Remi Oswald: “I Was Ready for a Promotion”

Remi went through a lot of trial and error before becoming a content strategist.  Like many within the industry, advertising wasn’t the job that Remi saw herself doing when she was in high school. 

“My guidance counsellor actually sat me down and told me that she thought I’d be really good in a communications role,” she said. 

Remi spent the first moments of her career as a brand/content manager in various businesses before moving to Wellcom. At Wellcom, she started off as a social media manager, setting up the social media department in Melbourne. During this time, she was brought into strategy meetings, learning the ropes and developing her skills before applying to Award School in order to solidify her content strategist role. 

“I was ready for a promotion, and the role that made sense for me to move into was social strategists, or social specialist. But I didn't want to be pigeonholed to social media. So I asked to be considered as a strategist, and let me learn it and implement it and get it out there, we could go from there. Ad school was the thing that made the most sense to learn those kinds of core basics and strategies to move forward,” she said. 

With the attitude of ‘sometimes you just have to manifest this stuff,’ Remi put the work in to benefit herself in the long run, something she continues to do day-to-day in her role at Wellcom. She highlights Ad school as an essential part of the development of her career.

What ultimately got Remi excited for Ad school were the lecturers and connections that are presented to their students. As a self proclaimed ‘yapper’, Remi detailed her experience at Ad school in a thought piece, which you can find here. 

“Being able to apply learnings in real time with professionals at the same level as myself was a huge benefit. It’s the whole appeal of this industry, being able to speak and create with people and to work with lecturers that I had heard my superious speak about,” she described. 

While at Wellcom, Remi has worked on a number of projects that have made her feel pride in her strategic work, most notably the work done with Mission Foods and the AFL team Western Bulldogs. Despite a 15 year long partnership between the two brands, neither of them had created content together but rather created content that could be shared or placed on the back of jerseys. 

“I asked if we had access to them (Western Bulldogs), which was something that had never been asked before. So we got together with the two brands and started to create content together. Not only did we build a better relationship between the two brands but the community growth and engagement skyrocketed. Having those real and authentic interactions was what was needed,” she said. 

While Remi loved the success of the project and being able to report the increasing results to her boss, she remembers ultimately having fun with this ongoing partnership. Remi continued to note that the strategy behind this partnership always keeps her on her toes. Whether they are doing a video or a social media post, the question ‘where does this fit in the overall strategy?’ is always in the back of her mind. 

“I also loved getting to be a part of Stanley’s introduction to the Australian market, it has been a joy to work on that project with the rest of Wellcom and I do name drop Stanley at a few dinner parties now,” she admitted. 

Having worked within the social sphere of marketing for sometime now, Remi has come accustomed to the rise and fall of social media trends. She talked on the infamous Duolingo Owl, who will jump head first into any and all conversations on social media, almost like a ‘meme carousel.’ She commended Duolingo on their ability to build a brand that can perform in such a way.  

However, she noted that sometimes joining in on a social media conversation doesn’t always go the way one expects, using the example of TBH Skincare, whose video ended up on Andrew Tate’s X account and was since then bombarded with hate comments. 

In an almost defiant stand towards the turbulent nature of social media, Remi’s advice was, “don’t be afraid to join the conversation but also know and educate yourself on what that conversation is and why you should be joining it.”