Jamie Collins is VP, Advertising at Dierbergs Markets, an independent grocery chain based in St. Louis, MO, where she can combine her love for team leadership, brand development and food. She is also a mom, wife, crossfitter, and forever a Missouri Tiger fan. Since working at agencies back in the day, Collins has enjoyed a career working for family-owned businesses across a variety of industries. You can reach her on twitter here.
I pour 99.5% of my time into family, friends, work and catching up on sleep. This leaves 0.5% for keeping up with current events. I’m not proud of this fact. I’m a journalism major. I should covet this information. But typically it’s so biased and negative I can’t bring myself to sit through the news or read the newspaper. And I refuse to rely on social media to tell me what’s happening in the world, although sadly, the trend seems to be heading that way. I subscribe to The Week. It gives me that “need-to-know” snapshot of what’s happening around the country & globe, even if it is a week later sometimes. Often something will pique my interest and I can choose to dig further. Even cooler is I appreciate seeing how news sources known to lean to the political right or left spin the story. The Week lays it out there front and center for me to consider both sides as it should be.
Remember that family time stat? This is proof positive. My 10 year old daughter (scratch that, my 10 year old bookworm, who has read more books in her short 10 years than I will in my lifetime), found this book in our library and then later read it for classwork. She fell in love with it. So much so, we purchased a copy and I am now reading it. Mostly to spend time with her and talk about the details of the story with her; but also, it’s a really great book, and really worth reading. The book tackles bullying, friendships and embracing people for who they are. My daughter has an amazingly kind heart and embraces the differences in others. I learn from her approach to life on a daily basis. Wonder, I believe, is classified as a children’s book, but don’t let that stop you from reading it. So great!
I am not a digital native. Yet, I hire them, I’m related to them and I am responsible for developing campaigns that target them. About four years ago, I was in a position that didn’t require a ton of interaction on social channels, and I realized that if I don’t make it a point to actively keep up on my own then my ability to be effective in a profession that I love will be lost. Rather than more schooling, which would literally be outdated before the course would wrap up, I began looking for online resources. SocialMediaExaminer.com allows me to at least be in the conversation. And while I will never be able to truly understand how to manipulate the ad management tools for business myself, I can follow along when my digital group is explaining why they set up a look alike audience and which ads will be rejected because of the text rules and which sites have changed their business algorithms after an acquisition. Well, kind of.
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Feature header by the brilliant Jay Roeder. You can see more of his great work here. Portrait of Ms. Collins by the scintillating Mike Caplanis. You can see more of his work here.
The Agency Review 