The 2023 We❤️NYC marketing campaign was supposed to encourage New Yorkers, nonetheless pessimistic in a post-pandemic world, to point out love for his or her metropolis.
And boy, did it ever.
Final yr, Maryam Banikarim royally pissed off the Olsen twins and the Jonas Brothers along with her We❤️NYC marketing campaign. However that very same marketing campaign earned twice the impressions of a Tremendous Bowl advert … in 48 hours.
I caught up with Banikarim to get her high advertising and marketing classes, and it was instantly clear that she’s the embodiment of “do what you’re keen on” — and all of it stems from asking herself, “What if I did that?”
So we talked about purpose-driven work, how one can use curiosity to energy your advertising and marketing campaigns, and one of the best ways to remain on high of latest tech.
“What if I did that?”
1. Good campaigns have stress. That’s what will get folks speaking.
I can see Banikarim’s eyes sparkle by my laptop monitor as she tells me how she ruffled the feathers of two units of movie star siblings. She’s relishing the reminiscence of it.
Her company labored on the city-wide advert marketing campaign, which was funded by members of the Partnership for New York Metropolis to encourage civic motion and group engagement. It capitalized on one thing New Yorkers care very, very deeply about: New York.
As soon as “We❤️NYC” started showing on bus cease indicators, at Barclays Middle, and throughout Instances Sq., “everyone thought we have been making an attempt to eliminate the I❤️NYmark,” she says. They weren’t, however “communication isn’t what I say, it’s what you hear.”
So as soon as any person (incorrectly, angrily) posted that the brand new marketing campaign was making an attempt to oust Milton Glaser’s iconic I❤️NY, it turned a actuality of types. A actuality that was picked up by discuss reveals, Mary-Kate and Ashley, and the Jonas Brothers — “it was only a entire factor,” Banikarim says with fun.
There’s no placing the toothpaste again within the tube: We❤️NYC was now a putative risk to New Yorkers’ identification and their iconography. Pressure constructed up; tweets rolled in. “Milton Glaser could be so mad.” “Can we please let Milton Glaser relaxation within the peace he deserves?” “Milton Glaser bought it proper the primary time.”
Banikarim is delighted by this. “We couldn’t have purchased that media,“ she says.
Your subsequent marketing campaign in all probability received’t pique the ire of the Olsen twins (although a lady can dream). However know what your audience feels possession over, and the place to tease out the strain in your advertising and marketing marketing campaign.
2. DIY — with curiosity.
“I all the time appear to have a facet hustle as of late,” she tells me. (One will get the sense that Banikarim has all the time needed to have a facet hustle.)
It’s simply that Banikarim’s facet hustles would make most major hustles envious. Final weekend, she celebrated the third yr of The Longest Desk, a community-building occasion born out of a necessity for human connection again when everybody was masking up and sharing tips about discovering Lysol wipes.
She noticed a neighbor put a folding desk outdoors so they may eat dinner with a couple of pals. She launched herself and thought, “What if I did that?”
One additionally will get the sense that Banikarim doesn’t do rhetorical questions. She began with a couple of posts on Subsequent Door and an eight-person outside potluck on her avenue in Chelsea. On October 6, 2024, over a thousand folks confirmed up for dinner.
Collectively they cobbled collectively a Squarespace web site, and “we use HubSpot to electronic mail folks.” (We didn’t bribe, pay, or threaten her to say that.—ed.) Banikarim doesn’t complain about DIY advertising and marketing tech; quite the opposite, she refuses to be outpaced by evolving expertise.
“Advertising and marketing has all the time been for people who find themselves curious,” Banikarim says. And “with a view to consistently be studying, it’s actually useful to be touching the instruments your self and never simply directing from up excessive.”
3. Transfer sideways, transfer rapidly. And take small bets.
Transferring sideways signifies that generally you are taking a job that appears like a lateral transfer, or perhaps a step backward. That’s common now, however Banikarim jokes that she was a millennial earlier than her time, as a result of she’s had so many roles for any person in her 50s.
“However I used to be all the time searching for objective within the job.” Like millennials, she’s “searching for impression.”
Your advertising and marketing profession “does not need to all the time be transferring up. You may transfer sideways. You may transfer off, you may transfer in.”
After all, millennials don’t want Banikarim to inform them that it’s okay to have a non-linear profession. However are you moping about it or are you studying from it? (No judgment; glass homes and all that.)
“I believe there‘s loads of lip service given to this concept that in case you fail, it’s ‘okay,’” she tells me. After which she says what so many people really feel in these moments: “however it’s not actually okay.”
Once I ask her what the largest waste of cash is throughout the advertising and marketing panorama, she says that it isn’t a instrument. It’s that “all of us need to be higher at discovering issues that we will check and be taught from” — and now we have to cease considering that if these assessments don’t work, then they’re a mistake or a waste of time.
Her recommendation: Transfer rapidly. Take the small bets. See the place you get sign — after which go massive.