THE STRATEGY IS SIMPLE: do unto others as they do unto you
I’d always tell people, that my most amazing superpowers at my disposal are common sense and being average. I am an average designer, born into an average income family, and best of all, an average consumer. Everyday, I scroll through websites, advertisements and applications with one constant question running through my head: “Does this make me, an average consumer, want to purchase/enter/remember?”
The best strategy is to be a decent person. Consumers can feel authenticity and sincerity through the screen (it’s honestly not always the case, but then again, I always assume the best in people).
My success with every campaign, every single pitch, every client call, or even my favorite Mexican food truck down the street, is to be a decent human being. As a person who would spend days reading research paper about things so trivial, numbers and statistics can get in the way of genuine connections. Viewership, click-through-rates, retention markers, etc. are strategy suggestions, not strategy guidelines. Being a great strategist, to me, is being compassionate.
“WHAT’S AN EXAMPLE OF YOUR BIG TALK?“
In 2021, I interned at an ad agency in Kansas City called Signal Theory – absolutely wonderful company and even more wonderful people. A brainstorm meeting popped up on my calendar: North American Meat Institute.
I joined the meeting without knowing too much context. NAMI wanted us to come up with a 10-year grass root campaign that educates consumers about meat productions and their pact to distribute food sustainably. We brainstormed a lot on the executions and different ideas on how to do this, as it is particularly a very sensitive but important subject, both to us and every consumer.
A few months later, my internship would come to an end. I couldn’t see much of what has transpired since then. But a few years later, my lovely mentor sent me a URL of the campaign that was now in the running. My idea was the picked option.
Of course, it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the brainstorm sessions and the pitches between all amazing minds, but for my contribution, it was about being empathetic and transparent. It was about being an average decent human that also cares about the sustainability of meats, how it could be better and curiosity to learn more.
Since then, I’ve worked on many more projects, but this is still my absolute favorite case study: A beautiful collaboration between empathetic humans that happen to be designers and strategists.