Mary Johnson Builds Her Business – One Brave New Word (or Two) at a Time
Written by Meg Seitz · Photography by Julia Fay
A journalist for 12 years, Mary Johnson left the news industry a year and a half ago to manage digital marketing for a startup here in Charlotte.
As much as she’d left journalism though, it hadn’t really left her.
Her curious and interested nature started to gaps and misses in the way companies produced their stories. In those opportunities, Johnson saw possibilities. That energy fueled her drive to build her content marketing firm, Brave New Word, in late 2017. {Continued below}
As much as the company’s name is play on Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s 1932 work of dystopian fiction, there’s nothing more real and authentic than Johnson’s philosophy when it comes to her work.
“I saw this big gap in the type of content that companies were producing and the type of content that I knew people wanted to read,” she recalls. “I was thinking to myself that I could leverage my journalism experience to help companies tell their stories – which, I think, are the stories that people want to read.”
“Above and beyond all else, stories are really compelling,” Johnson shares. “And the best is any time you can connect with people over a shared experience.”
Johnson knew what she was doing. She’d experienced an intuitive, gut reaction earlier in her career that supported her philosophy. Prior to working in digital marketing, Johnson served as Editor at Bizwomen, an online publication supported by sponsored content. One particular advertiser wasn’t satisfied with how their content was performing on the Bizwomen website. Johnson investigated and noticed that most of their content was non-descript, run-of-the-mill, stock content pushed out to other sites, as well.
At the same time, she received a notification that the high-profile, female President of Personal Investment for this respective advertiser, had just published a blog post to Linkedin that talked about how her mentees had mentored her. Johnson knew that THIS was the content people – women, especially – wanted to read. This content had the guts to form a connection with and for the reader.
“Above and beyond all else, stories are really compelling,” Johnson shares. “And the best is any time you can connect with people over a shared experience.”
Creating shared experiences can be tricky especially for businesses. Which is why Johnson recommends that companies and brands take time to use stories to humanize their business, sharing about their team members, their customers, their respective communities.
“It’s hard to get companies to realize that you don’t have to be selling all the time to be effective,” Johnson notes.
It’s also hard to get businesses to realize something else: they must be fearless in their branding – and their stories. “You have to decide who you are, and go with it,” she advises.
“Once your eyes are open to something, you can’t close them,” she says. “Which is why I started to get more interested in the issues impacting women and what women were bringing to the table.”
Johnson has told many stories over the years. But some of the stories she keeps coming back to involve women in business and female-owned businesses. Though it wasn’t a passion point from the beginning, her role as Managing Editor for a state-wide business newspaper in New Jersey years ago opened her eyes to not only the challenges and issues women in business struggle with, but also what they’re all about as both a community and a resource for each other.
“Once your eyes are open to something, you can’t close them,” she says. “Which is why I started to get more interested in the issues impacting women and what women were bringing to the table.”
Though Brave New Word doesn’t focus exclusively on female-owned businesses, Johnson holds a special place in her heart for the relationships women have with each other in and for business.
“There’s a connection there that I like,” Johnson notes. “Now [with Brave New Word] if I can help female-owned businesses build themselves up and get to that next level, that’d be amazing.”
Meet the Author: Meg Seitz is the Founder and Managing Creative Partner of toth shop, an agency with one goal: Elevate your brand’s content through powerful writing, creativity, and strategy. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor with Queens University and Founding Partner of the children’s book series, “Bea is for Business”.
She’s an English major with an MBA, so she can talk Homer’s “The Odyssey” just as well as she can talk sunk costs – though she’d much prefer the former.
Meet the photographer: Julia Murray, owner of Julia Fay Photography, feels most at home behind a camera with a story to tell on the other side. Her business began during her sophomore year of college, while majoring in radio and tv broadcasting. Now residing in Charlotte NC, she primarily shoots weddings and other local small businesses like her own. Her favorite part about her job is the connection it brings between art and people.
