We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jennifer Vaughn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jennifer thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?
Honesty. Integrity. Trustworthiness. These are elements that can be elusive if you don’t protect and honor them. I can speak further about how news and media have compromised these once bedrock traits, and how I have worked diligently to preserve them.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
Viewers know me as a trusted source of critical community information, political exchanges, and that face/voice they expect to see on their nightly newscasts. I am familiar, like an acquaintance you greet in your daily life, and yet an enigma, as they only see me as a one-dimensional figure who delivers their news. Surprisingly, there’s more! I took my love of writing and began marking a new career as a novelist. With seven books through ten years, including award-winners, and a best-seller, I have combined two different worlds into one ongoing passion: to create, entertain, and enrich. Twice, I have taken real life stories and made them award-winning books. Several times, I have taken a story and made it an award-winning segment on a newscast. Blending these realms is not a simple nor common process, and I take great pride in being able to raise my children while navigating a demanding career, and expanding it to make room for storytelling in a personal yet permanent manner: writing books. I take what I’ve learned and help others do the same by editing, consulting, and moving them along to achieve that ultimate end goal; a book, compilation, or story of their own that will last forever.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
Social media is a mega-verse for TV AND book writing. This is the new age advertising agent that we, as creatives, are responsible for managing, feeding, and learning from. One of the biggest and arguably most difficult parts of television news is the instantaneous access anyone has to us, our content, and our brand. When input is good, it’s moment-to-moment validation on a job well done. Conversely, it can be vicious, inaccurate, personal, and damaging. Often, witnesses are the only link to an event happening in real time, and that has been a fascinating addition to telling visual stories on TV. We use their video (with applied credit) and share their emotional recount of being on the scene before our cameras arrived. It is an enormous leap forward in media. That’s the beneficial and desirable formula for proper social media consumption, but often, it goes the other way. For instance, if someone becomes disgruntled with the product, or more concerning, with any of us, they can spread nonsense or worse to followers, viewers, readers, or anyone who absorbs our/my content. It can be done in real time, and it can ride a powerful tailwind. The best and only way we can override this relatively modern new phenomenon is to maintain expectations and deliver them without fail or distraction. Social media is like a tropical storm, often delivering a much needed soaking on dry land, or quickly morphing itself into a devastating flood. It’s difficult to predict which way it will go, and yet remains a necessary angle of doing business in the modern world.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
Upon the release of my first novel, Last Flight Out, I received an unexpected and fascinating email inviting me to share my book with celebrity attendants at the Daytime Emmy Awards in Beverly Hills, California. I learned the coordinator had heard of me and was kindly asking if I could provide copies of my book in the Swag Bag each attendant would receive prior to the awards ceremony. I was stunned, of course, given my book had just recently released and I had no idea how this opportunity had presented itself–while quickly trying to figure out how to execute this rare chance at expanding my readership. It was a whirlwind, and an expensive one at that, but I made it work. I booked plane tickets for myself, my pre-teen daughter (at the time) and my mom. We stood behind a table in a room loaded with other creatives who had products that ranged from toe-less socks, the most delicious brownies we’d ever tasted, handmade jewelry, patent-pending technologies, and organic make-up, and greeted celebrities including Alex Trebeck, Lou Ferrigno, Kristian Alfonso, Dr Andrew Ordon, and the biggest stars to deliver drama on beloved Daytime TV soap operas. I invested in this chance to mingle with top-tier talent, and while it never quite delivered results in a monetary manner, it remains one of the best memories I have. When I lost my mother this February, our joint trip to the Daytime Emmys is an instant smile-making memory of her munching on brownies, making small talk with huge stars, and feeling so proud that her daughter’s book was going home with every last one of them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jvwrites.com
- Instagram: @jvaughn9
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.vaughn.146
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-vaughn-13671027/
- Twitter: @JvaughnNH
Image Credits
Terri Trier Photography, WMUR-TV