0:07

Hi. I'm Taylor, and I'm a sophomore advertising student here at SDSU.

0:12

Hello. My name is Morgan Larson and I am a COJO alum, class of 2013 Advertising Major.

0:20

Yeah, and to kind of start off, Morgan and I met through the alumni mentor program here at SDSU.

0:27

And so that's when we we were matched together in October and we've been meeting monthly since then.

0:33

Yes, it's been so fun. Taylor, you were awesome. It has been a pleasure to get to know you.

0:38

And you are a rockstar Cojo student. And it's so fun to be a part of this journey together.

0:44

And I just have to say that Morgan's then absolutely great with anything from like applying towards

0:49

internships or just like helping me in kind of knowing what I want to do with my advertising degree.

0:56

So it's been great to have that guidance with that like, well, thank you, Taylor.

1:02

So I guess we'll kind of jump right into your college experience and kind of starting out.

1:09

Did you always know that advertising was something that you wanted to do?

1:12

Oh, good question. I would say in high school, I was interested in a lot of things that were probably, you know, like the school of Cojo adjacent.

1:25

Right. So I did, um, I was the coeditor of our newspaper.

1:29

I did, you know, photography for that layout for that. I liked the more kind of creative types of things.

1:36

And so while I didn't have advertising as like listed as what my major was going to be when I graduated,

1:43

I think when I graduated high school, I should say,

1:46

I definitely now thinking back, I was a lot of the things that I was really into and got me excited in high school,

1:52

you know, led me to the advertising major here.

1:55

So when I had I was a senior in high school and I graduated, I think I had declared that my major was going to be broadcast journalism.

2:03

And at the time at SDSU, it was a journalism major.

2:07

And then there was different emphasis. And so advertising was an emphasis you could choose or broadcast journalism was an emphasis you could choose.

2:14

I had went with broadcast journalism originally and then my sophomore year switched to advertising,

2:20

and then at that point advertising became its own measure. So I was part of the first class of true advertising degree graduates.

2:30

So yeah, I, I wouldn't say like advertising was top of mind for me, but I knew I wanted to do something semi creative.

2:38

And so I'm really, you know, kind of led me to that path.

2:41

And I think the College of Communication Journalism was perfect for that because it's really you get a broad sense of everything in a way,

2:48

and then it's pretty easy to switch around to. Exactly, yeah. And I didn't have to stay any extra off by doing that, especially so early.

2:55

But you know, between freshman and junior sorry, freshman and sophomore year.

3:00

And so that made it easy for me. But also I had just realized two, even by switching to advertising,

3:07

I still didn't know what I wanted to do, but I was thinking more long term of like,

3:11

well, no matter what I end up doing in life, I'm going to need to know how to market and advertise whatever that thing is.

3:17

And so everything that I knew that I was going to learn by being that major I knew would apply to whether I did nonprofit work or if I did,

3:26

you know, worked for a small business or large business. Doesn't matter, right?

3:29

Like you have to talk about and know how to sell an advertiser, your services, whatever those things are.

3:34

So I am very indecisive person. And so this was the a good decision for me knowing I still didn't know what I wanted to do when I wanted to grow up,

3:42

but it was very relevant and useful no matter what. And were you involved in anything when you were in college?

3:48

Any clubs or anything like that? Yeah, I was. I would definitely I feel like high school burned me out a little bit and I was involved in absolutely.

3:56

I think the only thing in high school that I wasn't involved in that I could have been was golf.

4:00

So everything else I was I had my hands in, too.

4:03

And so when I got to college, I took a little bit of a breather from involvement, but I did.

4:09

I was a CST deejay, 90.7 radio deejay for a few years.

4:14

I had a show called Mondays with Morgan, very creative name, and I also was a part of advertising club.

4:21

So I think I was a secretary and vice president of that and involved with that throughout my my time at SDSU.

4:27

So those are probably the two largest things I was involved in while I was in in school.

4:34

And was there anything like during college that you did that kind of like influence your career path at all?

4:39

Oh, totally, yeah. So I when I was a sophomore, my dad encouraged me to get a job at Terminix.

4:47

He had been a contractor for them on some different projects,

4:50

and he had thought it would be really good for me to get experience working for some larger company.

4:56

And he knew that there were some different departments that were relevant to what?

4:59

I was starting to learn in school and so I interviewed and ended up getting a position in their creative services department,

5:06

which is really their animation, almost kind of mini agency in-house.

5:10

That also would work with outside clients that had, you know,

5:13

we would work with the baseball teams or football teams that had tektronix boards and create those animations that were on the screens there.

5:19

And so because of that, I received experience working with clients right in college and was trusted by the folks that I was working with and helping to then work with,

5:30

also the animators and designers at Jack Tropics.

5:33

And so because of that, I had learned I really liked being on the kind of account side,

5:39

and I liked more of that agency kind of vibe where we were having a lot of different clients come to us and work with us.

5:45

So that totally helped me understand that, you know,

5:49

I wanted to continue trying out different agency type places to work at because of the experience I gained there.

5:57

Dr. Onyx Okay, so I after your experience as a student and then also in the classroom,

6:02

were there any challenges when transitioning to like a career after graduating?

6:08

I don't I don't think there was a huge I don't remember anything off the top of my head.

6:14

I did have a little bit different of an experience probably than the average person with that transition,

6:19

though, because I had because of that tectonics job that I talked about,

6:25

I then went to get an internship between my junior and senior year at a startup called

6:31

Nine Clouds that had had a side project called Lemon Leaf Start at that point.

6:36

So they were I mean, just a couple of months old. And we're looking for an intern that had experience working with clients and creatives.

6:43

And so I fit the bill with that. And so I got that internship not really knowing what Lemon Lee was going to be.

6:50

I just learned what an infographic was from them like, Oh, have you heard of the term infographic?

6:54

I was like, No, what is this new thing? Because it was pretty, pretty new at the time and because of that.

7:00

So I started as an intern at Lemon Lee in my junior year and then stayed on part time

7:06

during my senior year of school and then and then was hired on full time after graduating.

7:12

And so because of that, I didn't have like I already was doing basically my, my job but just part time in school.

7:19

And I had already done that my, you know, my job but it to my junior year that summer.

7:24

And so I would say that transition was much easier because I was already there and already had had that job when I was graduating.

7:33

So that transition didn't seem too hard for me, I would say.

7:37

And I would also think I was grateful for my time working at Tektronix as well, just because that had helped me learn some of those things in school.

7:46

So then that, you know, I kind of knew what to expect when going to another position somewhere.

7:52

Was there anything like surprised you about your internship role or like even

7:57

anything within the field of advertising when you first started your job?

8:02

I would say the amount of trust I was given as an intern was very surprising to me.

8:08

And I would say that that probably varies for people depending on where they work.

8:11

But so for me at Lemon Lee, they were a very new company, just a few months old.

8:17

They had four employees at the time, but no one was on really the project management or account management side.

8:24

The CEO, John, at the time, he was taking care of that but also doing sales and, you know, CEO things.

8:29

And so I was kind of the first person to take on that role to do that specifically.

8:35

And they just they let me do it and said, hey, if you have experience doing it,

8:39

we trust, you know, use the process that you had in place and had learned.

8:43

And if there's things we need to change and do, we can be like, we trust you, you know what you're doing, and so just go with it.

8:49

And I was just kind of floored at the time, like, oh, you're just going to you're going to let me do it and trust that I know what I'm doing.

8:55

Okay. You know, it was the but I also appreciate that now looking back, because then it just gave me the confidence to be able to understand that I do.

9:06

I had value even as an intern, even as someone in college,

9:09

that the experiences that I had had and the things that I was learning were all relevant to that experience.

9:16

And so, like I even remember I had experience learning.

9:19

I learned how to do email marketing with MailChimp in a class with Roxann just that semester before, and they were like, Oh, perfect.

9:26

Yes, we don't we don't know how to do it, but if you know how to do it, take our email list and make a make an email.

9:32

And so those types of things, they just were they just let me do it.

9:37

And it was so surprising to me at that time. MM Can you explain some of your different roles that you had with Womanly?

9:42

Yeah, good question. I did a few, so I had started, like I said, as a project management intern is what we called it.

9:50

So serving on the account side and then along side of that, I also started doing all most of our, you know, our marketing rate.

9:58

I was kind of the voice of. LEMON We. Online. So I did all of our, you know, our email marketing.

10:02

I was Lemon Lee on social media, started our different social channels and that transitioned into we needed more.

10:09

We wanted to focus more on someone focusing on the lemon lemon lee marketing.

10:13

And so that became more of my full time role. And then I was assisting on the project management side with some of the larger accounts that I had had.

10:21

But we had hired more people to take care of strictly project management.

10:24

So then I was more on the communications and marketing side,

10:28

and then I started leading our we didn't have a writer until we finally hired a writing intern, I think in 20, gosh, maybe 15.

10:39

And so then I started managing the internship program and then also started managing kind of what we called the content department,

10:46

which is our writers and marketers there too. And then I transitioned into doing more business development and sales as well.

10:54

And so basically I think I did almost every role at Lemon Lee except for design.

11:01

But I think sometimes I remember when we I first had started,

11:04

I also I got to wireframe and do layout for different infographics just when it was super busy and we didn't have enough people.

11:11

And so yeah, really, that's what I loved though about being part of a small company is that I really got to, you know,

11:18

have my hands and everything, especially when it was a young company and we all were building it from the ground up.

11:24

And so yeah, I did a lot in my time there in my nine years there ultimately.

11:29

Wow, sounds like you did a lot during your time there and yeah, definitely a broad experience.

11:35

It wasn't. It was. And thankfully it was nice because I think because of just the different courses that I had taken here,

11:44

you know, kind of showed you a little bit of a lot of things.

11:46

And so almost every I feel like every course I took, especially in my junior and senior year,

11:52

were applicable somewhere in no matter what role that I had had there at the agency.

11:57

So that was, that was cool. MM What was your favorite thing that you were able to do with Lemon Lee?

12:02

Oh gosh. Oh. I would say the internship program kind of helping create that and continue to build it into what it is now.

12:17

I think that's probably something I'm most proud of.

12:22

It was something that as a former intern that, you know, had a special spot in my heart.

12:27

And so being able to help create, you know, and, oh, hey, we should we should brand it and we should make it fun and we should,

12:33

you know, go talk to high schools and go talk to colleges and get our name out there somewhere fun to work.

12:38

I think I loved being a part of that, working with students, helping interview students.

12:43

And then a lot of those students that became interns then state as full time employees and a lot of them still work there.

12:49

And so it's really cool to see how they've grown within the company too.

12:53

And so I think just everything about the internship program is really something that sticks out for me as a huge win.

13:01

Obviously the cool client work we got to do, like those are awesome memories.

13:04

I got to do a lot of traveling with the company and so I have, I mean, just so many awesome memories,

13:09

but I think the one that sticks out as the most rewarding would be just the interns and the people that got to go through that program.

13:15

There have been it's been fun to watch. That's awesome. We are not being able to take the program full circle.

13:21

Yeah, starting as an intern and then starting an internship program.

13:25

So yeah, it was super cool. And again, that was one of those things that I was just, you know, they gave me the reins and said, Yeah, you know,

13:32

we have a vision of kind of where this needs to be, but you've been in the shoes of the intern, and so you take this and run with it.

13:39

And so that was that was incredible. Awesome.

13:43

Well, do you want to talk a little bit about what came after Lemon Lee?

13:46

Yes. Yes. So I would say in 2021, I was approached about an opportunity to work with a federal and state funded organization,

13:57

specifically force of manufacture for manufacturers in South Dakota here.

14:01

And and there is a part of me that wanted to effect more locally and do more with folks locally.

14:08

And so that just really spoke to me at the time. And I felt like that was a sign because I was approached about it and the timing all just worked out.

14:14

And so I decided after nine years, ultimately to to jump in to take that role.

14:19

It was really interesting for me. I learned a ton. I did that for about two years,

14:24

helping just the manufacturers around our state with their marketing needs and

14:28

especially with like recruiting employees and thinking about it from that lens,

14:32

which I had a lot of experience with at Lemon Lee. And so that was really fun to think about.

14:38

And then was approached again just a couple of months ago, talked to my old my old boss, John was the co-founder, one of the co-founders of Lemon Lee.

14:47

And he had an idea and it kind of another side project at the time called Duet that is

14:53

essentially a video editing studio for busy content creators and entrepreneurs and startups.

14:59

And he had had this idea and had started testing it out and it had some legs, but he needed some help getting it off the ground and running.

15:06

And, and so I felt like it was just the right time for me.

15:10

I'd kind of missed some of the things that working more in agency life.

15:14

And so I kind of took the plunge with him.

15:17

And so we're now co-founders of a studio called Duet.

15:20

And like I said, we're a video editing agency. We have we have clients now.

15:26

We have editors. We really were two months in, but we're we're busy and we're rolling and we're just continuing to grow.

15:31

So that's been my new focus now for the past two months. And it's been it's been awesome.

15:36

That's awesome. Where did that idea kind of start out like in the beginning before you were approached about this?

15:42

Yeah. So John is he's us after he had sold Amy and he they were co-founders of Lemon Lee.

15:49

Right. And they had sold it. It was acquired by Click Read.

15:52

And so John was off to kind of the next chapter then, and he had a couple different ideas of things he was starting,

15:58

and for him he had always wanted just to be a thought leader and he always liked making content.

16:04

But he was a busy guy, right? He had a few businesses to run and things, you know, projects going on.

16:08

And so while he wanted to make all of this video content for just his personal social channels and some of his business social channels,

16:15

he realized like he needed to hire, you know, a freelance editor for this type of thing.

16:21

And so he did that. And in this really cool style of how they were editing these like kind of reels and tiktoks and shorts, things like that, these video clips.

16:28

And so a lot of people were approaching him about, Hey, what tool did you use to edit these videos?

16:33

They look awesome. And he's like, Oh, actually, I'm working with a freelancer editor right now to do this.

16:39

And so enough people asked him about this that he was like, Oh, I sent some sort of an idea here that this could be for your business where it's,

16:48

you know, people that don't necessarily want to spend a ton of money on having a full agency, work with them on shooting all this video.

16:55

But it's like folks that have podcasts or folks that are just sitting in their car taping something

16:59

but then want to polish it and create lots of different video type content for their social.

17:05

Angels and just need someone to kind of offload that, too.

17:08

And so that's where the idea came from because it was something that was a pain point for him and he realized there was a ton of

17:14

other people out there like him that especially kind of in that entrepreneurial and startup scene that that would need that do.

17:22

Absolutely. And I think so sorry. I was just thinking, too.

17:25

And so I think for me, where I fit at is just being able to help kind of build from the ground up

17:31

from lemon of that process of how we work with clients and how we do things.

17:35

That's kind of the challenge where I can plug in and fit into is how we do that again.

17:39

Now here with duet is this isn't it's not like what Lemon Lee does, right.

17:44

But it's still there's things in place like the process of working with a client,

17:48

the process of getting feedback to an editor, how do we work through that now?

17:52

And, you know, ten years later, there's new types of apps and different types of technology now that exist now that didn't exist.

17:59

And so just finding the way to make the client experience as smooth as possible, but also, you know,

18:04

giving the editors as much time as possible to just do what they want to do and editing there, too.

18:09

So just kind of fitting all the puzzle pieces together and figuring out how that works has been most exciting for me.

18:16

Yeah, I was just going to ask you, so what there's been some of that change that you've seen,

18:19

whether it be like social media or technology throughout your career?

18:23

Yeah, I think just, you know, video is such a huge deal.

18:26

Right. And I think not only just video but also the short snackable pieces of video.

18:32

And so just really thinking about all the different ways we can chop up larger pieces of content into small snackable things for the tech talks,

18:41

for the YouTube shorts. And it seems like all of these different social channels keep still focusing on video in some way, shape or form.

18:47

And so that's just a different mindset as we start to grow duet as then when with family it was infographics, right?

18:55

And they're still relevant and you know, now they're doing kind of video forms of those today.

19:00

So we're just but we're not doing the creating of the content, we're doing the editing of the content.

19:04

So it's a little bit of a shift of how we are just taking existing footage from folks and teaching them how to make it into,

19:11

you know, 22nd blips that will catch someone's attention on social.

19:15

And so it's a little bit different shift there, but there's a lot of cool things operationally on the back end of just there's a lot of things

19:22

that now can be automated between apps working with each other and talking to each other,

19:26

that you had to have someone, you know, manually do ten years ago, that you don't necessarily have to have someone sit and be responsible for.

19:33

We can have, you know, just with all the different types of tech and air out there, things can talk to each other and apps can work together where.

19:40

And so that's cool from just an operational standpoint, if we can make it a pretty, you know,

19:45

we don't have to have a million people working there in order for us to get our job done.

19:48

We can still, especially with just all these different apps, you know, they could talk to each other.

19:53

So it's really cool for sure. Yeah, that's the thing with like marketing is it's always changing.

19:58

There's something new to learn. And yeah, you just kind of had to stay open minded for that change.

20:03

Yes, I would say. And that's something I was thinking. You are too, is the thing that I'm noticing now.

20:09

You know, I've been out of school, out of college now for ten years and I remember thinking like, oh,

20:16

I always want to learn about the newest, latest, greatest, you know, piece of technology and apps.

20:22

And now I'm getting to the point where I still want to learn about them, but it's like I need to remind myself that, yeah,

20:28

things are changing and that I can't just stay stagnant and that what worked five years ago isn't necessarily going to work now.

20:34

And so we're writing myself like, Hey, we still got to yeah,

20:36

we have to be curious and we have to keep wanting to learn about these different things because yeah,

20:41

this, it's never going to stay the same and it's changing every single day and just reminding ourselves that of that,

20:48

whether you're in school or out of school, I think it's it's something to just it's a good reminder for me of that didn't

20:54

just because it worked ten years ago doesn't mean it's going to be the same now. Right.

20:58

One other thing I had a question about with duet was do you work with different target audiences?

21:04

Is there different ways that you approach the different groups of people?

21:09

Yeah, I think definitely. Especially even just for style and the way we're doing hooks,

21:13

we're still learning that even with our clients of it's honestly, we have to do a lot of experimenting with them.

21:19

On doing different The clients are using us best are the clients that are saying, let's make a lot of different versions of this ad, but you know,

21:27

let's use these different hooks or let's use this different music or let's use

21:31

this different style and let's test it out for an extended period of time then,

21:36

okay, now we understand what's working and then we're going to, you know, lean into that.

21:40

And so I think that's the clients that are doing that. And we're helping trying to educate our clients like, hey, you really do have to experiment.

21:47

And just because something worked for your audience last year doesn't mean that's going to also be the same to you.

21:52

Right? And so those are the types of clients that I love working with are the ones that are willing and understanding,

21:58

especially with the short snackable video content. Like, you've got to keep moving, evolving and changing and you can't just.

22:04

It can't. Look the exact same forever.

22:07

And so understanding how we keep that in brand, but how we also evolve has been a really interesting piece that I've been,

22:14

you know, diving into in the past couple of months here. Okay.

22:18

Yeah. So you've kind of seen a lot about the field of advertising.

22:22

So one question I always ask guest is What advice do you have to someone pursuing a career in advertising?

22:29

Hm I think it has to do with that curiosity part that I was talking about, but I would say the biggest thing,

22:36

especially for students that are either interested in doing it or even are current students now is I mean,

22:42

the thing that changed my life, it was doing those different internships in school and being able going and asking professionals in the field what are things that they enjoy or what,

22:53

you know, what where their career path led them to.

22:56

I think just engaging with the people in the industry as much as possible while you're still in school is incredibly important.

23:04

In order just to learn that there are so many different pathways and things that this, you know, this the degree the degree can take you.

23:11

And so just because you meet someone that does something that you don't enjoy doesn't mean it's the wrong major for you.

23:16

It just means that maybe isn't the particular career path that you want to go down.

23:19

But just helping people understand there's such a wide variety of things that advertising and the different cultural majors are doing now.

23:27

And it's not just a one size fits all path by this major.

23:31

And I think that's the most exciting part of it, is that it can evolve to become so many different things.

23:36

And so the more curious people are about just asking folks in the field and, you know,

23:41

going to those different student days and internship fairs and shadowing opportunities do all of those things.

23:47

Even if you're more of an introvert and you're uncomfortable with that networking side,

23:52

if you do it now, you're it's going to help expose you to so many different things down the road.

23:57

So then when you're doing different, you know, big career decisions,

24:01

you have a lot of different things and experiences and interviews and people that you can ask to go off of.

24:07

Absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing. Is there anything else that you would like to mention to listeners?

24:12

Oh, gosh, that's a good question. No, but I just want to thank you and just the entire staff here of the Department of Communication and Journalism.

24:23

I think you guys are doing awesome things and you continue to evolve and that's fun to see as an alum,

24:27

as you know, even just having this podcast and just these different things.

24:30

It's really fun to watch what's happening here and kind of from the sidelines.

24:35

Now, as someone that is now just a forever fan of SDSU in the school of Cojo.

24:41

So good job to everyone involved here. Yes, Cojo is doing great thing.

24:45

And is there any way that you would like connectors or listeners to connect with you online?

24:50

Yeah, totally. I would say the easiest ways to connect with me would be on LinkedIn.

24:54

So Morgan Larsen and I Twitter is easy too.

24:59

I think right now I just changed all of my usernames.

25:02

I think they're all Morgan at Morgan Larsen here, so feel free to connect with me on social or LinkedIn.

25:07

They're awesome. Well, thank you so much and it's been nice getting to chat with you.

25:13

Yeah, same to you. Thank you, Taylor. This podcast is the property of the School of Communication and Journalism at South Dakota State University, which reserves all rights to its use.

25:25

Music by Cody M Johnson and Tyler Addison James is licensed through AP Music.