The Work That Made Me: Becky Dreps
Becky Dreps is an account director at Jack Health, global brand experience agency Jack Morton’s healthcare specialty practice. Becky began her career in healthcare marketing with HCB Health, now Boundless Life Sciences, after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin. Living in Austin, the burgeoning tech scene piqued Becky’s interest and drew her to join a small tech start up as Marketing Manager, where she was introduced to events. Becky eventually returned to healthcare marketing and later joined the Jack Health team, marrying her knowledge of healthcare and events along with her tech experience.
The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Becky> I always loved the Double Mint gum commercials that featured several sets of twins. I’m a '90s kid who grew watching the Olsen twins, so my desire to be a twin was a little too strong back then. The commercials that aired when cable TV was in its heyday were more memorable to me and had so much more staying power than the ads of today’s streaming world.
The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Becky> My work in marketing, specifically healthcare, was not influenced by ads themselves but rather by a person in the industry. During college, I was a nanny for woman, Nancy Beesley, who co-founded HCB Health (now Boundless Life Sciences) in Austin, Texas. I was so intrigued that Nancy had built such a successful company. During the fall of my junior year, Nancy asked me to intern, as long as I could also watch the kids. I agreed, and that is how my journey started. I immediately feel in love with mix of art, business and life-changing technologies in healthcare marketing.
The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Becky> On the side, I am a yoga teacher, so the work that I revisit regularly is always related to my passion for the human body and how magically it supports us when we support it. I’m always diving into my anatomy books to learn more about physical and energetic parts of the body. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t pull at least one the books from this bookshelf in my office.
My first professional project…
Becky> My first professional project that I really got to own was a re-brand and campaign for a medical device client. The rebrand covered 12 brands underneath the client’s surgical franchise and was led by one of the best marketers I have had the chance to work with, Steve Speares. The campaign was a call to action for industry and healthcare professionals alike, centred around the concept of 'We’ve Got Work to Do,' as it pertained to worldwide issues of blindness cause by diseases such as cataracts, glaucoma, and others. It was a massive endeavour that touched so many parts of the business from packaging and distribution, manufacturing, digital marketing, events and beyond. It was also amazing to see the campaign run around the globe and translated into SO many languages. Layouts change a lot when you have to translate English into Mandarin or even German!
The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Becky> I wouldn’t say this made me angry or that I would NEVER make anything like this again, however there is one piece of work that sticks out in my mind as one of the biggest challenges of my career. I had to launch program and a host an event in China. The experience taught me so much about the country, specifically all the security and firewall rules within the nation. We ended up having to secure a server and rebuild our technology inside of the Chinese system, which lengthened our project timeline from 6 months to 18 months! It was a learning process for us and our client to flow with the changes, be ready for anything and prepare not one, but three contingency plans for everything!
The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Becky> I really love the Google ‘Curiosity Rooms’ that Jack created to launch the Pixel 2 smartphone! I loved this creativity, and it was so masterfully executed. It so perfectly embodied the brand and was such a fun and playful idea!
The creative project that changed my career…
Becky> The project that changed my career was a three-year-long project with the MetLife Foundation when I was a marketing manager at a small tech start up in Austin. This project was a series of global innovation competitions in 10 different nations, where we recruited entrepreneurs working on financial health solutions for low to moderate income individuals within their countries. After a series of rounds to narrow the best solutions, we hosted an event in each country to award grant money to the top five finalists after a live pitch in front of a panel of experts. The project was unlike anything I had ever done before and was my first taste of event marketing and production. I had to learn and work with local teams to put together programming and events, navigate culture and language barriers, and build websites and materials in numerous languages. It was both a challenging and amazing experience that took me around the world!
Global Summit Social Media Recap
The work that I’m proudest of…
Becky> That project with the MetLife Foundation is also the work I am the proudest of too! Because the solutions we sourced were impacting 100s of thousands of lives around the world. It was amazing to see how something we take for granted in the US, like secure money remittance, could be life-changing for a rural farmer in China who no longer has to carry cash home and risk being robbed or how insurance for livestock or crops could save a village from a tough year or an unforeseen weather event.
The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Becky> I recently worked on a global internal meeting for a big pharma company, we put on a killer four-day event in California with everything from general sessions, guest speakers, workshops, and evening entertainment. It was massive group effort, and I am proud to say we have been invited back for 2024.
