Balcom Agency
Balcom Agency is a full-service advertising agency based in Fort Worth, Texas. With clients spanning coast to coast, it's the largest agency in Tarrant County and top 20 in the Southwestern United States. I joined the Balcom team as a writer and proofreader in October 2015, crafting copy for internationally known brands like Sinclair Oil, Kubota, Ball Park Buns and Texas Christian University, while collaborating with fellow creatives and account executives across the agency to proof anything and everything we put in front of our clients. Here's a look at some of the most compelling content I had a hand in creating – my highlight reel, if you will.
E-commerce Oasis (Balcom)
I wrote this blog on the Balcom website as a crash course for current and prospective clients on the wonderful world of social media e-commerce. Since it’s only, you know, the fastest-growing e-commerce platform in the universe (as far as we know anyway), it's important they know what it is, how it works, who’s on it, and how brands could — and in many cases should — be utilizing it.
GEAUXing THE DISTANCE (KUBOTA)
For this LSU football game day program ad, I wanted copy that reflected the rugged dependability of Kubota's outdoor equipment, but in a language their fan base could understand: Cajun. The end result was a riff on the school's crowd-pleasing "Geaux Tigers" motto, and I may or may not have spiked a football when this went to print.
MAN BUN (BALL PARK BUNS)
Hey, I have no beef (heh) with the man bun, but clearly the people who follow Ball Park Buns on Facebook do. I captioned this graphic with the blue-collar American in mind — grillin', tailgatin', no-nonsense burger eaters — and the post was instrumental in helping grow the Ball Park Facebook account, which I helped Balcom launch in March 2016. Today, the page has over a quarter million likes and a post reach of more than 15 million impressions.
Doggy Daily (Hippo Sak)
Hippo Sak's pet bags, like its trash bags, have a leg up on the competition — in more ways than one. This post leveraged an impossibly cute stock photo, which we edited to include an equally cute newspaper name and quippy headline, as a way to engage the brand's followers and compel them with a call-to-action to buy the bags on Amazon. Needless to say, it worked; we are powerless to puppies, after all.
A love letter to hamburger (Ball Park Buns)
Sometimes you just can't contain your emotions any longer, faced with no choice but to profess your love for something you've long held near and dear to your heart. In this case, that something was a hamburger. Published on Ball Park's Hot Corner blog, this love letter was my attempt at putting the strong personal (maybe too personal) feelings of millions of hamburger admirers into words.
TAILTATIN' (Ball Park Buns)
For a sports-themed hot dog and hamburger bun brand like Ball Park, the tailgating experience is vital — and so are the puns. These two elements coalesced in this effort to promote the company's potato buns, resulting in a simple, punny post to match the no-frills packaging graphic.
Santa Sak (Hippo Sak)
Hippo Sak trash bags are the top-rated trash bag on Amazon, and they're equally beloved in the North Pole (or at least they would be, if ... you know). This whimsical Facebook post highlighted the product's defining characteristics — strength and durability — while underscoring the seasonal holiday cheer present within the brand's followers. I worked on this in tandem with our art director from concept to execution, and the result was one of Hippo Sak's most engaging efforts on the platform to date.
Big Green (Sinclair Oil)
When an iconic and historic brand like Sinclair Oil turns 100, people who appreciate iconic and historic things, like Nebraska football fans, take notice. As part of the company's ongoing partnership with the University of Nebraska, Balcom created this print ad for the school's fall sports program, strategically likening Sinclair's classic Dino mascot to Nebraska's tradition-rich "Big Red" moniker.
LIFELONG CONNECTIONS (TCU NEELEY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS)
The Executive MBA program at the TCU Neeley School of Business routinely ranks among the best in the world, in no small part because of the sense of community it fosters. So when combing through Balcom's interviews with students and faculty and arranging quotes for this script, the messaging had to be representative of this particular set of values, yet remain consistent throughout each of its six testimonials.
A day in the life (Balcom)
Full disclosure: I am not, nor have I ever been, a full-time social media manager. But I do know some full-time social media managers, and believe it or not, they don't just tweet and surf Facebook all day. I compiled this infographic, conceptualized and designed for Pinterest, as a testament to the around-the-clock labor that goes into managing social media accounts — with a little fun (i.e., cat videos) sprinkled in for good measure.