Emily Joe Watterson
🗓 When: Juneteenth, June 2021
👤 Client: Interlude Creative Studios, Los Angeles CA
❓Asks: Part of Kinn's social promise is speaking openly and honestly about social issues through their Founder's Note Instagram series. As an Asian American woman, Kinn's Founder & CEO has previously spoken to the community about the Black Lives Matter movement and spoke up during a time of increased violence towards the AAPI community. The ask this time was: sensitively communicate to the Kinn community the historical & present significance of the Juneteenth holiday.
💡 Insights: My favorite type of project is one where I get to use my Women & Gender Studies degree to sensitively and appropriately address social justice topics. The most critical component of this Juneteenth message was not simply celebrating freedom, but highlighting continued oppression. Without this key piece, "a reminder of the work that has yet to be done," this message would feel disingenuous to the Black community's sentiments towards the holiday. I then chose a quote that evoked inter-struggle solidarity and ended with a call to action to continue education. Brand messaging about such serious topics can often feel calculated and profit-driven. There is a way to communicate these topics genuinely, and I think I helped Kinn accomplish that here with this post. Getting the opportunity to write something of this nature also opened up ways that I, as a copywriter, could bring further education to our team. For instance, after writing this post, I shared an article with the whole Kinn team on why we capitalize the "B" in "Black." (The screenshot below is the team's first iteration, which sparked the "B" capitalization conversation. It was then corrected before being posted to Instagram.)
2021