We were lucky to catch up with Jessyca Dewey recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jessyca, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
This success was a culmination of sorts of the year+ we’ve worked with them. During that year, we’ve seen substantial growth. But we’ve also found what didn’t work and pivoted away from that.
In partnership with the client, we combined this learning about low performance on Fridays with the success of our “surprise and delight” tactic, which is a bit of our “secret sauce” for increasing engagement via caption copy, and developed a plan.
Instead of skipping posts on Friday to avoid low numbers, we would use a super simple (read: low cost) social media design template to host “Feel Good Fridays” on the brand’s Instagram account. These posts, which encourage community members to share positivity, connection and kindness, are not only a low-cost way to bring bright brand colors to the grid but also have become among the brand’s most consistently high-performing posts week over week. We are achieving three major client KPIs at once — cultivating a supportive, community vibe, leaning into the bright brand colors, and steadily increasing followers, reach, and engagement.
Jessyca, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
My approach to effective management is simple: We all want to wake up happy. It’s important to me that I wake up grateful for the people I get to work with each day and that I know my work is appreciated. That’s how I want our team and clients to feel.
But feeling grateful for our awesome crew is not the same as paying them fairly — something many agencies don’t often do.So, when we say our company motto is to wake up happy, what we’re really saying is we want to wake up knowing we respect our colleagues and we respect our clients, that we’re valued, and that our work is appreciated.
As such, I set out to ensure the team is highly collaborative, communicating clearly and respectfully, and compensated fairly. I strongly believe in building a space where personal responsibility and autonomy is celebrated.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
When starting The Y Collective in 2021, I sought to be incredibly authentic and transparent. The whole model of The Y Collective is built upon collective — not my individual — success, and therefore radical authentic transparency has been key.
However, I’ve recently been working on reclaiming the balance between transparency and professionalism. As a leader, it is my role to uphold the morale of the company. It is often my job to manage some of the stressful underpinnings of the business.
I recently read the book “How Women Rise” by Sally Helgesen, which was recommended to me by a mentor and leader in the CPG space, Kathryn Tuttle. The book talks about how authenticity for women in leadership can often be a trap.
Authenticity must always be seen through the lens of professionalism. This has become my new lens for leading authentically with restraint to avoid leading with emotion, ego, or fostering negative feelings among the team.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ycollectiveagency.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/ycollectiveagency
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessycadewey/
Image Credits
Skandia Shafer for The Y Collective