JAYDE I. POWELL TALKS AGENCY LAUNCH IN Q&A WITH AD AGE
this interview was originally featured in ad age’s influencer marketing newsletter published on thursday, june 23, 2023.
we’re switching things up a little for this week’s q&a and hearing from jayde powell, a content marketer and creator who last friday launched her own agency, the em dash co. powell started the “one-woman-led content and creative development agency” after spending the past year and a half as a freelance content creator, a role in which she partnered with brands such as netflix and prime video to both create social media content and develop campaign strategies.
what led you to want to start your own agency?
for me, it was about owning something that had a brand of its own and a vision of its own. i wanted something that was a little bit different than a traditional marketing and advertising agency, and one of the things i was very focused on was the fact that this is a one-woman-led agency. it’s just me—you're getting my brain, my ideas. i will not be hiring any employees, at least in the short term future. but i think people will see that as a value-add, because they want to work with me, not these 100-person creative teams or strategists or account executives. i also recognize that i will not be everyone's cup of tea, but that's okay with me.
with em dash, i look at it as something that is kind of an all-encompassing place for my brain and the ideas and the marketing skills that i have. that was kind of the vision behind it—i wanted to create something of my own that i can do my work through and also keep it separate from my personal brand and all the other things i'm doing that aren't necessarily related to marketing. and i always knew entrepreneurship was my path—i just didn’t know where it was going to take me.
what services will your agency offer?
the services i’ll be offering are content creation, content ideation and strategy. how those came about was honestly me just thinking about the work that i love to do the most. with content creation, it’s funny, because when people think of the term “content creator,” they automatically assume they’re an influencer on tiktok or instagram posting content. i look at myself instead as someone who creates content and happens to have a social media presence. i don't think a lot of people look at content creation in terms of how it's often considered today—as content marketing. i look at myself as any part of any brand’s creative team, with “content creation” encompassing all types of creative work: copywriting, design, photography, videography.
content ideation is one of my favorite things. i think a lot of brands, whether they're businesses or creators, are so stuck in their own mind in terms of what they feel will work that it's hard for them to have a different perspective. so, i think pulling someone in is very helpful because you get a different perspective. and they get me, someone who's very chronically online. i think that's a selling point. i’m a very online person, and that’s what informs my own ideas—what digital trends are happening, what people are talking about on social media.
and i'm also a strategist. i know how the content i'm creating can ladder up to a brand’s overall goals and how it's going to help them achieve those metrics that they’re looking at for their strategy. so whether i'm building out a strategy for a brand or doing strategic consulting, as i call it, for influencers and creators, i think all of those things are kind of relevant for brands by helping to support their marketing efforts and build up their brands.
how did you land on the em dash co. as the name for your agency?
i was originally going to name it “evergreen”—you know, like “evergreen content”—but i felt like in terms of seo, that wouldn’t stand out well. and then i was scrolling through my tweets and i was like, what about the em dash? because i’m obsessed with this punctuation mark. it’s something i’ve always been incorporating in my style of copywriting. and then a couple of months ago, the full idea for the agency came together—like, okay, the em dash co. is going to be an agency, and this is what my services are going to be and this is the type of clientele i want.
what went into starting up your own agency?
it’s technically been a year in the making, but about a month prepping for launch. in october, i registered my business with the state of georgia, because it’s where i’m based. and i just sat on it for a while, but this past month has been all about me getting ready for launch. the first big step was hiring a brand designer—i worked with my friend kyra [james], who’s a graphic designer, and i wanted to bring her on because she has her own style of design that’s different from the ‘jayde i. powell’ brand that i’d built as a creator. and the second thing was hiring an accountant to get my shit together, financially.i also hired a web designer, and the website was the biggest piece of the launch because i really wanted it to showcase all of the work that i’d done over my entire career. and that was hard, because i’ve worked for 10 years, so i narrowed that down to just show the work that i feel fully encompassed the work that i’m trying to do now. we spent weeks developing this website, and it was a lot of work—a lot of copywriting—on my end, because i wanted to keep things in my tone and writing style. and i spent all of last week just working on the social post announcements, until finally, i launched the agency.
how did you first get into freelance content creation and strategy work?
in 2021, i quit my job—my last role was as the head of social at sunwink. and i was like, “okay, i just quit my job without a backup plan, i don’t know what i’m going to do. i’m just going to wing it and we’ll see what happens next.” i just knew that i wanted to get out of social media management because it was driving me insane. it was having a huge impact on my mental health, like seriously making me unhappy.
from there, i started freelancing. it wasn’t necessarily my plan, but i decided it was what i’d do in the meantime. and then i realized i really loved freelancing. i got to work on so many cool projects, and i loved working with agencies and with brands directly. and in the process of that, because i was a creator, i started working with other creators who were just asking me for advice on things like, “how much should i charge this brand?” or “what should my content look like when i deliver it to them?” it’s not really how i thought things would go, but i’ve had so much fun doing it.
