Shena Patel
“In the world of creator marketing, we're feeling the loss of the editor.”
Shena Patel is a creative executive, strategist, and writer who has spent over 20 years crafting voices, narratives, and campaigns for brands you might recognize (think little blue boxes, lacy bras in striped, pink bags, and big blue coupons). These days, she focuses on helping founders and CEOs build the brands of the future—the ones set to make the world a better place.
Shena is based in New York and has a storied career that includes book publishing, magazine editorial, movie production, and both agency-side and in-house creative leadership. She also likes to lend a creative, pro bono hand to causes such as pediatric cancer research, political activism, the revival of the creative arts in New York City, and adolescent health in underserved communities.
Give us a buzzword that needs to go away immediately.
There are so many words that are overused and misused. I'm a word person, so my list is long. Listen, my niece made a book of my trigger words when she was six years old, and this is an ongoing endeavor!
Asking a creative team to create a viral anything is a big one. Something is only viral when it becomes viral. There’s no magic wand. And the word "authentic" is everywhere. You know, if everything is authentic, nothing is authentic.
Another thing is when people interchange the terms marketing and creative. There is a massive difference between the two. Creative people make things. Marketing people put them out into the world. A writer is a writer, a designer is a designer, and a marketing manager is a marketing manager. The blurring of functions doesn't help anyone. We must understand our roles and work together to be successful.
Campaign is another one. I worked with an organization where people were talking about campaigns, and what they actually meant was promotions (or discounts). It shows you how certain words get out into the ether, and people start using them indiscriminately to sound like they know what's going on. And then meaning is lost.
When it comes to content strategy, do you ever find yourself advising clients that sometimes less is more?
There are too many words. I mean, there's too much everything. A friend and I started noticing a saturation pre-pandemic. One of the signs was how LinkedIn had become yet another social channel for people to start posting missives about their personal vacations, right?
Are people not quite sure how to edit themselves? In the world of creator marketing, we're feeling the loss of the editor, I think. 20 years ago, you'd go to a magazine rack and buy editorialized pieces of content giving you curated content for travel, fashion, beauty, food, and all the things.
Now, when planning a trip, you go on Instagram and there are all these creators. Podcasts, Substacks, and LinkedIn all push you to click "read more." Posts are too long, episodes are too long. There's a real fatigue. I have no idea who a thought leader is anymore because I can't get through a day of content on LinkedIn. Who are the TRUE experts?
I'm all about getting back to quality over quantity, because people are training the machines to output the content. AI will make the last 5 years of content look quaint. So let’s bring back character limits in posts. Bring back caps on video length. Edit your pod to come in under 30 minutes. It’s like, mama doesn't have time, OK? Let’s bring back brand guidelines!
“AI tools should be used to free us up for higher-level creative thinking, not so that we can do everything the day before we want to deploy them.”
Who’s doing content right?
There's this woman named Melani Sanders who's got a million followers on Instagram. She's the founder of the We Do Not Care Club and does all these videos on midlife, motherhood, and perimenopause and menopause. Her comic timing and writing are hilarious.
She's editing these snackable bits of video content, and everybody's watching. CEOs, physicians, brands, all kinds of regular people. She got a recent write-up in the New York Times, too. She connects without trying too hard. It's a reminder that independent creators can break through with something that's real and curated well.
When you counsel brands, what's a pitfall you counsel them to avoid?
It depends on who's running the creative team. Much of the time, those in charge have no idea how long it takes to create something creative. So, you really need someone with creative experience. A lot of organizations these days just don't have a handle on their calendars or how the work can be done at a quality level.
One of the great things about working in fashion is you have to be ahead of time because of how far ahead seasons are. It's built in. You get ahead of time. Even then, you're not far enough ahead, but you're concepting three to six months ahead of when a collection is launching. Or longer. That's amazing. Some brands I've worked on recently are literally a week ahead of when something is supposed to deploy.
How did that sense of time get away from brands?
One theory I have is that it started when people who didn't know how to make the actual creative were put in charge of it. Organizations like McKinsey began building an agile model, and some people misunderstood it. An agile model runs parallel to a maintenance model or a business-as-usual model, but you can only build for agility if you already have the work done.
AI tools like Pencil are amazing, and we're going to have more and more amazing stuff like this at our fingertips. That will create an even more unrealistic expectation of speed. AI tools should be used to free us up for higher-level creative thinking, not so that we can do everything the day before we want to deploy them.
Have you noticed how your language has evolved when discussing creative strategy over the last couple of years?
I wouldn't say that my approach has necessarily changed. We can't ignore data and emerging technology, but I think that what remains at the core of a brand strategy must be, simply put, the brand itself. It sounds funny to say, but I think companies can lose sight of that.
Maybe it's because it can be hard to focus on differentiation and narrative and audience needs in such an evolving landscape. The most fun part of my job is when I get to come up with a brand personality, a brand voice, or concepts for a campaign, or brainstorm a bunch of headlines.
I try to remind my newer creatives (and clients!) of that sense of fun. This is what makes the brand, and everything about it, more interesting and engaging.
Give us a favorite book or magazine author.
So this is a tough one for me because I am loathe to name a favorite, but what I will tell you is I have been thinking so much lately about Nora Ephron. I think Nora Ephron would be having a field day with what's going on in the world right now, and we could definitely use some of her humor.
All of her essays about aging are brilliant, as is all of her New York canon of writing. It just captured the time and energy of New York City, as well as our expectations and disappointments and fantasies of it.
There's one essay she wrote about her love affair with her apartment and how much she loved that building. Then there’s her collection “I Feel Bad About My Neck.” So yeah, we could use a little more Nora in our lives.