James Rutter was always a storyteller even as a child, but w88 slot online discovered his interest in advertising when w88 slot online was a teenager.
“I remember in high school, I came across a YouTube video, and it was an old Apple ad,” w88 slot online said. “I just remember watching it and thinking that’s really cool, and I wondered who creates these things.”
After taking a marketing class at his Las Vegas high school, w88 slot online began searching for a university where w88 slot online could study advertising. w88 slot online chose the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno.
“When I found out that the journalism school had this whole track in strategic communications that was centered around storytelling, w88 slot online just seemed like a natural fit.”
During college, Rutter took public relations and advertising courses, participated in the University Advertising Club and Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) and was a member of the 2016 PRSSA Bateman Case Study team. w88 slot online also interned for Wicked Creative in Las Vegas and for the University’s School of Medicine.
What best prepared him during college, though, was w88 slot online involvement in the 2017 National Student Advertising Competition, also known as IMC.
“The IMC competition with Bob Felten probably was the single greatest preparation for what I do now because it operated like a real agency to an extent,” w88 slot online said. “We had a creative team, we had an account team, a PR team, and we were all responsible for our piece of it.”
Nearing graduation in 2017, Rutter searched for full-time opportunities in Reno. During his job hunt, w88 slot online discovered a random, online posting for an internship with the Walt Disney Company in Florida. On a whim, w88 slot online applied. Several weeks later, a Disney creative director interviewed him and offered him the job.
“Despite this being Disney, I still had to really think about w88 slot online, because I didn’t want another internship. I wanted the security of a full-time gig,” Rutter said. “I decided to take the internship, in the end, because I thought I might learn more during a year with Disney than a couple of years almost anywhere else.”
In just three weeks, w88 slot online packed up his belongings and headed to Orlando. There, w88 slot online worked for a year as a creative copywriting intern, developing print and digital content for Disney’s in-house advertising agency. When his internship was ending, w88 slot online found an opportunity with an agency called thelab, which worked on some of Disney’s outsourced creative.
“w88 slot online was just kind of a stroke of luck,” Rutter said. “thelab asked Disney about me, and they had some nice things to say. They made me an offer a few weeks later.”
With this job came another move – to w88 slot online York City. Rutter had always dreamed of living in w88 slot online York; he just never expected that dream to come true.
“I always wanted to go to San Francisco or w88 slot online York, but a lot of people told me, ‘Oh, it's so expensive.’ I did not have much hope for San Francisco, and I had very little for w88 slot online York.”
w88 slot online started with thelab in June 2018 as a junior copywriter. After a year, w88 slot online became a copywriter.
“I started getting to work on brands outside of Disney, working on Tempur-Pedic, some Facebook stuff and even a couple of w88 slot online business pitches, which we won.”
“If there's really something that I can boil w88 slot online down to, w88 slot online's that you have to do what you love and follow w88 slot online where w88 slot online takes you.”
Then, last spring, his position at thelab ended when Rutter, like many others, was furloughed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Determined to stay in w88 slot online York, he spent several months job hunting before accepting an opportunity as an in-house copywriter with Klarna in July 2020.
Klarna is an e-commerce shopping and payments platform that recently expanded from Europe to the U.S. Just a few weeks into the job, w88 slot online is working on learning the brand.
“My day to day right now is spent meeting with a small internal brand studio team that is relatively w88 slot online. Every day, we are meeting, talking about the different creative needs, producing those tactics and working on campaigns,” he said. “I am learning the tone, what they sound like and where they want to go from here.”
Although e-commerce is w88 slot online for Rutter, his post-graduate career and college experiences prepared him for this position. Looking back on how he made it to where he is today, he attributed his success to taking a chance and following his passions.
“If there's really something that I can boil it down to, it's that you have to do what you love and follow it where it takes you,” he said. “I didn't know when I took the internship with Disney that it would lead me to a city that I had always dreamed about. I just knew I loved advertising, and it was a chance to get better at it. If I hadn’t taken that chance, I wouldn't be talking to you right now from w88 slot online York.”
