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Lizz Behler is VP, Brand, at the creative agency Spcshp (formerly known as Big Spaceship). She’s also worked at agencies including Huge, Ludwig+, and IPG Mediabrands.
Favorite project you’ve worked on? My most recent favorite is the repositioning and productization of Spcshp. To join an independent company with the intention of branding it as I would a client is a dream opportunity. It’s also a project that challenged me to start from the inside out, rather than outside in. I wanted to make sure I clearly understood the amazing culture and magic that already existed, because not all companies have that as a starting point.The project I reference as my all-time favorite was the development and design of marketing that promoted a clean water program in India as a consultant for Piramal Sarvajal. I had to learn a culture I knew very little about, conduct cultural studies, learn foot-based travel patterns, learn linguistic nuances, and even how to create marketing when print wasn’t an option. It really pushed me to shift my perspective and abandon everything I knew about marketing. I then needed to turn my research into designs that were hand-painted in over 100 villages in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
What’s your favorite ad campaign? Hands down, Absolut Vodka’s print campaign that started in the late ’80s. Over the years, they produced over 1,500 print ads by partnering with different artists, the first being Andy Warhol. As a young child I collected them, because they were so beautiful, inspired, and often incredibly clever. As I reflect on what they did through the lens of today’s world, they entrusted the outward expression and creation of their brand campaign from the late ’80s to early ’00s to the original creator economy.
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One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: The level of love I have for data and analytics. Data is the fuel for creativity. I could nerd out for hours talking through the different types of data sets that might be brought together to solve challenges and create new business models.
What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? Brands partnering with creators is something I love to see. If there’s a mutual overlap in the identity of the brand and the creator, true magic can happen. The caution in this is that it has to be the right partnership so that both the brand and individual are being authentic to who they are, what they represent, and what they care about. That’s when they learn and grow from each other and make meaningful connections with people. It’s arguably the most human way for a brand to show up.
On the flip side of this, it’s really off-putting when there’s misalignment between the identity of a brand and a creator. That’s when you know the creator is getting paid, and it feels directly like an ad version, a more organic integration. I can’t tell you how many creator influencers I’ve unfollowed because they oversaturated my feed with content that doesn’t fit who they represent in my life. Rather than create a meaningful brand moment, they’ve completely put me off of the brand they’ve mentioned and them as an influencer.
What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? Spcshp’s Internet Brunch. It’s our daily cultural pulse e-newsletter spearheaded by Lauren Nicholas and the rest of our content and community crew. I won’t name names, but there’s a lot of competitive agencies that have been receiving our newsletter for years.