Today we’d like to introduce you to Keisha Whaley and Mary Kate Powers.
Keisha and Mary. please share your story with us.
Brass Tacks Collective was born out of 7 years of frustration. Frustration that the ad agency method of community building by way of pro-bono or deeply discounted work is tied to how much press they can get. Frustration that the expectation of an intern is to have the skill-set of a junior employee, but the willingness to work for free when cost of living only continues to rise. Frustration that, to hire a junior anything, HR looks for 1 to 2 years’ experience, but few employers are willing to provide it.
It made sense to me to find one solution to these two problems. Both potential job candidates and growing businesses need the same thing—quality advertising, branding, and marketing work—so why not connect them and oversee the process? I brought this idea to my agencies over the years, hearing only “great idea, but no.” I decided that I couldn’t spend any more time trying to make someone else’s dream my dream.
I started with two part-time web developers and two nonprofit clients, unsure if this bird would fly. Today, we have seven paid apprentices, three full time employees, five professional core team members, and partnerships with agencies, boutiques, and freelancers to provide a full-service agency that adapts to our 48 (and growing) clients’ needs. Our clients are 90% high needs/low budget: nonprofits, startups, small businesses and individuals paying out of pocket. We offer tiered pricing to work within their budgets. We give them our attention and we learn every day.
From the moment I wrote the business plan in November 2015 to today, I can proudly say that we’re doing everything I set out to do and then some.
Has it been a smooth road?
Every startup has growing pains and hiccups. You find the best lessons are learned through skinned knees and that’s absolutely been true for me. Of course, the ones everyone expects are the ones related to finding the right team members or creating your policies, and we’ve experienced those. The ones I didn’t expect were related to money. It’s challenging to be a non-capitalist in a capitalistic city. I don’t like chasing people down to pay their bills or having to adjust my pricing to account for the rest of the world’s push forward in costs. I’ve had to learn how to do that in a way I can live with and still cover my own bases. At the end of the day, everyone is trying to keep their businesses going. All you can do is allow some grace without sacrificing your own business to do it.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Brass Tacks Collective story. Tell us more about the business.
To quote from our site, we are a teaching advertising agency. The first of its kind. We establish a strong foundation of advertising and marketing skills through a paid apprenticeship that provides real-world job experiences. Our apprenticeship program addresses the gap between postsecondary education and the expectations of an entry-level job in advertising and marketing. While some learn best on their own – watching tutorials or reading articles – others thrive on interaction and discussion. That’s what we do every day.
Our clients are nonprofits, small businesses, and local organizations that support our goals and our belief that everyone deserves great work. We all know the adage, “you get what you pay for.” Heck, when it comes to advertising and marketing, industry behemoths pay millions to have A-List actors appear in studio-quality commercials or to trademark a shade of blue to reserve it from the rest of the world. There are agencies made just for those clients, but Brass Tacks Collective isn’t one of them.
We believe that all businesses deserve great work and the visibility in the market that comes with it, regardless of whether they have access to millions of dollars. We understand that startups, nonprofits, and local organizations all have high needs, but low budgets. We strive to be the ones that see to it that their brands, materials, sites, and social presence can compete with the big leagues.
We’re known for our compassion, our diligence, and the quality of our work without high prices.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The ad industry is going to continue to adapt to the consumer’s needs. Right now, consumers have to love your product or your cause. They don’t want to have human contact and we’re only going to further isolate in our buying and consuming habits. I think the industry is going to spend the next decade trying to create the scenes we see in Blade Runner and other futurist movies were ads are everywhere, holographic and sparkling against the night sky. In order to accomplish this, they’ll have to hire young talent that knows the technology and learns it faster than the execs can even begin to.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1601 Elm St
Fl 33 Dallas, TX 75201 - Website: www.brasstackscollective.com
- Phone: 214-886-0631
- Email: info@brasstackscollective.com
- Instagram: @brasstackscollective
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brasstackscollective/
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