When Writers Wear Their Own Hats

(Pulled from a Swanson Russell newsletter piece.)

A writer finding their voice is a bit of a coming-of-age story. It’s like we’re back in high school deciding if we want to be seen as the class clown, the one who has their life together, the quiet and compassionate one or whatever other stereotype we think we’d like to settle into. As an agency copywriter though, even when we find our voice, we hardly ever get to write in it. For our clients, we have to put on a hat that’s not our own and assume the role, and voice, of the person who would wear it.
 
In my first year as a full-timer, I’ve had to wear the hat of a new parent terrified of the cost of college, a golf course superintendent trying to make sure their course is beautiful within budget, a greenhouse grower seeking a more sustainable substrate and a fisherman who is willing to spend more on his boat than his house. You don’t have to know much about me to imagine that none of these hats are ones I’d naturally wear. I’m a certified goober who makes eye-roll worthy puns, slams two Red Bulls a day and uses words like “sick,” “dope” and “gnarly” in normal conversation. If I had to pinpoint what hat I naturally wear, it’d be one of those multi-colored hats with the little propeller on top.
 
Once in a blue moon, though, something magnificent happens to writers where a client’s voice aligns perfectly with their own. For us, this is striking gold – the work becomes effortlessly fun and magic happens. So in February, when we won the business of WOW Watersports, a new outdoor rec client with some wild products, I saw my gold mine – my opportunity to make some real magic.

WOW’s brand is wacky, energetic and always down to get gnarly on some water. Here is a client whose voice is so similar to my own that I’ll be texting a friend and think to myself actually, that sentence could work well for a WOW Instagram caption. And thanks to a client contact who’s willing to trust our recommendations, we’ve been able to compare tubing to riding rainbows, explode emoji heads in the name of selling water trampolines and use autocorrect’s version of the f word in an Instagram caption. This is my writing heaven.
 
Writing for WOW is the epitome of how we foster Real Connection™ here at Swanson Russell. I think that’s something special about our agency, that when getting a new client, we take the time to choose a team that’s truly full of the best for that brand. Putting Hoke on Visit Omaha gave birth to OMAR; Charlie’s goofy brain led Lincoln city busses to “run on beef and cabbage”; and Lundeen’s ability to let his mind wander allowed Humminbird and the Johnson Outdoors family to host a star-studded reality YouTube series complete with a helicopter drop. When you let a writer wear their own hat, Real Connection™ is at its strongest.

The FYRE Festival Documentary Through a Marketer's Lens

The people of the interwebs, myself included, are raving about the FYRE Festival Netflix documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. If you haven’t seen it, watch it right now, or if you’re at work, here’s a quick little summary, beyond the trailer.

FYRE was a start-up platform for booking music talent. “The Uber of booking,” one employee called it. To get the word out about their company, the founders Billy McFarland and Ja Rule had the idea to throw a music festival (genius, right? On brand, totally makes sense to promote a booking platform by hosting a festival with top talent). The festival was going to be held on a private island, meals from a gourmet catering company, lodging ranging from glamping to luxury cabanas and headliners including Major Lazer, Disclosure and Blink 182. The tickets were quite expensive, as you can imagine, and only the rich could afford them (perfect target audience for the booking platform, just saying).

Long story short, all these elements of the festival were highly exaggerated when in reality the festival was not put together at all. When the patrons arrived, they were basically stuck at a trash site with no food, not enough water and no way to go home. The Netflix documentary tells the behind-the-scenes story of how the founders created this lie and the key decisions they made promoting an event they knew they weren’t going to be able to put on.

The entire internet has thoughts on how big of scumbags the people involved are and plenty of other things to say about the documentary. Yes, I agree with that all that, but honestly, the whole time I was geeking out watching this thing from the perspective of someone going into the world of marketing. There were so many lessons to be learned from this documentary from this perspective. I rounded up my top five for some discussion here.

1.     Influencers have A LOT of power

The promotion for the FYRE Festival was launched with a series of videos and photos of 10 of the most well-known models/influencers having a grand ‘ol time on an island. The agency in charge of producing these videos and managing the social media was Jerry Media, lead by Elliot Tebele, the man behind the very popular fuckjerry Instagram account (excuse the expletive). Talk about popularity on popularity. The people at FYRE knew what would impress Millennials and they nailed it.

So Jerry Media produced these promo videos and pictures that were basically just the models hanging out and looking pretty on an island. Throw some yachts in the video and Millennials had no idea what they were signing up for, but they wanted in. The video “sold an experience,” it didn’t even mention anything about a music or ammentities. Regardless, that video combined with the beautifully executed FYRE Festival Instagram account and the models featured in the video each posting an orange square mentioning FYRE Festival in the caption, caused tickets to sell out immediately.

The quick sellout is proof of the power influencers hold. PEOPLE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY WERE BUYING, but they spent thousands of dollars on it. Literally, all it took was photos of models, videos of them having fun and a website featuring no photos of the festival grounds and people were all in.

2.     Good graphic design helps establish premium quality

Check out the Instagram grid for the festival account.

Honestly, pretty stunning. Now I can’t fully articulate the elements of design used here that I think make the brand look so high-end but the clean lines and modern features were part of what sold the luxury of this festival. The designers in charge of this, though they had really no idea what this festival was going to have, sold the idea that it was going to be a premium experience.

People didn’t even have photos of what they were going to be staying in, or what they were eating or even what the stage looked like (because these amenities didn’t even exist). It was these graphic elements that were left to sell the experience.

3.     People trust marketing

As I have harped on this whole post up to now, people did not know festival details, they just were given these marketing pieces and they were sold. That is P O W E R F U L, people! This is the idea that I kept getting hung up on while watching the documentary. It is a huge responsibility that we hold, knowing that people will believe what we promote. We can’t take that lightly.

4.     If a client seems sketchy, go with your gut

The art director in charge of making the promotional video admitted that in making the video, he had no idea what to do, because he didn’t understand what he was promoting. That is a red flag to me. Now I have never been faced with this and am nothing more than an intern, so I don’t know what it feels like to have a huge cash out on the line, but he didn’t have any information and he still promoted it. Maybe we get ambiguous projects, but this seemed beyond the point of ambiguity and into straight sketchy territory. He should have asked more questions.

The people running the social media accounts also didn’t know what they were promoting and they ran out of new photos and content and still had so many questions as to what they were promoting. I don’t know what it feels like to be a professional and I wasn’t in their shoes, but watching the them express the hesitation they had then, I just want to know why the heck they didn’t go with their gut and pull out sooner.

This is something we should absolutely take to heart. We have a responsibility to tell the truth and remember that consumers are not numbers, they are people and people should come before profits. Now this probably all sounds like it’s coming from behind a veil of student ignorance, but whateves. I’ll stand on my ethical soapbox while I still have it lol.

5.     The idea itself would have been an incredible promo event

My parenthetical side notes have made it pretty obvious I feel this way, but seriously. This event would have rocked and been perfect. Hosting a world-class music festival for the Millennial elite would have established FYRE as a high-end brand that had some serious power in the music industry. Genius. If only they had given themselves more than 10 weeks to plan and not lied about literally everything to the public. Shoot.

365 Whole Days at Swanson Russell

Can you believe it?? I sure can’t. Time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve had a lot of that here. Over the past year I’ve learned from some dang talented people and gotten to work on some really cool projects. This internship has given me opportunities I never imagined I would get in college. To reflect, I want to talk about my top three experiences I’ve had at my time here at Swanson.

#3 – Employee Passion Projects

My fellow intern, Carlos and I were part of the revamp to the agency’s Instagram and we implemented a series of employee spotlights highlighting the passion projects our coworkers do outside the hours of eight to five. I have really enjoyed conducting these interviews for a couple of reasons. First, I love getting to know people beyond the copywriting team. They’re dope and different from me and have unique hobbies and I love learning what they’re passionate about. My other favorite part about this project is finding the personality trait they have that connects what they do every day at work and their passion projects afterhours. For example, an art director I interviewed bartends on the side and used to brew his own beer. The connection between design and making cocktails is that he’s naturally a creative problem solver. Another designer I interviewed powerlifts and the connecting trait for her was her drive to continuously get better and take advantage of the opportunity to prove herself in a room traditionally full of men in both design and the weight room.

#2 - Dorothy Lynch Twitter Persona

If you’re from the Midwest odds are you grew up with a certain bottle of bright orange, sweet and spicy salad dressing on your table that is none other than Dorothy Lynch. The team that manages this account at Swanson Russell was tasked with making their social media relevant with little to no budget. To do this, they wanted to run the Twitter from the perspective of who Ms. Dorothy Lynch would be as a person. I was pulled on to the team to help bring this gal to life. We all agreed that Dorothy should be a grandma, and from there they let me off leash to go create Grandma Dorothy. I came up with an old lady who doesn’t quite understand social media (but she’s working on it), speaks in Midwestern dialect (eats supper, not dinner), loves the Huskers more than anything, would do anything for anyone (sweet) but doesn’t hold back the smack talk to opposing sports teams (spicy). In all honesty, I initially had Dorothy being a little spicier, like spiked the punch at the church Christmas party spicy, but that got vetoed and we went with just sassy instead of wild. Other than that slight change the team loved the ideas I suggested, and when you see Dorothy on Twitter today, you can see all these traits come through from the ideas I put up on the brainstorm board that day.

#1 - Commercial for a Local Fast Food Chain

The peak of my advertising career so far happened when I was at a minor-league baseball game with my grandparents and I looked up on the big screen to see a commercial I had written playing for the whole ballpark to see. My jaw dropped, I shook my grandma’s arm, said “WATCH THIS!” and then proceeded to accidentally tear up. I told her I wrote it after it ended and asked her what she thought of it and she said “I couldn’t hear it, but it looked great.” Classic. Despite Gramms not being able to hear it, it was a moment I’ll never forget. I’ll also never forget how involved my boss let me be in that campaign. From the concepting stage, to script approval, to seeing animation proofs, choosing voice talent, being in the studio on the recording day and then watching the final version of the commercial before it was published was an experience I never ever thought I would be able to have as an intern.

The thing about Swanson Russell that my fellow interns and I always come back to is how everyone is treated as an equal here, even us at the very bottom of the hierarchy. We’re given the same opportunities senior copywriters have and treated as though we’re full-time adults who’ve been working here for years. The most high-up people at the agency never hesitate to give us their time and advice and for that, I feel so fortunate to have this place as my space to start out in the ad world.

An extra special thank you to my boss Charlie Stephan for looking past the fact I was 20 minutes late to my interview (whoops, I had the wrong time down and thought I was 10 minutes early) and giving me a chance. His belief in me and the investment my supervisor, Kelsey, has put in me with all the reviews and feedback over the last 365 days are things I am so grateful for. I’ll cut myself off before I get too sappy, but to all the folks at Swanson Russell who have given me their time, thank you so much.

A New Happy Hour

Friday is the best day of the week, right? Not anymore. Thursday takes that title now, because that is when the happiest news show hits the air waves. Happy Hour News is a radio show that I cohost with my pal Rachel Long on UNL's online live streaming station KRNU2. On our show we talk about only good news happening in the world, play throwback tunes and sometimes chat with guests.

Since about Sophomore year of high school I have had this idea that I wanted to start some sort of news show that only talks about good stories. You turn on the news now and all you see is "this horrible thing happened here" and "that person did this horrible thing there." Like every time I turn on the news, I am convinced the world is ending. Sensationalized stories and fear sell, so that's what the news reports on and dramatizes. But there are SO MANY incredible things happening in the world today that nobody talks about because it's not what sells, I guess. But the one thing this world freaking needs is to hear about all the good going on. Positivity is my number one Gallup strength (what's a Gallup strength?) and I try to incorporate it into anything I do. Happy Hour News is the project where I get to maximize this strength and share it with people.

In my sophomore year of college, I told this really peppy girl in my class about my dream of having this news show and she was over the moon about it. So over the moon about it that she invited herself to be my cohost dragged me into the radio manager's office and got us a slot on Thursday nights at 7 p.m. (but this semester we're at 10 p.m.). Now, that peppy girl, Rachel, is one of my best pals and I'm so glad to be able to vibe with her and her infinite positivity once a week.

My life motto is "love as He has" and I try to live it every day. I even got it tattooed on my arm as a constant reminder to remember our main purpose on this earth is to love God and in turn, love others. That's what I truly feel like the meaning of life is and Happy Hour News is my way to love on others and let them know strong love still exists in the world and can be seen every day, all we have to do is look. We sign off every show with "We do Happy Hour to bring some positivity to the world. Because no matter your race, religion, gender, political ideology or income we can all be kind. You are valued, loved and important." I wrote that one night while I was all up in my emotions and I think it speaks really true to what Rachel and I want people to get out of listening.

If you're paying attention to all the bad going on in the world, life can get you real down, real fast. As someone who struggles with depression, I have to find the positive in life every day to keep going. To get your weekly dose of positivity and happiness, tune into KRNU2 online every Thursday night at 10 p.m. or follow us on Instagram for an almost daily dose of happy. On our Instagram you'll also find my graphic design handiwork and that's a source of laughter in itself.

Before we got a sweet logo.

Our slogan/mission/vision.

#Employed!!!

So turns out the late nights and brain power put into this website and blog paid off because I scored an incredible internship at Swanson Russell here in Lincoln. I'm only a little over a month in and can already say that I feel I have absolutely lucked into this job. The people here are talented, humble and genuinely give a heck about my future as a copywriter. 

My supervisor, Kelsey, started as an intern here when she was in school and now it's all come full circle and she has me as her intern. Boy am I going to learn a lot from her. She's so organized, tenacious, dedicated and confident, yet continuously learning. I feel lucky to be under her wing and get learn from her. I know I'm going to learn from her writing talent, that's a given, but the thing I think I'll also learn from her is how to be a young woman in a room full of people older than her, sometimes mostly men, and present ideas with confidence and poise, knowing they are kick ass and worth investing in. Super stoked to work with her.

My big boss is an absolute goof. His writing is captivating, he's hilarious, patient and I can tell he is all-in with helping me make the most of my time here. I messed up my interview and he looked past it and gave me a chance to prove myself outside of my mistake (I had the time wrong and was 20 minutes late. I thought I was 10 minutes early. I promise that is not a representation of who I am as a person lol). He saw me for my potential rather than my flaw and for that, I really am so grateful and will have that to fuel this fire under me to absolutely nail this internship.

In my first month, I've got to read through brand stories to get to know our clients, learn how a full-service agency functions logistically and have gotten the task of taking a stab at writing marquee lines for a local fast food chain. He said that writing marquee lines is a great exercise because of how structured it is. You only have 45-60 characters, made up of three to four lines with 15 characters each. In that time you have to get someone's attention, make an impression and make them think about how good the food sounds and that they need to "skrrt" on into the drive-thru line ASAP. I'm having a lot of fun writing these and I look forward to getting feedback and seeing what the finished lines become.

So in the style of Twitter and at 280 characters or less, here is the summary of my first month at Swanson Russell: I've gotten to do actual work, no fetching coffee, for incredibly talented, passionate and humble people that I feel incredibly blessed to work under and I'm so excited for what's to come. I'm overwhelmed with gratitude and completely motivated to freaking crush this.

Me at my super cool desk at my super cool real job.

Advertising for Good

I have always felt a strong calling from the Lord to help people. I have also always felt a strong passion to go into advertising. But what took me a while to figure out, was how those two were going to fit together. Building businesses through advertising is awesome, but at the end of the day I feel called to do way more than write an iconic, award-winning ad campaign, even if it does boost sales by 200% for a start-up. And then of course, I could work for or work on projects for non-profits, but that still doesn't feel like unlocking the full potential to do good. So I was feeling a little lost because I was dead set on going into advertising, but I was feeling guilty about it.

So what did I do? I went on a search. I started digging deeper to find out who is doing more within advertising at this moment. The beginning of that journey started when I saw the recent Forbes article on Mike Smith, founder of the Bay (The Bay is an organization that is a coffeehouse, but also a skatepark, that promotes local artists-designers, painters and musicians all included, but was founded to give food and coffee to the homeless and give at-risk youth a place to go after school to be surrounded by positive people. Super awesome place that does so much, check it out here.). The article mentioned how much of a difference he was making in the world on so many different platforms, including a branding agency that creates socially conscious campaigns. My jaw dropped when I read that because I was like whoa, there's an example to the exact question that I was wanting answered. The branding agency, Unlife, has worked for companies as monstrous as Red Bull and BMW and did good, while still building huge brands. BOOM, my worlds of advertising and doing good put together. 

I was feeling pretty hyped after that, like I could finally see a path of doing good in the industry. Things got even better a few weeks later when I was doing an Instagram follow spree of some of the biggest agencies and was relying heavily on the "suggested" people to follow to find out who I should add to my spree. There was an account that came up called D&AD Impact and I clicked on it to see what it was all about and was left in shock by what I had found. D&AD Impact is an awards show for world-changing ads. How cool is that? A few of the categories they give out awards in are civic engagement, community, diversity & equality, education, environmental sustainability, health & wellness, humanitarian aid and so many more (check 'em out). The candidates were mostly from huge agencies doing work for some pretty big clients. The D&AD Impact Awards are dedicated solely to awarding companies that are making socially responsible changes in the world.

Finding this was like the answer to my prayers. Here was the open door to what I had been searching for. Proof that there is advertising for good. Proof that there are huge agencies working for huge clients that are working to make huge social changes. Even more proof that I am going into a field that is the perfect fit for me.

The First Time We Didn't Get What We Wanted

I didn't really realize it until I got to college, but I didn't have to work hard for things in high school. Maybe it was the fact that I was just a "coddled millennial," but I didn't hear "no" too many times when it came to things that I applied for growing up. The point of this is not to prove that I'm a spoiled brat, but to help you imagine how surprised I was when I received a rejection letter from the student government organization here at UNL my freshman year. I was in shock. I was the student body president at my high school and my freshman self was convinced I had a position on the UNL student government waiting for me. NOPE. 

As it turns out, in the real world you don't get everything you want. What a concept. After the student government "no," many more rejection letters followed. Perhaps the most heart breaking was a few months later when I received a rejection letter for a job that I wanted so badly. Let me set this scenario up for you. Going into college I had my sights dead set on working at Red Bull, in their marketing department. I was, and still am, in awe of how strong of a brand they have established. They do things so differently from any other company that it's not necessary for them to invest in traditional advertising anymore. I imagine this is how things down in their pitch room:

Marketing person 1: "So the plan is we'll just buy these Youtube ads."

Marketing person 2: "Yes, we could do that, OR we could have a guy jump out of a Red Bull space ship and set the record for the world's highest free fall, while wearing a Red Bull astronaut suit."

Then I imagine everyone clacking their papers, dusting off their hands and dropping their invisible mics as they left the room, knowing they had just thought up the greatest marketing stunt maybe ever. (In case you missed Felix Baumgartner's skydive from the stratosphere in 2012, I've hyperlinked it for you here.) Genius. Perfect for their target market. Perfect for publicity. Just perfect. 

WOW. That was a very long way to say that I really admire the way Red Bull does things. That is why freshman year I really, really wanted to work for them and why I was crushed when I found out that I wasn't what they were looking for at the time. I took that "no" as a slammed door on my hopes and dreams of working at Red Bull. But what it actually was, was a wake up call. A call to action for me to get up and go work my ass off to get things that I wanted. A call to get better, be bold and swallow my pride enough to do the dirty work to grow as a marketing professional.

Since then, there's been many more rejection letters, quite a few unanswered emails and even an "is this a joke?" after presenting my portfolio. But the thing about these rejections are that I learn, now. I learn what I can do better; I learn what people are looking for, and what they aren't looking for; I learn what's considered average and how to shatter the ceiling that houses it. Each "no" has knocked me down, but caused me to grow as I got back up. These "no"s have pushed me to be confident enough (or at least fake confidence enough) to hand out my business card to the two ladies, I had never met before, talking about how they needed marketing help at a Starbucks. They've caused me to spend countless extra hours editing and getting an assignment critiqued that had been turned in months ago. They've inspired me to cold call an agency in Denver and say "here's why you should hire me" and land my first advertising internship. And now it has inspired me to spend my Friday night writing a blog to add to my personal website that I built because I love this industry so freaking much. 

So to all the people who just got their first "no," congratulations. You're about to get a whole lot better.

Why I Want to be a Mad (Wo)Man

Up until a few weeks ago I didn't have an answer for this question beyond "it just sounds fun." I mean I was passionate about advertising and knew it was the place for me, but I couldn't articulate why. How could I not have an answer to why I, so enthusiastically, want to jump into an industry that some call deceitful and manipulative? It was sweet professor Patti Harney who put a participation grade on the line to help me find my words. When I was forced to write it all down, this is what came out:

"I’m interested in advertising because I want to foster relationships between brands and consumers. I have always felt connected to brands throughout my entire life. When a brand stands for something that people can relate to, it becomes a part of their life and can even inspire them to be better. For instance, Bauer (now Nike Bauer) motivated me to become a better hockey player for the five years of my life that I played hockey. My brother, my hockey idol growing up, always said 'look good, feel good, play good' and I felt the best in a pair of Bauer skates, holding a Bauer stick. In high school Make-A-Wish inspired me to give families faced with the adversity of their child being sick hope and strive to put smiles on people’s faces when our school partnered with the Colorado chapter to host a Wish Week. Serengetee was the brand that made me feel like a global citizen when I got to college my freshman year and realized I wasn’t cultured at all. Now in my life you can find my closet filled with an absurd amount of Patagonia items because they make me feel like I’m back at home, adventuring in Colorado and I feel proud supporting a company that takes a firm stand on protecting the environment.

I mean look at the world's biggest brands. They connect people to something that feels bigger than themselves. Nike turns average Joes into athletes. Starbucks fosters connections over coffee. Apple inspires people to think different, even though users aren't being different by having the same products as everyone else. But see, that's just the thing, brands make people feel like they are apart of something. They invite people into communities of people with similar interests, intentions and lifestyles.

I have always been fascinated observing what makes a person connect to a brand. Now that I’ve learned more about the subject the past two years, I feel passionate about fostering those connections and helping new brands to build themselves. I know that I’ll be a good fit in this field because I have felt the connections I hope to inspire, I feel passionate about the industry, I’m genuinely interested in learning and I’m extremely motivated to be successful."

So that's why I want to go into advertising. I want to connect people. I want to inspire. I want to make people laugh. And most of all, I think I'm gonna be damn good at it.