On February 8th I attended an event organized by the SVA continuing education department on “Purposed-Led Marketing”. The webinar host was Valerie Smaldone and the main guests were Jazmin Correa, advertising strategist, and John Rea, creative director of digital marketing at Havas Tonic.
The event was an interesting informative discussion about the new tendency of big companies to embrace social and environmental causes in their marketing campaigns and the impact they have. In a country obsessed with consumerism, brands like Dove, Rei Coop, Warby Parker, Hellmann’s, Greenpeace… stand for something real like food waste, plastic recycling, real beauty… What is also new is that those big organizations act like brands to launch their messages. A key role is played by social media in fact some of the brands previously mentioned such as Rei Coop successfully launched their campaigns entirely digitally, where the power of sharing can reach a vast number of people in a few seconds. Of course, along with the trends of campaigns with purpose, there are always more companies that are adding health and wellness categories to their agencies such as Revolt London agency. John Rea reveals the reason for this new tendency at the end of his speech. In a world where the government does not act or does not listen to the needs of the population, big companies such as Apple or Microsoft and small ones can actually move mountains and make more changes than the government.
The webinar which lasted 1 hour and a half had a Q&R session at the end, with the two speakers answering most of the questions written in the chat for them. I was actually impressed by the number of attendees and where they were from, some of them were from Spain, Portugal, UK, South America… For most part of the event, there were about 74 people, then the number went down to 50 after an hour. I was expecting a follow up email from SVA with a link of the recording. After contacting them, they told me that they were still working on the video to have it captioned for ADA compliance.
In the meantime, I connected on LinkedIn with one of the guests of the event, John Rea and I wrote him a thank you text for the knowledge he shared with us and for accepting the connection. He wrote back to me a few minutes later, thanking me for my pleasant text, and voluntarily he offered his help to review my portfolio over the phone and give me career advice. I didn’t want to lose the chance to talk with him so I called him as soon as I could. We had such a nice conversation and after reviewing my portfolio he invited me to one of his online classes, taught at SVA. I accepted the invitation, and I was so happy I did because the class was interesting, and the students presented amazing work. They had to design an ad for Tiger balm to target the new generation of athletes and gym amateurs (since it is a balm that relieves muscle pain) with a strong slogan. The lecture was about the 10 principles that stimulate creative thinking and at the end of the class he also showed us the amazing work of previous students. I thanked him again for giving me the opportunity to join the class and he suggested staying in contact, and he offered again his help to review any works of mine in the future.
As he is described on the event page “John Rea is the creative director of digital marketing at Havas Tonic, where he is responsible for developing ideas that require multi-channel execution, as well as concept development of integrated digital platforms. Prior to his position at Havas Tonic, he worked in advertising for clients such as Coca-Cola, Intel, Volvo, and Claritin, and as a designer at Rolling Stone.” What is really impressive about him is his volunteer contribution to Debra of America, a non-profit organization that helps children born with Epidermolysis Bulosa.
