Jessica Kohlsmith (continued)

Jessica Kohlsmith (AKA Jessica Kohl) is a Social Media and Internet Marketing Strategist in Miami, where she co-founded the brand “Alittlefamous.” Jessica was part of the team that executed one of the more prominent viral marketing campaigns of 2015, “the belfie,” which drew the attention of Time, CNN, and innumerable other major news outlets.

In 2013, Jessica completed her degree in Honours Rhetoric and Professional Writing. She did not have to wait long to launch her career. “I was recruited right out of university, while attending a career fair that UW hosted. Two weeks later, I was living in Miami Beach and working for an online media conglomerate managing social media profiles, viral campaigns, blogs, and other areas of digital media marketing including working with celebrities, models, athletes, big brands and the media.”

Internet marketing was not Jessica’s original plan, but she found that her time with the English Department here at UW gave her the tools to build a career where she could follow her passions without sacrificing a secure future.

“I wanted to be a creative writer with a ‘back-up plan.’ While most universities offered creative writing programs, UW offered the Arts Business co-op. While there, I fell in love with the rhetoric of media and images and I took many specialized digital media stream courses, as well as psychology, CS, and business. The flexibility of the program helped me to build a Frankenstein degree that is often unmatched by other candidates for exactly what I do now.”

What Jessica does now requires her to take the ideas and skills that she studied and cultivated from the classroom into the boardroom.

“Using the different critical lenses and perspectives learned in rhetoric, and being able to pull together philosophical theories, mass media communication, business, psychology and computer science have enabled me to perform at a higher level and to create connections that I can apply in unique strategies, and communicate more effectively. Having the ability to form and understand persuasive arguments in meetings as well as in mass media has been critical to my career.”

Jessica’s work on “the belfie” campaign is testament to both her rhetorical skill and to her creative vision within a new media landscape.

“The belfie is essentially a selfie of your behind, a term coined by the pop culture Queen Kim K. We wanted to create something that would ‘break the internet’ on behalf of our selfie app, ON.com. We analyzed two of the top market trends of the internet: Kim Kardashian’s Paper magazine cover and the Selfie Stick. We created belfiestick.com and put out a press release. We had to make the decision between allowing Buzzfeed or Business Insider the first product coverage. If we had gone with Buzzfeed, the product would have been a joke off the hop, but by choosing Business Insider, the product gained an ethos that then allowed it to be covered by TIME, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, and many others, including requests from The Ellen Show, The Today Show, and The Golden Globes. Rhetoric always plays a role.”

Riding on the success of the “belfie” campaign, Jessica’s latest project has placed her into a stronger leadership role within the marketing community.

“Alittlefamous is a brand that I co-founded here in Miami to help grow social media audiences for models and entertainers, as many cannot get signed without a high amount of clout these days. We run a group of themed social media accounts with very high followings that we grew to over 150k followers each account and now do features and model takeovers to help them gain followers, primarily on Snapchat. We also connect brands with influential social media models for promotions of their products on their account.”

Looking back on her time with the UW English Department, Jessica offers the following advice.

“Make friends. Talk to your professors; make use of office hours. Join clubs. Reach out to industry leaders online. Develop your personality and ability to communicate effectively. Most of my recent job offers have happened from something like a casual chat in the gym. Be dynamic. If you are only reading the books, then you are missing the practical experience. At the same time, read and write as much as you can. Go beyond theory. Practice application and hone technical skills by working with tools you will be expected to know, like Photoshop/inDesign, software platforms, Wordpress, etc. My number one piece of advice: You don’t drown by falling in water; you drown by staying there.”