By Michelle Keong
Kelsey Dundon (BA’04) never thought she would be creating advertising campaigns and branding businesses for some of BC’s leading companies.
But as head copywriter for one of Vancouver’s top communication and advertising firms, Dundon creates what she calls personalities for her clients.
“Nike, for example, has a very different personality they’d be putting forth than something like IBM. And it’s very much done through their communications,” says Dundon, who graduated with a degree in English literature.
Working on the award-winning Metropolis at Metrotown campaign to promote the newly expanded shopping complex and White Spot’s Triple-O campaign baffles this recent graduate. “I never ever thought I’d actually be where I am, because I’m 24 and I’m doing this and I love it,” Dundon says.
Dundon works at Traction Creative, a Vancouver firm that specializes in branding, where she does anything from naming a company, to writing their advertisements, websites, radio, or TV scripts.
She shared her educational experiences and career path at last year’s Arts Career Expo as part of the “Media and Communications” panel. “We’ve got some clients in retail that would need a very different voice from clients that are selling multi-million dollar condos,” she adds. “So the audience that we’re reaching require very different voices, and so I have to be very responsive to what it is that our clients need to say.”
Dundon says the focus on research and writing, plus the feedback she received from her professors at UBC, helped her prepare for the communications industry. Learning to be critical of her writing allowed Dundon to reach a variety of audiences whether they are teens going out, or retired people looking for a vacation home. “People are going to respond to it — they’re going to interact with it whether it’s online, or listening to it on the radio, or reading a print ad,” she says. “Through my English training, I have learned to be critical of my work before putting it out there.”
Dundon has recently contributed to the Metropolis at Metrotown campaign. An earlier version of the campaign featured mannequins making their way to the mall by various means, including transit and hitchhiking. That earned Traction Creative the MAXI Merit International Award for global excellence in marketing. The spontaneity of bouncing ideas off co-workers is one of the things Dundon enjoys most. “It’s funny how we’re sometimes sitting around in the boardroom and we’re joking around and we’ll come up with the punch line to a radio script. That’s the process I love.”
Initially an aspiring journalist, Dundon researched and wrote for the Faculty of Arts website and research magazine, UBC artsBeat; she also freelanced for The Georgia Straight, Vancouver news and entertainment weekly magazine, and The Tyee, the award-winning online journal, amassing a hefty-sized portfolio early on. While still a UBC student, Dundon interned in the Global TV newsroom as a news researcher. She says the adrenaline rush of constantly working towards the six o’clock news prepared her for the deadline-based communications industry. “It’s interesting to see how experiences that may not directly relate actually end up relating,” she says.
Now writing for various clients, Dundon started off part-time, managing client accounts at Traction Creative, until one of her articles for The Tyee fell into the hands of the firm’s president, Larry Donen. Recognizing her talent, Donen explored whether Dundon could turn her writing into copywriting. “She turned out to be exceptional,” he says. “So we quickly moved her from the account component to the creative side. Now she’s our head writer.” Not bad for a girl who started off organizing company logos. “I’ve had a very interesting journey to get here,” she says. “And so it’s fascinating to me how every step has helped me.”
“I’ve always said that no matter what comes my way, I will try and take it on without compromising anything, except maybe my social life,” Dundon says, laughing.
So what’s next on this promising writer’s career path?
“Eventually I would love to be involved in running a company very much like this one because the clients are so diverse, and the people I’m working with are so bright and creative.”
