Tell us a bit about your organization and what your specialty is in the film and video space.

Hofstra University, founded in 1935, is a nationally recognized private research institution located on a 244-acre arboretum campus in Long Island, New York. It serves a diverse community of more than 10,000 students. Hofstra offers a rigorous academic environment with interdisciplinary programs, practical learning experiences, research opportunities, and a vibrant student life, including NCAA Division I athletics. The university provides more than 175 undergraduate and 200 graduate programs in fields such as liberal arts and sciences, business, communication, education, health sciences, and engineering and applied science. It also offers honors programs, a law school, and a school of medicine. Small classes, taught by accomplished faculty in state-of-the-art facilities, ensure personalized attention for students. Conveniently located near Manhattan and Atlantic Ocean beaches, Hofstra offers a unique blend of urban, suburban, and coastal experiences to enhance student learning and growth.

The Office of Marketing and Communications is the strategic and creative partner of units across campus, bringing stories to life through print, digital, interactive, written, photo, video, and social media.

I am Hofstra’s Social Media Manager. I manage, strategize, and create content for all the institutional Hofstra pages, and oversee all official University-affiliated accounts across Academics and Student Engagement sectors. I develop university-wide guidelines, policies, and best practices, create organic photo, video, and graphic content for the institutional pages, run an internship program for the academic sectors’ socials, troubleshoot, social campaign development, and more.

I hold a Bachelor of Science in Video/Television & Film from Hofstra University’s Lawrence Herbert School of Communication (class of 2020). I worked on the operations and strategy side of the Media/Entertainment industry in New York City for a few years post-grad before I began freelancing in social on the side. Digital video, wacky yet dry comedy, and “being crafty” have always been my areas of expertise and interest, so eventually transitioning to social full-time felt natural. Now at Hofstra for two years and going, I am also pursuing my MBA in International Business from the Frank G. Zarb School of Business at Hofstra University.

What is your organization’s ethos and how does it set you apart from industry competitors?

Our core values are brought forward by the Hofstra 100 Strategic Plan: Belonging, Community, Creativity, Discovery, and Integrity. Hofstra 100 bridges Hofstra’s first century of excellence to the student-centric, technology-forward needs of the next era. This plan will propel the University to its centennial milestone. The future calls for a new model of student success, and Hofstra is ready to rise to the challenge. The University aims to be a national leader in interdisciplinary education, designing a curriculum that crosses invisible lines within the institution and communities Hofstra serves to provide an education centered around career readiness for the workforce needs of the future.

How can people join or learn more about what you do?

Follow @HofstraU on all platforms!
Check out Hofstra’s Office of Marketing and Communications here.
I can be found on LinkedIn

Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?

#FindKW ended up becoming a roughly month-long social media and public relations campaign to build up the hype about our redesigned mascots. Hofstra’s beloved lion mascots, Kate and Willie Pride (named after our founders Kate and William Hofstra) received a much-needed refresh – a new, bold, strong, fierce look; a drastic change from the worn-down raggedy suits that have had years of wear and tear. The mascots in their old suits were not posted on official @HofstraU social media for well over a year and had ceased all in-person engagements 6 months prior to the relaunch. The new suits needed to be built up, and not launched as a one-off piece of creative. More importantly, the buildup needed to involve and engage the Hofstra community – current students, alumni, faculty, staff, etc.

Thus, the “missing mascots” storyline was born. The ending was determined first – all this time, they’d been at Campus Recreation, working out to achieve their new look. To establish mystery and campus engagement, the rest of the campaign was broken into three (3) phases.

Phase 1: Establish that the mascots are missing.
Phase 2: Begin the search.
Phase 3: Teasing the reveal

In addition to eight (8) social media videos across all institutional platforms, elements also included a web page and TINT-powered UGC content board, written news articles crafted for Hofstra’s news site, campus screen messaging, missing flyers, and on-campus clues, such as paw prints and item giveaways.

The campaign was powered across all main institutional Hofstra University social media pages (including Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all housed on YouTube. The primary engagement came from Instagram, as students were able to share their on-campus findings and were easily reshared by the main @HofstraU account.

The campaign lasted throughout the month of September 2024, and the creatives and engagement heightened the month’s average post engagement to 8.42% (including Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and TikTok only, not including Instagram stories).

The real success came with the Hofstra community. Following the on-stage reveal at the student event, the entire audience waited around until the end of the event to get their first picture with the new Kate and Willie Pride.

What are you most proud of about this piece? What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?

I am most proud of the campaign looking like everything went the way that it was supposed to from the outside, when in reality, so much went wrong. Kate’s torso was initially twice as large as Willie’s in muscle and width. We constantly joked that Kate was on steroids while working out. The suit had to be sent back to the manufacturer in the Midwest for immediate alterations.

Initially, we were only going to do one piece of creative to relaunch the mascots (which we ultimately turned into the final reveal piece), but once we saw how drastic of a change the new look was in comparison to the old ones, we knew we had to ease the community into it and build out a longer campaign that spanned the first couple of weeks of the Fall 2024 semester and ideally ending a week before our annual Fall Fest.

Meanwhile, the new suits were delivered the second week of the Fall 2024 semester, and upon realizing that Kate’s suit was wrong and needing to be sent back, we had to adjust production timelines, add more creative installments and giveaways and clues to build up the suspense. Once the suit came back in, we had to put the athletics uniforms on a rush tailoring job so we could film the final reveal.

We ultimately shot the final reveal video three days before the mascots’ in-person reveal at a student-run talent show the night before the Fall Fest carnival. The final reveal shoot was coordinated with a 15-minute lead time to get the student performers, the facility to shoot in, our university photographer to get some promo shots, and a videographer. The final reveal video is the only video not shot on an iPhone specific for social, as we wanted the higher quality imagery for the piece. We shot the final reveal sequence in about a 2-hour time span, and it was the first time the student performers got to put on the suits.

Kate and Willie had their first in-person reveal at an event the night before Fall Fest because it was set to downpour the day of the concert and carnival, and we didn’t want to ruin the suits right after launching them. So, instead, they participated in any indoor activities before the carnival kicked off to mingle with students.

Do you have any advice to other filmmakers based on your career or your team’s approach to work?

I’m a firm believer in quality over quantity (when quantity is met). When quality is recognized, engagement will follow, especially in a higher education setting.

For younger creatives like myself, finding a specialty medium and niche is important, but not limiting yourself to that area is more important. Allow yourself to work as part of a team, incorporate other mediums, expand on your story via different channels. You’ll learn more, you’ll learn faster, and not just different neighboring functions of storytelling, but learning how to work with like-minded and unlike-minded creatives and learning how to “roll with the punches” will elevate you faster.

Finally, be proud of your work. Allow yourself to be passionate. Passion drives creativity, drives fun, drives quality, drives engagement. Think big, outside your limitations, and you’ll find a way to make it happen.

Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?

I was the first one in the new Kate suit! The new mascot suits came to Marketing and Communications first, before they made a permanent home at Campus Recreation. We had to make sure that the suits came out the right way (they did not…), and ultimately required a few trips to a local dry cleaner to get Hofstra Pride Athletics uniforms custom tailored to the new muscular suits.

I’m roughly the same height and stature as our main student mascot performer, so I was the first one in the Kate suit to ensure proper look and feel, and needed to “suit up” more than once (and being told I’m “scarily good at this” being mascotting). Throughout the campaign, I also worked directly with Campus Recreation and our main student Kate and Willie performers to help re-develop their characters, creating new personalities for the lions that would match their new look, and help develop some signature moves. Since then, Kate and Willie have become new prideful, fierce, strong, and a little bit chaotic icons on campus, rebranding them from the inside out.

Tell us about the most memorable response you got from this work.

Making new connections overall was the best reaction. I got the opportunity to pull in interest from so many areas of campus, from faculty, administration, and staff, and current students.

My biggest fear was getting a poor response to the new mascots, and when they were revealed in-person on stage at the same time that the reveal video premiered at the event AND on social, every student in attendance gave a screaming standing ovation, and stuck around after the event to grab a photo with the new Kate and Willie. The photo line was at least an hour long. Seeing that reaction in real-time was incredibly rewarding.

Our student mascot performers knew to look for me at any event after that. We got custom friendship bracelets as a giveaway/clue item, and ordered custom large ones that fit the Kate paws, and our student performer continues to wear them with the costume, along with her human-sized Kate friendship bracelet daily. Our Willie performer, we got to do a reveal video with him at the end of the academic year as he was a graduating senior. Making memories and collaborating with the mascots and Campus Recreation in a new capacity has strengthened bonds, and has acted as a prime example of how we can best support their marketing, creative, and strategic needs.

Complete this sentence: ‘Great video storytelling is…’

… having fun. I know something is going to turn out well when I’m having fun behind or in front of the camera. A good, creative, collaborative, and again FUN environment behind-the-scenes when storytelling almost always shows in the content itself, and the passion shines through, which in turn incites tremendous engagement from our community. Just plain, simple having fun can be the key to successful, quality, engaging storytelling.