Today we’d like to introduce you to Brooke Oleynick.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Brooke. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My professional career began with working in Public Relations at a handful of different agencies where I worked with clients across the board – from hospitality to consumer packaged goods. I learned and grew immensely from these positions, grasping a sense of business acumen, strategies and confidence that ultimately helped me find the courage and base knowledge to start what I’m doing now with ELEVATE Collaborative.
That said, since I can remember, I’ve always had this attitude of wanting to make/do/create something for myself or on my own. If I saw something in a store, I wanted to make it myself. If I heard someone was out in the world building something of their own, I wanted to learn how to create that lifestyle for myself. I feel like there’s always been an underlying sense of that mentality riddled throughout the span of my life.
As I got older, ideas were continuously flowing about different business ideas, dreams and innovative ways of thinking about how I could be living my day-to-day. While I certainly enjoyed certain aspects of PR, the creative side of myself was feeling largely unfulfilled and the lack of human interaction was really tough for me. Through working with a variety of brands and companies, I was able to gain an understanding of where marketing dollars were being spent, and an idea that had been percolating for quite some time suddenly seemed to make more sense than ever to pursue.
Has it been a smooth road?
Ha! Absolutely not. I feel like the universe was really aligning for me as I unknowingly embarked on spearheading my first event and bringing this vision to life. I always think about that… if I ran into the roadblocks that I currently face (often day-to-day), I likely would have stopped right then and there before I had truly gotten started. I like to hold that tidbit delicately to this day as a reminder to keep pushing through when I think I’ve hit the “end of the road.” While it’s difficult to say what I’ll be doing a year from now, I try to stop myself from too much forward-thinking that causes unnecessary anxiety. I’m enjoying where I’m at, I’m learning with what I’m doing and I’m meeting some incredibly inspiring people along the journey – and right now, that’s exactly what I want.
While I certainly have to convince myself of it every day, I would encourage young women to follow their intuition. There is nothing that I believe is more powerful in leading you toward the direction of a life that feels in alignment and toward your dreams. Sure it’s hard, but so is sticking out a soul-sucking job day in and day out that doesn’t fulfill, inspire or light you up. Seek out advice and encouragement from those around you, give yourself the space to dream up your vision and bring it to life, and understand that you can still move forward while holding doubts about your success all in the same swing.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into ELEVATE Collaborative story. Tell us more about it.
With the media landscape ever-evolving, it’s become more competitive than ever before for brands to, not only catch consumers’ attention but to maintain it. As the digital space continues to become oversaturated with branded content that tends to look strikingly familiar from one #sponsoredpost to the next, brands are in dire need of standing out among the competition. While social media continues to boom and evolve, it’s also created a community of people hyper-connected digitally, yet severely disconnected physically. This tricky combination has led to an increasing desire for offline experiences – and meaningful ones at that.
Many larger brands have done a particularly impressive job testing out experiential marketing – from Nike to JetBlue to Glossier, it’s evident that these branded experiences catch consumers’ attention. But what about smaller brands that don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in creating an experience or brand activation?
At ELEVATE Collaborative, I’ve sought to build a space where we can unite brands with a community of influencers and consumers through experiential lifestyle events (from baking classes to creative workshops to farm-to-table brunches), all with the goal of building brand awareness, while getting people offline to connect IRL. We work really diligently to thoughtfully and seamlessly integrate brands that we love into our carefully designed event experiences (as opposed to using standard booths that feel over branded and inauthentic) for our guests to really thoughtfully and organically experience them. Even though our guests are very much being marketed to, they don’t mind it because it’s actually relevant to the context and is a curated group of brands that organically fit the theme and attendees. People learn well through storytelling and creating an atmosphere where our guests are having a positive emotional and visceral experience with a brand is integral to our process and something that digital on its own simply cannot achieve.
I think it’s vital for brands, especially ones with smaller budgets, to rethink the way they’ve traditionally allocated their marketing budgets. Evolving times warrant evolving mindsets around marketing. Creating fulfilling, memorable customer-to-brand experiences is vital for the longevity of a brand’s success and I’m hoping to help them achieve this while fulfilling my core mission of helping people connect more offline through beautifully designed experiences.
What do you feel are the biggest barriers today to female leadership, in your industry or generally?
The limitations that have been historically placed on women surrounding the level to which we believe we can achieve very much continues to be engrained. These old mindsets are often lying dormant in our subconscious and (often unknowingly) affect the decisions we make day in and day out. The more we can encourage the women in our lives to feel empowered to take action toward these leadership roles and ownership over their talents, the more progress we’ll make toward knocking down these barriers.
In terms of experiential marketing specifically, I believe there’s a huge level of education still needed for brands (smaller ones, specifically). As digital marketing continues to shift (especially as social media evolves), it’s important for brands to understand the power of creating lasting brand loyalty through in-person connections. Sure, you may be reaching less people than when online, but if people are immediately scrolling past, registering your content as an advertisement, it’s near pointless. Just because you hypothetically have more eyes on a piece of content, doesn’t mean it’s more effective. I think brands are going to be forced to think about their marketing efforts differently, understanding that metrics, numbers and analytics can’t always be used to quantify or rationalize every marketing effort (public relations is a perfect example of this).
Contact Info:
- Website: www.elevatecollaborative.com
- Email: info@elevatecollaborative.com
- Instagram: @elevate_collaborative
Image Credit:
Amazonas Photography & Tiffany Le
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