Meet the Millennial

Hi! My name is Shannon and I’m not your average millennial. My love of learning, culture, and adventure lead me to teach English in Madrid, Spain from 2014-2015. Fast forward to here and now: I’m back in good ol’ home sweet home Chicago and ready to redirect my passion of understanding people towards advertising.

A self-proclaimed research enthusiast, I can spot a heart-filled story anywhere. I think big ideas come from small moments, and I’m looking to dig through meaningful numbers, charts, and articles to find a story that can touch hearts.

Want a more personal look into my daily meanderings? Personal Blog, Buzzfeed Page, Instagram

Learning at Leo Burnett

Role: Optimization Practice Intern

Clients: P&G, Fifth Third Bank, Pfizer, Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Description: As an Optimization Practice Intern I was taught the nuances of analytical software tools like Excel, YouTube Analytics, Google Analytics, and DoubleClick.

Responsibilities: Making recommendations on how to optimize various campaigns via reporting, data analysis, and social listening tools.

Core Project: I was tasked with daily reporting and insights for Always’ #LikeAGirl campaign. After reviewing the data, I found that most people stopped watching the video after about :40 seconds. My recommendation was to create multiple shortened :30 second clips of the 3 minute video.

Fun Fact: Leo has troughs filled with apples, so I took it upon myself to follow the age-old “apple a day” rule.

Digging Through Data

Role: Optimization Practice Intern (Analytics)

Agency: Leo Burnett

Client: Always

Campaign: #LIKEAGIRL

Description: As an Optimization Practice Intern at Leo Burnett during the summer of 2014, one of my main responsibilities was daily reporting for the #LIKEAGIRL campaign.

Responsibilities: Learning YouTube Analytics in order to create accurate reports about drop-off rates, top referrers, and actionable follow throughs. After analyzing this information, I then had to deliver the reports to the Always account team.

Fun Fact: I was in love with this campaign, and really enjoyed reading all of the positive reactions to it in trade publications.

Building a Brand

Role: Strategist

Agency: Leo Burnett

Client: Jet-Puffed Marshmallows (Kraft)

Campaign: Go Ahead N’ Play

Challenge: For the Leo Burnett pitch project, I worked as a strategist on a team of 12 interns. We were tasked to recreate the Jet-Puffed Marshmallow brand, and ultimately increase awareness.

Responsibilities: Conducting primary (shop-a-longs, man on the street, in-depth target interview) and secondary (Nielsen, RedBooks, Trade Journals) research, co-creating and co-presenting creative brief to our creative team, and ultimately pitching our campaign to the client and the Leo Burnett executive team.

Key Learnings: Jet-Puffed Marshmallows has almost no brand recognition. We needed to find a way to talk to their key demographic (millennial moms). After conducting primary research and pouring through secondary research I found that these moms wanted to play, create, and ultimately have an experience with their food and their children.

Recommendation: Create fun, interactive advertisements in store, OOH, and online (Instagram specifically) that illustrate the inherent “fun” of marshmallows.

Fun Fact: Getting interviews on the street is really difficult! I think our success rate was roughly 7%

Image above created by: Cristina Hernandez, Jack Dess, and Pamela Lama

Discover Digital Media Planning

Role: Digital Media Planning Intern

Agency: MediaCom

Client: Discover

Campaign: Discover it Card

Description: As a digital media planning intern at MediaCom Chicago, I worked on the Discover Card business.

Responsibilities: I was primarily responsible for tracking creative for live campaigns, analyzing key media metrics, and developing research-based insights to improve the digital campaign.

Core Project: Conduct an in-depth competitive analysis focusing specifically on custom content and native advertising.

Key Learnings: American Express was using organic platforms (blogs) and tying their brand to real-life things people care about (think small business). Citi started a bike sharing program in NYC that year, which served as an amazing source of added value for OOH advertising. These brands cared about their consumers in more ways than just being their line of credit.

Recommendation: Focus more on what Discover as a brand could give it’s users. Even something simple like creating custom content on Buzzfeed that would tie back into the brand. Or sponsor an event in multiple cities like restaurant week featuring restaurants that accept Discover Card.

Fun Fact: This was my first industry internship and I learned all of the advertising basics here.

BP Fuel Rewards Program

Role: Media Planner

Agencies: MediaCom/Mindshare/Maxus

Client: BP

Campaign: BP Driver Rewards

Description: As a Digital Media Planning intern at MediaCom, I worked with two other Mindshare interns to create a cross-platform media campaign promoting BP Fuel Rewards program.

Challenge: Get millennials to utilize BP’s new Fuel Rewards program.

Key Learnings: BP had a bad public image, especially for environmentally conscience millennials. BP was also seen as a more expensive gas station, thus creating additional barriers for a demographic that largely relies on minimum wage jobs.

The Strategy: Divide the campaign into 3 main phases: notice, excite and act. The notice phase would comprise of brand awareness plays (Pandora radio, TV, social media). The Excite phase would be a string of BP sponsored events in different cities (concerts). And the act phase would be focused on implementing “street teams” to help consumers sign up and use BP Driver Rewards program. After this phase, consumers would remain loyal to the brand in order to rack up points for prizes.

Responsibilities: Utilized media research software like RedBooks, Nielsen, comScore, and DoubleClick to create an all encompassing media plan to reach millennials. The projected culminated in a presentation of our media plan to a panel of Mindshare judges, and top executives.

Fun Fact: My team won the media pitch, and were given the opportunity to present our media plan to Mindshare CEO, Colin Kinsella.

Capstone Class

Role: Media Planner

Agency: University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Client: GoPro

Campaign: GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition, “Capture Everyday Adventure”

Description: My capstone advertising project was to create a full-blown campaign for GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition.

Responsibilities: Conduct demographic, psychographic, consumer, and media research. Create the entire media plan and media budget. Present final campaign to a board of judges.

Fun Fact: My team won against the other 35 students competing, and we were subsequently given the highest grade in the class.

European Experience

Role: English Teacher

Company: BEDA

Description: I was awarded a post-grad scholarship to teach English abroad in Madrid, Spain for a year.

Responsibilities: Planned, delivered, and facilitated English lessons in a Spanish school. My students ages ranged from 3-17.

Fun Fact: The hardest lesson I ever had to teach was the day I taught 5 year olds their ABCs.

Cultural Explorations

I spent a year living, working, and traveling in Europe. You can read my blog about those travels, experiences, and lessons learned here.

Cultures I’ve experienced:

Spain

• Segovia
• Toledo
• Granada
• Barcelona

Europe

• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Cologne, Germany
• Dublin, Ireland
• Geneva, Switzerland
• Lisbon, Portugal
• Manchester, UK
• Paris, France
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Rome, Italy
• Venice, Italy