Pueblo Nuevo, Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. Early nineties.
It is humid enough to take cold showers twice a day, dust yourself with talc, and still break out in hives. In a seemingly older wooden house, the telephones are rotary. The cartoons my grandparents put on for me are on VHS from the 1950s. The world is small. Beautiful and small.
And on an afternoon like every other afternoon, my grandfather comes home and places a cold Pepsi in my grandmother's hand. Glass bottle. Ice cold. She drinks it. He goes about his evening. Nobody makes a thing of it.
I am but a small child, but I am watching. I do not know it at the time, of course, but that bottle, the logo, the colors, the way the condensation runs down the glass in the heat, is creating an association in my brain. The connection between a product and a feeling. Between a logo and a cherished memory. A connection that showcases itself decades later every time I stand in front of a soda fountain or walk past a refrigerated case. They were making me feel a brand before I knew what branding was.
My earliest memories of printed media sat on a bookshelf in our house next door, still stained from the afternoon we painted and I got carried away with the roller. It was Disney's Wonderful World of Knowledge, an encyclopedia set that my mother bought and paid for in installments. It was a Spanish hardcover series. It could have been in English, but I couldn't read it. But I would sit with those books and stare at photographs of cities I had never seen, technology I could not imagine, and a world so full of wonder and mystery.
The first flight I ever boarded was an American Airlines flight to Miami, with our ultimate destination being New York to visit family. I had never seen a plane in real life. Only in those encyclopedias. I remember the flight attendant handing me cold milk. I had never had cold milk. Ever. Let alone at altitude, on a plane. The future, I thought to myself.
Then we landed in New York. Cue the Sinatra ballad. The subway. Automatic doors that opened before you touched them. Central air conditioning. Hot water on demand. A gaming system with the gun, the duck, and a dog that laughed at you when you missed. Yankee Stadium, the original one, so large I could not understand how it was holding itself up.
But the skyline. The skyline was mesmerizing. I looked up from the street, and those buildings had no end. Extraordinary. And the only thing I could think to ask was: Is this where Knight Rider lives? I wasn't trying to be funny. I genuinely thought he did.
Moving to the United States was not a vacation. It was a decision. I left my family, my language, my culture, everything familiar, and gave myself a chance.
I was scared. I was out of place and time.
The other kids couldn't really communicate with me. They didn't know how, so they did what kids do. Simple commands. Point and name. They did not mean harm. They just did not have another way. I had to adapt quickly and learn to communicate without words. I have been reading rooms ever since.
When I was around 12, I moved to Naples, Florida, full-time. As soon as anyone would hire me, I was working. Fifteen, sixteen. I cleaned, and I sold, even if I had to walk there and back. I did what needed to be done before anyone would let me do what I actually wanted.
Once I realized I could legitimately talk for a living, I pursued that avenue exclusively by finding work at a phone case stand on weekends, open-to-close. Rocking a Motorola Bluetooth earpiece with the blue light, because that was absolutely the move, and I have zero regrets.
One school day, I rushed home before going to work and watched Steve Jobs walk onto a stage and change the world forever.
Once I finally graduated from high school, I was hired as a specialist at Apple retail. Not even a few months later, I watched the world change forever again (the second time in approximately two years), with the introduction of the App Store. But this time, I was finally a small part of it. Young. Still figuring out what professionalism looked like. But I could sell the product better than almost anyone in that building, and I understood the technology in a way that made customers feel confident about this new, daunting world of information and social content. Most walked away knowing that they had made an informed purchase that would enrich their lives. With every interaction, I was being shaped. With every teammate's guidance. By every manager who took a chance. By every business owner who saw something worth developing, every new product or software launch, and every room that challenged me to figure out how to belong in it.
My experience has accumulated. The title eventually caught up.
From sales and technical support to management, to district manager, to marketing director. In charge of the entire marketing department for an established company. I challenged myself by taking over marketing for a newer business. Add in a stint at a corporate wireless giant. I learned technology by living through every shift from the inside and out.
Now, I am back home in Naples.
We are not an agency. I am not a vendor. The mission is not a template with your logo dropped in and a monthly invoice attached.
It is nearly two decades of working inside sales and technology, and feeling the full impact of great marketing. Here is what nobody in a boardroom wants to say out loud in 2026: the educated consumer has seen behind the curtain. They've seen through it since I was still trying to work my magic behind it. Mad Men ran for eight seasons and earned every award it got. High-end clients know when they are being played. The old playbook is not working the way it used to.
What works now is what always worked, before the playbook existed: genuine connection. The game has evolved, the technology is light-years ahead, but the proof is in my own fridge. To this day, I still check weekly ads waiting for that buy-two-get-three 12-pack Pepsi sale. (Or Dew). It is ingrained in me. Marketing and the systems to capture and convert that attention drive lifelong buying habits. Would you consider it shallow or materialistic that I dream of driving a Porsche 911 one day? All over town. Of course not. But maybe it's not the Porsche 911 that I'm dreaming about. Maybe it's what it represents. Success, accomplishment, a physical representation of a lifetime of creating and providing value to others. That is marketing. And today, we have the technology that empowers small business owners like never before.
We are going to make your competition wonder why their twenty-thousand-dollar website keeps sitting below yours in natural search results, no matter what they do.
Together, we will make it so out-of-town corporate giants spend a thousand dollars a month bidding solely on your business name. Attempting to capitalize on your naturally earned traffic. Force them to spend even more on agencies with consultants attached, trying to figure out how to break into your local market.
Playing catch-up in a game you already own.
I am not here to bounce your branding and business strategy back and forth between multiple language models, then send you an invoice. Araya Marketing & Technology is not here to put your logo on a template and call it a strategy. This firm was built to make your product, service, and brand a part of someone's story.
The same way an ice-cold can of Pepsi is a part of mine.
Araya Marketing & Technology. Naples, Florida.
Founded by Marcos Araya II.
