Dan Wade

A professor in college pulled me aside after class one day and gave me a powerful message: To make an impact in this world, you need to influence people and to influence people in this world, you need to be able to write well. From that point on, I committed myself to developing numerous voices and styles so that I could influence a huge range of people and help the best ideas win in the marketplace.

Since my styles range widely, my influences do as well. Christina Kahrl's effortless brilliance and ability to contextualize complex ideas in long-form content is inspiring to me, as is Eddie Shleyner's guidance on creating tight, pithy copy. When the content calls for bravery and steadfastness, I look to Wendell Berry; when humor is the right vehicle, I'm partial to Dave Barry.

To borrow a phrase from Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson: There's treasure everywhere!

Research, to me, is the most critical part of marketing campaign development. Without being exceptionally clear on what needs to be communicated, to whom, and what I want them to do about it, the odds of success are much lower. Techniques to ensure I have that clarity can range from quantitative research to AI prompting to user or SME interviews depending on the need — though I am particularly partial to reviewing sales calls for candid feedback.

To choose the right style, I take buyer personas — either by creating them or using existing definitions — and do a media analysis to understand what they're already consuming. This gives me a sense of where and how they expect to get information, which helps determine both the channels I'll use, the media, and the level of formality.

Personalization is critical for breaking through the unending onslaught of information consumers get on a daily basis. If your product solves a problem, personalization means understanding not just the surface level of the problem, but the secondary problems that result from it, and the emotions that are wrapped up within it. Communicating to a consumer's gut-level feelings instead of making a purely intellectual argument will almost always produce better results.

More aspirational products also benefit from personalization as targeting each audience with the way it will help them specifically keeps the product in the forefront of their mind instead of consigned to a pile marked "kinda cool stuff."

One really important thing to me is to have a life outside of work, creative projects I care about that help me develop skills and try new things but that are separate from my work life. This helps me keep some distance between myself and my work, which makes taking critical feedback much easier since I'm not as reliant on any given project to help me see value in myself.

The other thing I do is build strong relationships with my teams, clients, vendors, and stakeholders. This helps ensure we're all working toward the same goal, which makes feedback an exercise in teamwork rather than a one-sided conversation.

My most recent project was with Niantic to promote their new 3D scanning app, Scaniverse. The first element was a partnership with a non-profit to both create awareness and introduce the social good the app can do, which included a landing page and social media posts.

The second element was a product launch for the app on Meta Quest, which coincided with the holiday season. I built a scavenger hunt intended to give participants ideas of things they can scan throughout the year and backstopped it with an influencer campaign showing how easy the app was to use and how it could be a new way to save travel memories and relive them in VR.

The projects that excite me most are multichannel campaigns like the holiday campaign described above, which serve multiple goals and where the whole can be more than the sum of its parts. I can contribute at any part of the process — strategy, research, even down to tactical execution — and my extensive experience as a full-funnel marketer helps ensure that the pieces are fitting together to maximize ROI.

When time permits, I also take on smaller projects such as positioning, copy, and messaging development.

I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota with my wife and our two-year-old daughter. I'm deeply involved in the soccer community here, leading communications for one of the largest supporters groups in the country as well as attending games for, and advising, some of the lower league teams. When I'm not cheering on the Loons, Crows, or Aurora, I love to get outside and hike or cross-country ski, especially along the shore of Lake Superior.

Professionally, I started as a sports data journalist, falling in love with telling stories and using hard facts to back them up. I was able to grow an audience for my work on Twitter, which led to my move into social media and content marketing. Much of my career has been spent in startups, which has given me an incredible versatile skillset across content, product, and growth marketing as well as communications and PR. I love working with innovative products and helping companies really hone the messaging around what makes their solution not just different, but truly better.

I'm a big believer in changing physical space to find inspiration. Go to a new place, see new things, hike to high places and look down to change my horizon, etc. I may not be a visual artist, but I still find new eyes helpful when I'm feeling stuck in a rut intellectually. I'm a highly analytical person, so when something catches me, I get really interested why I had a reaction to it — positive or negative — and try to incorporate those underlying principles in my work.

Related to copy and content, I consume as much as I can — News, financial reporting, data stories, personal interest, fiction, and more — all to keep from falling into one narrow way of thinking and writing. Keeping a wide lens also helps me connect elements within campaigns to strengthen the overall messaging.

Starting my career in journalism gave me a holy respect for deadlines, so those are a powerful motivator for me. I'm happy to use whatever task management software clients want, but I also have a white board on the wall as soon as I enter my office that has the big project dates on it so I'm never caught flat-footed!

Resilience. Marketing is harder than ever and with the changes rocking social media, another big pillar isn't as useful as it once was. There's an element of risk in every campaign now, and even the best plans can produce unexpected results, which makes betting personal or professional value on one big thing is dangerous. Being resilient means that I can take feedback well, I'm capable of making quick changes, and I don't let defeats turn into despair. Being able to spread that desire to keep moving forward to team members is part of what makes me a great leader and it's something I really value about myself!