stack behind it.

AI adoption

Policy, guardrails, and staff training that leaves people confident rather than alarmed. AI deployed across content production, research, and workflows with daily use across every role on a team. Member of the Magisterium AI Product Advisory Committee. Workshop facilitator at the Builders AI Forum in Rome, 2025 and 2026.

Teams and operating discipline

Marketing functions built from nothing, and departments grown from five generalists to fifteen specialists. Multi million dollar profit and loss ownership. The Entrepreneurial Operating System implemented and facilitated, from vision through quarterly rocks to a weekly accountability cadence. Agency and vendor supervision. Project management by training and by certification.

• Raised marketing's revenue impact by half, to more than $100 million a year, through demand generation and sales enablement at an enterprise software company.
• Tripled revenue in a single year for a Catholic media and technology company, and grew recurring revenue fivefold across the decade that followed.
• More than $10 million a year in giving campaigns across 170 partner locations, exceeding goal by $1 million or better, on a $3 million profit and loss with 90% client retention.
• $30 million in incremental sales accelerated on third party retailer sites, through an international marketing platform built for a luxury beauty company.
• 86% product adoption among schools and 78% among parishes, reached through targeted go to market and customer success rather than discounting.
• 85 dioceses coordinated for the national marketing rollout of the television series The Chair, and all eight dioceses of New York State aligned behind one statewide Christmas campaign.
• More than 150 parish and school websites launched, plus a full diocesan site and digital homes for vocations, discernment, the seminary, the Catholic schools department, ministries, and two podcasts, along with a pilgrimage app.

Assessment

A two to four week engagement that ends in a written read of where you stand and a roadmap your team can execute. Fixed fee.

Build

A defined project carried from scoping through launch and adoption, running anywhere from a quarter to a multi year program. Fixed fee or retained.

Interim and fractional

Senior marketing leadership on a retained monthly basis or a day rate, for organizations between hires, in the middle of a transition, or not yet ready for a full time executive.

Dave Plisky is a digital strategy, marketing, and product leader, currently Interim Director of Digital Marketing at Blue Meridian. For the decade before that he was at DeSales Media, the communications and technology arm of the Diocese of Brooklyn, most recently as Director of Marketing and Digital. Before the Church he led teams at Sprinklr and Estée Lauder. He serves on the Magisterium AI Product Advisory Committee.

The full picture of the work and the capabilities behind it.