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 high advertising classes, and it was instantly clear that she’s the embodiment of “do what you like” — and all of it stems from asking herself, “What if I did that?”
So we talked about purpose-driven work, easy methods to use curiosity to energy your advertising campaigns, and one of the best ways to remain on high 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 means of my laptop monitor as she tells me how she ruffled the feathers of two units of celeb 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 Heart, and throughout Instances Sq., “everyone 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 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 speak 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’ id and their iconography. Rigidity constructed up; tweets rolled in. “Milton Glaser can be so mad.” “Can we please let Milton Glaser relaxation within the peace he deserves?” “Milton Glaser received 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 woman can dream). However know what your audience feels possession over, and the place to tease out the strain in your advertising marketing campaign.
2. DIY — with curiosity.
“I all the time appear to have a aspect hustle as of late,” she tells me. (One will get the sense that Banikarim has all the time needed to have a aspect hustle.)
It’s simply that Banikarim’s aspect 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 recommendations on discovering Lysol wipes.
She noticed a neighbor put a folding desk outdoors so they may eat dinner with a number 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 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 tech; quite the opposite, she refuses to be outpaced by evolving expertise.
“Advertising has all the time been for people who find themselves curious,” Banikarim says. And “so as 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’re 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 on the lookout for function within the job.” Like millennials, she’s “on the lookout for affect.”
Your advertising profession “would not need to all the time be transferring up. You possibly can transfer sideways. You possibly can transfer off, you’ll be able to 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 feel there‘s plenty of lip service given to this concept that should you fail, it’s ‘okay,’” she tells me. After which she says what so many people really feel in these moments: “but it surely’s not actually okay.”
After I ask her what the largest waste of cash is throughout the advertising 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 we’ve 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 large.
