Approaching Earned and Owned with Editorial Discipline
My approach comes down to three moves: channel clarity, following the signal, and full extraction. Two real programs below show it in practice.
Every communications strategy needs its own personality and trajectory, shaped by why it exists and what it's meant to accomplish. I bring rigor to the science of editorial and channel strategy, and genuine appreciation for the art of earning attention in ways that actually matter.
The framework I've refined over my career starts with a premise that sounds simple but is harder to execute than it looks: every channel has a distinct job, and the highest-leverage skill in communications is understanding that job and having the discipline to honor it, even when cross-pollinating seems obvious.
My role is set the strategy, and oversee creative development from concept through execution, making sure every channel plays its intended role.
01Channel Clarity: Independence vs. Crossover
The first question I ask when building any earned/owned strategy isn't how do these channels connect? It's should they connect at all?
The decision is driven by three things: the nature of the story, the audience each channel is actually reaching, and the specific business goal that tactic is meant to serve.
In practice: RPA healthcare hubWhile at RPA, the agency lost a major healthcare client and needed to signal its healthcare marketing capabilities to CMOs at hospital systems and insurance companies, a B2B marketing challenge as much as a communications one.
Working across a matrixed organization, I built and led a cross-discipline team (strategic planners, creative director, art director, copywriter, producer, digital strategist, PR specialist, and digital media director), managing stakeholder alignment from creative through senior leadership at every stage. I developed a layered channel strategy anchored by a white paper hub at rpa.com, with three parallel tracks, each with a distinct job:
Dark LinkedIn posts were precision instruments pointed at one audience with one goal: get healthcare CMOs to the hub. The copy spoke directly to the marketing problems keeping them up at night, including the nuances of patient trust, the complexity of regulated messaging, and the challenges endemic to healthcare advertising. No broad brand play. One audience, one job.
Organic LinkedIn and Instagram posts had a completely different mandate. They shined a light on the experts behind the paper, the people and their thinking, and spoke to a broader professional audience curious about the agency's point of view. The goal was brand positioning, credibility, and reputation, not prospecting.
A byline published by the Society for Health Care Strategy & Market Development on social media strategy in an era of mistrust stood entirely alone, with no CTA to the hub and no direct link back to the campaign. Its value was precisely its independence. Third-party validation by an organization that healthcare marketers read and trust.
The internal communications layer included intranet banners, screen posters, and a CEO note with an employee call to action. It functioned as its own kind of earned media. A typical agency LinkedIn post receives a handful of reposts. This one earned 45. That's not an accident: I had learned through repeated experience that the CEO's rallying force, deployed selectively and intentionally, consistently overperformed. This wasn't a one-time ask. I built an internal communications process around it, returning to that play selectively so it retained its power and ability to galvanize employees around external communications. The healthcare hub was one of those moments.
The hub itself attracted marketers from more than 15 top healthcare organizations that met the agency's criteria for prospecting and became a standing new business asset, referenced in pitches to healthcare and healthcare-adjacent clients long after the initial campaign ran. That's the measure of a channel strategy that did its job: not just a launch moment, but a durable piece of infrastructure.
A note on what this campaign didn't do: RPA didn't win new healthcare business in the window this campaign was active. That's an important observation about what marketing in service of business development can and can't accomplish on its own. Communications can build the runway. But without the new business infrastructure in place to convert that interest into opportunities, even a well-executed campaign has limits.
“A credential in isolation is a missed opportunity.”
02Following the Signal
The second concept lives in the space between strategy and instinct. It's the ability to spot an opportunity, whether a moment, a person, a placement, or a piece of content, and recognize that there's more there than what's visible on the surface.
I think of it as following breadcrumbs. Not every placement is a breadcrumb. Not every piece of content is one either. A breadcrumb is a signal that something has more depth to give, that if you push on it, more value will come out. The skill is noticing it and moving before the path is clear.
I've learned that the best thought leadership comes from colleagues who genuinely want to build their profile, not ones being cornered into it. I look for willing collaborators who have something real to say and a real interest in saying it. That combination of authentic expertise and personal investment is what makes a thought leadership effort sustainable rather than a one-time push.
In practice: Amina Asim, PhDI found exactly that in Amina Asim, PhD. Her credentials were unusual for an ad agency environment; a doctorate isn't common advertising. Her expertise in data strategy, programmatic advertising, and the post-cookie landscape was directly relevant to challenges CMOs were navigating in real time. She was also a natural communicator with an interest in building her personal brand. I spotted the breadcrumb: someone with something meaningful to say to an audience that wanted to hear it.
The first move was a speaking opportunity, a featured panel at the MediaPost Data & Programmatic Insider Summit on the return to contextual advertising. One moment that became the foundation for much more.
03Full Extraction: Squeezing the Lemon
A speaking placement is a credential. A credential in isolation is a missed opportunity. The real work begins after the appearance, figuring out how far the expertise can extend and how many formats, audiences, and channels it can reach before the value is genuinely exhausted.
In practice: extending Amina's authorityFollowing Amina's MediaPost panel, I developed a content strategy and built a sustained content ecosystem, mapping each format and channel against a deliberate editorial calendar.
Original long-form content lived on rpa.com as an article on navigating the evolving ad tech landscape, written in Amina's voice, consistent with the agency's brand voice, and positioned for the marketing leaders.
Social content across LinkedIn and Instagram broke the ideas into digestible form for audiences who wouldn't seek out a long-form article but would engage with a sharp excerpt or a pointed question.
A podcast episode on the primacy of first-party data, a format that invites a different audience into the conversation and lets personality come through in a way the written word can't.
A byline in MediaPost titled "First-Party Data: Your Property, Your Rules," placed with the same publication where she had originally spoken. This was deliberate. She wasn't a one-time panelist anymore. She was a recurring, credible voice in that publication's ecosystem. The loop closed. The authority compounded.
Amina's growing thought leadership profile became a genuine differentiator for the agency in new business conversations, signaling that RPA had the kind of specialized data expertise that clients were increasingly needing. That's what full extraction looks like when it works: one person's genuine expertise extended across formats and audiences until it becomes a tangible business asset.
Each extension was built on the same foundation: one person's expertise, one initial opportunity, and the discipline to keep asking what else is in here?
“The skill is noticing it and moving before the path is clear.”
04The Through-Line
These examples reflect the same underlying philosophy from different angles.
The healthcare campaign was about channel clarity: understanding the distinct role each channel played and resisting the urge to force integration where independence created more value.
For Amina it was about signal recognition: identifying underleveraged expertise, creating the first opportunity, and systematically extending its reach across audiences and formats.
Together, they represent how I approach communications leadership. Not as a function that produces content or secures coverage, but as a discipline that asks sharper questions. Why are we telling this story? What value does it provide? What role should each channel play? Who are we trying to reach, and where are they most likely to engage? Is there more in the story?
There usually is. The job is staying curious enough to find it.
“The job is staying curious enough to find it.”