After skipping last year because I felt dumb well today I am happy to share - MY YEAR IN REVIEW, she’s here. Sending part ii via email tomorrow since the full is too long for inboxes. You can also read it the whole thing today on the website! My preferred experience for you!
Say something so honest it hurts.
Is usually how it goes after you spend the day channeling your best CEO voice so when the night comes the whisper has become a scream IM DRUNK IN THE BACK OF THE CAR AND I CRIED LIKE A BABY COMING HOME FROM THE BAR.
Anything less is too much energy.
Sara Hendren on risky disco: "In the sensory workshop, a person at the far edge of the social contract encounters all the joyous, necessary inefficiencies of relationship and all the useless, urgent vitality of art."
what is the difference between containing multitudes and containing schizophrenia? These retrospective field notes are an attempt to define the space between. (The third edition of my yearly recap, after 2021 and 2020.)
Selling data is the new dream
2022 was my first year back to a conventional 9-6 after two years of independent consulting. To make the decision I turned down multiple freelance engagements after months of no work - for stuff I would've considered dream partners and projects when I first started. That really hurt. Turns out dreams change.
My first year at NewtonX was kitchen renovation era. Gutted and stripped, thanks to new owners in the house, new industry, audience, culture. At least you know your long term market value's going up.
When I joined, we just raised our Series B, $32 million. Series B is the weird state between baby and adult. Now in 2024, I'm catching up with our COO - what's working? What's not? Time, I say, time is working.
You ever make your COO smile?
You ever commit to growing with a company?
My days are mostly people managing and influencing, operations and governance. 8 contractors and 3 agencies in 2 years. On good weeks, a couple hours of strategy with my team. A half hour of therapy with our PMMs. A lot of questions thrown at growth team to make sense of creative performance. A LOT OF FAST WRITING AND EDITING. A lot of maintaining personal relationships with our execs, for better ghostwriting and corporate/investor comms.
A lot of storytelling, probably the core of the job, the part that generates millions in marketing sourced revenue. Talking about our work with Meta, Figma, Adweek, NYT, DoorDash, Checkout.com, Salesforce, Tableau, Pinterest, WSJ, Fortune, R/GA, Landor & Fitch, Microsoft. Special thanks to Jason Talwar and Matt Harris for being above and beyond partners, and Jackie Cutrone for steering the ship.
In B2B there's a lot of spunky SaaS or staid services; not a lot of inspiring in between.
So we launched our first big brand campaign—The Office, adapted for researchers who deal with B2B. scary how naturally this came out of my brain. First time I used GPT for creative output - not for final words, but to fashion my own episode & character guides into a screenplay. Big love to Lori Bacich for visualizing this. I've never seen a sales team so excited to share a marketing campaign. <3
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The weird thing about the transition from indie to in house is - now fully inside a company's organs, you suppress your weird. It's a protective instinct, to yield to how others think and operate in the name of safety, all the while the artist in you dies a little more every day.
2+ years later I'm a bit more unapologetic. There's something special that happens when you let your crazy make the company's crazy. Underlying the operational issues are always psychological issues. There is always a place to run and play, or at least cry in the corner.
I let my brain melt into Figma when reviewing 2023 performance and planning 2024. Turns out I make sense of data better when on an easel, not a spreadsheet.
Bringing poetry to technology
The other thing about going from indie to in-house is - well, your weird internet life isn't going anywhere. It doesn't just politely stop; in fact, the orchids you have spent all year watering have bloomed once you stopped looking.
I worked with LA-based creative shop Another, on strategy and campaign planning for a GV-backed Series D consumer product startup. My sister used to be their target customer so I called her for ad hoc user research. I got very sick 2/3 of the way through the project and couldn't finish in time. I felt terrible but this is how life goes. Thanks to Micah Heykoop and Chelsea Matthews for your partnership.
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Jennie Moser, Stagetime CEO & founder, reached out to work together on kicking off a new era of the product and rally the performing arts community around it. These are the notes that give buoyancy to hard times:
“I knew we had to work with Vicky from my first meeting with her, but I couldn't have begun to imagine how impactful her work with us to build a sharpened narrative strategy would be. Not only does Vicky have an incredible skill for creating a comfortable, creative environment that encourages organic, thoughtful feedback from users and team members alike, but her ability to aggregate soft data like user quotes, a founder's abstract vision thoughts, and the things that make our brand tick into a cogent and impactful narrative strategy is truly remarkable.”
For this project I spent 25% more time than I estimated. While the thinking and project management aspects of consulting are necessarily methodical, I don't have a catch-all framework. Clients are unique universes to ingest. Right now I try to operate from an abundance mindset - not counting minutes worked, but value delivered. Timing will improve, in time.
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I got to work with Eugene Kan & Adam Studios on brand strategy for BETWEEN, an HK-based specialty cafe concept. Defining tone of voice and content pillars, with copywriting examples to kick off. A treat to work with a friend, and remember Asia in the process.
We wrote about strategy and fun miscellany
In 2023, I signed on as a quarterly columnist for The Content Technologist, run by Deborah Carver. I wrote a content strategy series this year covering:
an original research framework for content
Writing these took a lot of head wringing and late nights and care, and I couldn't be prouder. Thanks to Deb, Arikia Milikan, and Wye Coday for edits.
Colin Nagy and Noah Brier of Why is this interesting? featured my media diet and Youtube music production wormhole.
In June 2022 I published "What makes for good narrative strategy," which remains my most popular piece ever. It instantly got me 30+ new subscribers. Vimeo featured it on their newsletter. I wrote over the weekend on the couch/floor when I had covid. vicky when will you learn to chill out
That year was a fun one for personal publishing - I ran a groupchat series with creative people on miscellaneous topics, framed "friends who talk about...":
the aesthetics of tech - with Kelly Pendergrast, Kyle Paoletta, and Behzod Sirjani
the messy, unscalable intimacy of community - with Jess Waal and Anyā Likhitha
where we virtually begin - with Eugene Kan and Charis Poon
taylor swift - with Anna Wilhelm (this netted my highest ever open rate - 66%!!)
We talked out loud in public about work
I presented my content research framework for The Content Technologist's June NYC gathering. Thanks Deb for believing in this, and Emily & Tom for coming out and generously listening to me go off script.
I guest spoke at the gracious Professor Chris Collette's Content Strategy grad course at Pratt. Thanks Jackie for the connect, and Hayden who tuned in for moral support.
I shared on my career path at Jeff Reid's Entrepreneurship and the Jesuit Tradition seminar at Georgetown. The e-ship initiative was the only thing I was seriously involved in during undergrad. happy they're still fighting the good fight
that’s it for part i, part ii coming ii you tomorrow—