This week, our chapter spoke with Ohio University alumna and past chapter member, Laine Dannemiller. During her time at OU, Laine was a Scripps College Ambassador, a volunteer at the Athens County Dog Shelter and was involved in PRSSA. She graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism, Strategic Communications, and a specialization in retail merchandising.
Today, Laine works as a strategist for Grey x Ogilvy based in Chicago, Illinois. During her presentation, Laine gave us an overview of strategy and walked us through what she does in her career, her experiences with different key accounts and gave some advice for future strategists.
Career Reflection: What is strategy?
During her presentation, Laine told us that a key part of a strategist’s job is answering what everyone else in the room doesn’t understand. Strategy is all powered by people and it is always grounded in an insight. An insight helps answer the “why” and guides the rest of the blueprint that you, as the strategists, are creating. Here are the three main types of strategy that Laine touched on during her presentation:
- Brand strategy: They are acting as the lead agency and the permanent foundation of who a company is and what a company does.
- eCommerce strategy: They guide how a business sells products or services online to achieve sustainable growth
- CRM strategy: Stands for consumer relationship management, their job is to creatively gather first party data to reach consumers in a personalized manner.
Not all strategy work requires a creative brief. Sometimes it’s more analytical like a competitive analysis, performance reporting or developing a new brand positioning plan.
Laine’s responsibilities and experiences with different key accounts:
-Discover Network:
- Creating new brand narratives
- Helping with logo designs
- Competitive analysis
- Campaign strategy
- Website/UX strategy
-P&G:
- eComm strategy
- Works on Dawn, Cascade and Clearblue
- Creative strategy for eComm that fits into larger brand strategy campaigns produced by external agency partners
-Coca-cola company:
- Email marketing
- Digital games and activations
- Website landing pages
-Henkel :
- Brand campaign ideation/strategy
- Creative strategy
- Works with Snuggle laundry detergent, All laundry detergent and Persil laundry detergent
Laine’s main points of advice for our chapter members to take into consideration:
- No matter what you do, feel the fear and do it anyway!!
- Talk to professors: Staying connected with faculty helped her get a job after college
- Go on independent study if you can, go after post grad internships
- Say yes to opportunities: Put yourself outside of your comfort zone
Connect with Laine on LinkedIn, here.
Alessia Klosterman-Lando is majoring in Journalism Strategic Communication, and Political Science. You can connect with Alessia here.