{"id":39853,"date":"2024-09-03T10:10:48","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T14:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/?post_type=bu-article&#038;p=39853"},"modified":"2024-09-09T13:57:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T17:57:35","slug":"vanessa-de-beaumont-is-going-viral","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/articles\/vanessa-de-beaumont-is-going-viral\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanessa de Beaumont Is Going Viral"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<div class=\"wp-block-editorial-leadin bu-blocks-block-editorial-leadin is-style-side-by-side has-media has-wider has-box has-media-focus-center-middle\">\n\t\t<div class=\"container-lockup\">\n\n\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-leadin-media\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<img width=\"3024\" height=\"4032\" src=\"\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot.jpg\" class=\"\" alt=\"Vanessa de Beaumont close portrait.\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot.jpg 3024w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-477x636.jpg 477w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-500x667.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-1000x1334.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-750x1000.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/files\/2024\/09\/Vanessa-de-Beaumont_Forbes-Headshot-600x800.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 3024px) 100vw, 3024px\" \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-editorial-leadin-caption wp-prepress-component-caption\">Vanessa de Beaumont &#8220;has a history of making culturally relevant, viral ad moments,&#8221; according <em>Adweek<\/em>, which recently recognized her as a rising star. Photo courtesy of de Beaumont<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"container-words-outer\">\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"container-words-inner\">\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<h1 class=\"head\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVanessa de Beaumont Is Going Viral\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<h4 class=\"deck\">Just seven years into her career, the advertising alum has already captured her industry\u2019s top awards<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-categories\">\n\t\t\t<ul>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/category\/advertising\/\"\n\t\t\t\t\t\t>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAdvertising\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/category\/alumni\/\"\n\t\t\t\t\t\t>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlumni\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/ul>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-date\">September 3, 2024<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-credits\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<ul data-credit-type=\"By\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/authors\/corinne-steinbrenner\/\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCorinne Steinbrenner\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/ul>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-share js-bu-prepress-share-tools\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-twitter\"><span>Twitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-facebook\"><span>Facebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-action\"><\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t<div style=\"display:none;\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-share-tools\">\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-share-tools-inner js-prepress-component-share-tools\">\n\t\t<h4>Share<\/h4>\n\t\t<p class=\"wp-prepress-component-share-tools-article-title\">Vanessa de Beaumont Is Going Viral<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-share-tools-article-link\">\n\t\t\t<div>\n\t\t\t\t<input type=\"text\" value=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/articles\/vanessa-de-beaumont-is-going-viral\/\" readonly>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<label>\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Copy URL:<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<button class=\"js-prepress-component-share-tools\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<span>Copy<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/button>\n\t\t\t<\/label>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Just two years after graduating from COM, Vanessa de Beaumont won her first Clio Award\u2014among the highest honors in the advertising industry\u2014for a viral social media campaign. She\u2019s since picked up a One Show Gold Pencil, seven more Clios, two Effies and six Cannes Lion awards\u2014including a gold Lion for an attention-grabbing Super Bowl commercial\u2014making her a recipient of all the ad industry\u2019s most prestigious awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier this year, the editors of <em>Adweek<\/em> included de Beaumont (\u201917), an associate creative director at Mischief, a Manhattan ad agency, in the magazine\u2019s annual Creative 100 list, noting that the 29-year-old \u201chas a history of making culturally relevant, viral ad moments.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTo be seven years removed from school and on a creative 100 hot list is a consequential accomplishment,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/profile\/doug-gould\/\">Doug Gould<\/a>, a professor of the practice of advertising. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult early in your career to create the kind of positive noise that Vanessa has.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3>Always Collaborating, Never Giving Up<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>De Beaumont initially enrolled in COM as a journalism major, hoping to combine her love of writing and her passion for football into a job as a sports reporter. After discovering a flare for copywriting, she opted to double-major in journalism and advertising. She excelled in both fields, but writing news articles often felt lonely. In advertising, she says, \u201cyou\u2019re never working in isolation\u2014you\u2019re always collaborating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After graduation, de Beaumont took a job as a copywriter with the Boston ad firm Arnold Worldwide and later moved across town to MullenLowe. She worked remotely for DAVID Miami during the pandemic and then moved to New York in 2021 to join Mischief. The agency was only a year old but was already doing exciting work, she says.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To write successful ad copy, de Beaumont pushes herself creatively\u2014something she learned to do while writing headlines for Mark Nardi, an advertising lecturer at COM. The meaning of a truly great headline, Nardi taught her, isn\u2019t immediately obvious to the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt should take, like, point eight seconds for people to process,\u201d de Beaumont says. \u201cBecause if it\u2019s so obvious, then you haven\u2019t really led people anywhere. If it\u2019s too complicated, you lose people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the most important lesson she learned at COM came from former advertising professor Edward Boches, a notoriously tough critic of his students\u2019 work. Boches\u2019 classes taught de Beaumont not to let failure deflate her. Watching your ideas be rejected by creative directors or clients is \u201cundeniably the hardest part of our jobs,\u201d she says.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSometimes you\u2019ll spend all weekend working on something, and you show up to work on Monday and have to start over. The person who can rebound, who has the mental resilience to say, \u2018Okay, I\u2019ll just do it better the next time,\u2019 is the person who\u2019s going to rise to the top.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3>Big Results on Small Budgets<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>With so many vehicles available in today\u2019s splintered media market, deciding where and how to spend limited ad dollars is a constant challenge, and de Beaumont is awed by the creative ways her colleagues rise to that challenge.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of her favorite ad campaigns don\u2019t look like ads at all; they\u2019re essentially clever stunts that draw big attention but cost little to execute. Two years ago, for example, she was impressed when Back Market, a seller of refurbished tech, airdropped messages to the demo iPhones inside Apple Stores. Shoppers who accepted the messages were taken to Back Market\u2019s website, where they could see the considerably cheaper prices for refurbished phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u201cSo subversive,\u201d says de Beaumont, with obvious respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She pulled off a similarly savvy stunt herself in 2019, when she was tasked with promoting the return of Burger King\u2019s funnel cake fries, which hadn\u2019t appeared on menus since 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-teal-background-right\"><p>It\u2019s very difficult early in your career to create the kind of positive noise that Vanessa has.<\/p><cite>Doug Gould<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>De Beaumont received a creative brief for the Burger King project that included <em>no<\/em> budget for execution. \u201cBut my then partner and I were super ambitious,\u201d she says,\u201d and we just were hellbent on making something happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their idea: Burger King\u2019s Twitter profile would like influencers\u2019 tweets from 2010 to remind people that some things from the past are worth revisiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results: Influencers took the bait, publicly asking why Burger King was liking their old content, unwittingly creating the buzz BK wanted for its relaunch. After realizing he\u2019d helped promote sugar-coated French fries, YouTuber Casey Neistat posted a video pretending to be outraged that a fast-food giant had exploited him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe thing that upsets me the most about all this,\u201d Neistat says in the video, \u201cis just how genius it was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The advertising industry agreed with his assessment. The \u201cTwitter Bait\u201d campaign garnered de Beaumont that first Clio, along with several other industry awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3>Pushing Boundaries<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When it comes to traditional television ads, de Beaumont appreciates concepts that reach beyond the screen. One of her all-time favorite TV spots is an ad from 2017 that featured a Burger King employee saying, \u201cOK Google, what is the Whopper burger?\u201d\u2014setting off smart devices inside consumers\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>De Beaumont set off action of her own last year with her award-winning Super Bowl ad for the streaming service Tubi. The 15-second spot, which featured Fox sports announcers Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen, tricked viewers into thinking the game had come back from commercial break\u2014and then made it appear someone was scrolling through Tubi\u2019s library, searching for something else to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio is-style-background-yellow\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"responsive-video responsive-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tubi Interface Interruption | Super Bowl\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/73p4lL1iq7w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The ruse sent football fans everywhere scrambling for their remotes. \u201cInterface Interruption\u201d was one of the most talked about ads of the game, and, according to Tubi, it prompted 70,000 people to open the company\u2019s app in the minutes after it aired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>De Beaumont also admires ad campaigns that promote a brand while accomplishing something good in the world. She cites Adidas\u2019s recent \u201cRunner 321\u201d campaign, which highlights the achievements of marathon runners with Downs Syndrome (which is also known as Trisomy 21).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2021, de Beaumont helped create Budweiser\u2019s \u201cBigger Picture\u201d campaign. Budweiser, traditionally a major spender on Super Bowl ads, announced it would skip 2021\u2019s big game and instead dedicate its $5 million ad budget to educating the public about COVID vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI love the way this industry has the potential to drive change,\u201d de Beaumont says\u2014in obvious ways (creating poignant public service announcements) and in subtler ones (casting same-sex couples or differently-abled children in commercials).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-end-of-article\">\u201cI know, a lot of times, the general public doesn\u2019t like to think that advertising is a part of culture, but it has enormous influence on culture,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I love that we get to be people who move that needle in a positive direction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just two years after graduating from COM, Vanessa de Beaumont won her first Clio Award\u2014among the highest honors in the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":39861,"template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"categories":[34,962],"tags":[1721,31],"bu-publication":[],"discipline-type":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/39853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/39853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39900,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/39853\/revisions\/39900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39853"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=39853"},{"taxonomy":"discipline-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/discipline-type?post=39853"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=39853"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=39853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}