Reignite! Freelancing Females virtual conference | Nicole Zizila
My original intent was to write about the Adobe 99U conference entitled, “The Creative Self”. The expectation was that of artistic and technological information and instruction, (after all, it was hosted by Adobe, the genius behind the Holy Trilogy of PhotoShop, InDesign and Illustrator) creative thinking and perhaps a sneak-peek into some fresh, innovative design. What I got instead was a millennial Midwesterner with imposter syndrome who liked to illustrate plants on her iPad, a 35-minute tutorial on making the world’s most complicated paper pinwheel, and how to treat your self-interest brain like a Bento box. (I still don’t completely get what Yancy Strickler was trying to put across with that last one, and I don’t think I ever will.) To put it mildly, after attending Adobe 99U, I was left unimpressed. But more importantly, I was left without decent material to write my essay (that wasn’t an op-ed smear piece). Slightly panicked, I wasn’t sure what my next step was going to be.
Still unsure a week later, an unassuming, powder-pink evite from #freelancingfemales swooped in and saved the day. I’d been following Freelancing Females for a few months and found their perspective to be fresh, authentic and honest. Reignite! was their first-ever conference (virtual or otherwise) and $11 dollars later I was enrolled as an attendee. Little did I know at the time, this would be the best $11 I’d spend so far in 2020. Here’s why-
Freelancing Females is the world’s largest community of women freelancers. Founded in 2017, their mission is to help women cultivate each other’s ability to achieve independence through work for a more equitable and prosperous world. They believe everyone, regardless of race or class or privilege, deserves a shot at their dream career and they’re actively building a global network to help make it happen. The Freelancing Females community has grown exponentially since its inception, with over 210k followers on IG, 42k fans in their FB group, and posting over 100 new job weekly. Reignite! was their first-ever conference to help bring this community together even more to share knowledge, information, and help foster networking opportunities.
The schedule of events was varied with many workshops, live presentations and interactive sessions to attend. (In addition, about two weeks later they also made all of the conference content available on a private Vimeo channel accessible to all who purchased tickets to the event.) In-step with the Reignite! theme of the conference, each breakout was titled with a re- prefix, indicating repetition or to do again, implying that what we’d walk away today may not be completely unfamiliar, but instead would be a new, better or more effective way of doing something we already thought we knew. Each event had its own topic and takeaways, and I’ve chosen to highlight and analyze “Recognize- What Brands Did Best, and Which Brand Failures We Can Learn From, in Crisis Communications”, “Represent- How To Put Yourself Out There to Grow Your Community & Build Your Business”, and “Regenerate- How To Be Part of a New, Kinder and Cleaner Economy”.
At the Recognize- What Brands Did Best, and Which Brand Failures We Can Learn From, in Crisis Communications session, a panel of advertising and marketing experts came together to talk about communication and branding in the time of pandemic and revolution. As creative thinkers and doers we oftentimes see ourselves as naturally thoughtful and more conscientious consumers, hyper-aware of what the brands around us are doing. These experts shared their perspective on how brands have been stepping up during the Covid pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement. Some have excelled and some have stumbled, but it’s the brands that are standing by their values and rising to the occasion of this unprecedented time that are becoming the beacons of doing what’s right.
Ariyana Hernandez, founder of NORA, a next-gen marketing + partnerships boutique agency, highlighted five successful traits that certain brands had in common (acknowledging the change, fostering community, value add services or education, quick to support for causes, actionable next steps) when responding and reacting to what was happening in the world today. When a brand comes off as inauthentic or takes too long to make a statement, they were quick to get #cancelled by audiences. It’s not enough anymore to just say that you care. Brands need to show that they care, and mere words only mean so much.
Fostering a genuine community during the Covid pandemic was a particularly difficult landscape for some brands to navigate. To have no motive or glaring agenda proved to be a difficult task for some. Just checking in on their people, reaching out to ask how they’re doing like a friend, a neighbor, a tribe. Simple, emotive, human behavior was apparently impossible for some. Ariyana stated,
“This type of action can solidify the love consumers can have with a brand. An authentic brand message fostered by genuine love.”
Bigger brands can be slower to action than smaller brands, but when the actions themselves are ramped up and implemented with their audience at its center, the net takeaway is almost a positive one.
The brands that succeeded were the brands that translated their mission and vision into their digital content, promoting the very idea of what they stand for. Depending on the brand and its channels, examples of this included IGLive and IGTV group workout and cardio classes from Nike, live DJ dance parties from sustainable skincare brand #youthforthepeople and live streaming step-by-step tutorials from “maximalist” makeup brand NYX. The programs implemented varied widely with some topics not even related to what the brand sold or made. The overarching point was that these programs brought the brand’s loyalists together, gave them something fun to do while stuck at home, and fostered a sense of community when an IRL one wasn’t possible.
During the panel, Galla Barrett, senior brand strategist at Gretel, called out brands that merely posted a black square on their social channels during #BlackoutTuesday, without any sort of conveyance or additional support, as being ingenuous and a boilerplate PR move. She posed the larger question of, “How can brands make a lasting impact that can live beyond the crisis?” Her exceptional answer/example to this question was the 15 Percent Pledge. Founded by Brooklyn-based fashion retailer, Aurora James, the 15 Percent Pledge operates under the mindset that Black people make up nearly 15% of the people in the U.S., and calls upon major retailers to commit a minimum of 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses to better reflect the people of America. Retailers such as Walmart, Target, Macy’s and Amazon were specifically flagged in the media as major examples of the disparity between who owns the companies that manufacture the products filling their shelves versus the consumers purchasing them. Within hours of the start of this movement, Sephora, the mega cosmetic, skincare and fragrance juggernaut, was the first major retailer to sign up and commit to the pledge. It was a moved lauded by media, cheering by loyalists of the brand and an enduring example of a major brand putting their money where their (highly glossed and oh-so-kissable) mouth is.
Much of the power of the 15 Percent Pledge lies within a company’s ability to take ownership of its findings, acknowledge existing biases and blinds spots, and take the steps needed to address them. By defining and publishing a plan to grow the share of Black businesses they empower, companies like Sephora are holding themselves accountable and behaving in a manner more transparent than ever witnessed before.
The Represent- How To Put Yourself Out There to Grow Your Community & Build Your Business livestream was hosted by digital entrepreneur, Puno (yes, just Puno. Like Bono, but a chatty, extroverted Korean/Filipino female designer from L.A.) Her session gave the audience fresh insights on reimagining the industry, the job market and how to navigate the new economic landscape on your own terms and avoid burnout. She is the founder of ilovecreatives, a platform connecting creatives through jobs, creative profiles and education, and the co-creator of PeopleMap.com, an Instagram marketing tool where you can strategically find, grow and track your community.
One of the things creatives fear most is burnout, when it feels like the conceptual tap has run dry. We openly admit to loving what we do, pouring ourselves into it, dedicating the vast majority of our waking hours toward it. But at the same time, we fear the factors we hate about what we do (factors that, likely, are out of our control) start encroaching, inevitably strangling the things we love about what we do. So how do prevent ourselves from getting stuck in a rut, feeling like we’re not going anywhere and burning out? According to Puno, bootstrapping your own business, instead of being locked into someone else’s vision, can be your ticket to avoiding burnout.
When venturing out on one’s own, the image of the small, scrappy startup comes to mind. But Puno says this is the wrong way to look at it. You shouldn’t look to build a startup. Instead, you should look to build a lifestyle business. The major difference between the two is the value you place on yourself and your time. The goals of a startup versus the goals of a lifestyle business are very different. In her argument against startup culture, Puno clearly stated,
“A startup’s goal is to grow big enough to provide a return to investors. A lifestyle business’s goal is to provide a great quality of life to its owners. This fundamental difference will change every other aspect of the way the business is run, how the employees behave and the decisions that are made internally.”
In a startup, usually the window of time to provide a return investors are looking for is a small one. The pressure to perform, and perform fast, is enormous. And working (or overworking, as Puno sees it) for the benefit of someone else is a formula for burnout right from the start. Lifestyle businesses don’t have to be small in revenue or employees. There’s a way to do this successfully, it’s just not that popular right now. The term “startup” sounds inherently sexy, fast-moving, provocative, risky. People (read: investors) love that. If you want to start your own business, the real question is, what do you want from your business besides money? What are your deal breakers? Decide on them and stick to them.
Lifestyle businesses are, by nature, slow growth. But that isn’t a bad thing. Slow growth means having a healthy relationship with time and knowing your worth. Too many are dazzled by slick, start-up culture that appears to move at the speed of light. Slow and steady can win the race, you just have to be OK with that from the get-go. Slow growth, daily prioritization, respecting one’s time, strategically outsourcing when you can and choosing the right clients whose business principles are aligned with your own can make doing what you love and what you do for a living one and the same.
Regenerate- How To Be Part of a New, Kinder and Cleaner Economy was a discussion that elevated the principles of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) beyond a sidebar endeavor for brands and into its primary mission and value. Alden Wicker, journalist and founder of ecocult.com and Samata, CEO of Red Carpet, Green Dress, deliberated on the quandary of whether fashion brands that embody sustainability, responsibility and kindness to the earth can thrive in today’s economy.
Fashion, specifically the manufacturing of textiles and fabric products, is an industry that has been under tremendous scrutiny for their lack of ecological integrity and social justice. Both panelists acknowledged the clear opportunity for the entire industry to act differently, to stop pursing pure profit and start creating social and ethical improvements. Initiatives such as reintroducing the concept of timeless garments, (read: killing off “fast fashion”) increasing the value of local production and manufacturing, and educating consumers on more environmentally-friendly consumption are a start, but without a category-leading brand to spearhead the charge, change will be painfully slow.
So much of fashion business is about value; the true cost and amount you place on something. What is it worth? We can all agree that time has value, craftsmanship has value too. But what about the steps that lead up to the finished end product? How that finished product’s creation has impacted our earth’s eco system? That has value too. In this discussion, Samata suggested that by placing an unsentimental and bias-free monetary figure on it, a figure your audience would be willing to pay for the product you’re presenting to them, that calculation may be the single biggest indicator of your brand’s ability to not only survive but thrive. She went on to state,
“So much more goes into what we’re creating now, and that needs to be reflected in the price of the things we create. Sustainable fashion, buying that top made from organic cotton or that uses less water in the process, is going to have that baked into the price. But consumers who purchase that top understand that, and they are the audience that will keep coming back as long as you are honest with them.”
In the end, rethinking the whole system, from designer to consumer, must align in order for the paradox to dissolve and real change to take place.
