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 together 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 prime 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, learn how to use curiosity to energy your advertising and marketing campaigns, and one of the best ways to remain on prime of recent tech.
“What if I did that?”
1. Good campaigns have pressure. That’s what will get folks speaking.
I can see Banikarim’s eyes sparkle by way of my laptop monitor as she tells me how she ruffled the feathers of two units of superstar 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 Occasions Sq., “all people thought we had been making an attempt to do away with 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 individual (incorrectly, angrily) posted that the brand new marketing campaign was making an attempt to oust Milton Glaser’s iconic I❤️NY, it grew to become a actuality of kinds. 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 menace to New Yorkers’ identification and their iconography. Rigidity 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 obtained it proper the primary time.”
Banikarim is delighted by this. “We couldn’t have purchased that media,“ she says.
Your subsequent marketing campaign most likely gained’t pique the ire of the Olsen twins (although a woman can dream). However know what your audience feels possession over, and the place to tease out the stress in your advertising and marketing marketing campaign.
2. DIY — with curiosity.
“I at all times appear to have a facet hustle as of late,” she tells me. (One will get the sense that Banikarim has at all times needed to have a facet hustle.)
It’s simply that Banikarim’s facet hustles would make most main 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 exterior so they might eat dinner with a number of mates. 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 number of posts on Subsequent Door and an eight-person outside potluck on her road 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 e 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 has at all times been for people who find themselves curious,” Banikarim says. And “as a way 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 shortly. And take small bets.
Transferring sideways signifies that typically you are taking a job that seems like a lateral transfer, or perhaps a step backward. That’s commonplace 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 individual in her 50s.
“However I used to be at all times on the lookout for goal within the job.” Like millennials, she’s “on the lookout for influence.”
Your advertising and marketing profession “does not need to at all times be shifting up. You’ll be able to transfer sideways. You’ll be able to transfer off, you possibly can transfer in.”
In fact, 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 quite a lot of lip service given to this concept that for those who 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.”
After I ask her what the most important waste of cash is throughout the advertising and marketing panorama, she says that it isn’t a device. It’s that “all of us need to be higher at discovering issues that we are able to take a look at and study from” — and we now have to cease considering that if these assessments don’t work, then they’re a mistake or a waste of time.
Her recommendation: Transfer shortly. Take the small bets. See the place you get sign — after which go huge.
