Kate Olson · Selected Work
Strategy that understands people and gives brands somewhere meaningful to go.
I help brands find the sharpest idea, then turn it into positioning, content, partnerships, community, and growth.
Brand · Digital · Social · Creator · Community · Insights
Explore the work
Nine selected case studies
Challenge
KANE is helping define performance recovery footwear within a fast-growing but still loosely understood category.
As its product portfolio expanded, the brand needed a clearer system for explaining recovery, differentiating products, and grounding its marketing in research and credible third-party support.
Approach
I developed survey research to understand how people evaluate recovery footwear and what builds trust.
I translated the findings into product positioning, messaging, and a comprehensive strategy playbook.
I mapped the journey from onboarding through engagement, retention, loyalty, and advocacy.
I defined priority communities, outreach targets, and activation recommendations within one credibility-building system.
Impact
The strategy gave KANE clearer direction for product launches, portfolio differentiation, customer education, and long-term relationship-building. It established a consistent, research-led approach to communicating product benefits and building authority in recovery footwear.
Challenge
K-State Salina is expanding beyond its aviation reputation into spatial computing, AI, engineering technology, robotics, and immersive systems.
As the university prepares to launch K-AIRES and evolve its academic portfolio, it needs a clearer digital identity, stronger storytelling, and a more cohesive way to communicate its programs.
Approach
Focus groups, website and social audits, competitive research, SEO analysis, and social listening shaped the “Be What’s Next” positioning and recommendations across web, social, partnerships, and PR.
I developed the university’s narrative framework, audience objectives, content pillars, and website storytelling approach.
I audited comparable programs, workforce terminology, and naming conventions, then created evaluation criteria to guide future naming decisions.
Impact
Together, these engagements give K-State Salina a connected foundation, from high-level positioning and digital storytelling to content systems and individual program names. The rebranding is currently underway.
Challenge
Los Angeles never lacked runners, clubs, races, or organizations. It lacked the connective tissue that made its running culture visible, navigable, and welcoming.
Information was fragmented, communities operated in silos, and people curious about running often did not know where to begin. The opportunity was not only to serve existing runners, but to help more people imagine becoming runners in the first place.
Approach
I mapped the journey from skepticism to curiosity, first participation, habit, belonging, and advocacy, then built resources for every stage.
I created the brand, website, editorial voice, social presence, newsletter, directories, discovery tools, routes, discounts, and practical guidance.
Instagram is the real-time front door; the website is the deeper, searchable hub. Both are hand-curated to remain accurate and genuinely useful.
I connect runners with clubs, races, retailers, nonprofits, fitness brands, and community leaders across Los Angeles.
Impact
18K+ audience · 5K monthly website users
LA Running Connoisseur has earned recognition from the Los Angeles Times, Outside, iRunFar, Gear Junkie, and UltraSignup. More importantly, people who once scoffed at running have found an approachable first step, returned, and become active members of the community.
It does not simply serve runners. It helps create, connect, and sustain them.
Challenge
Every race needs a distinct identity, a compelling reason to register, and a strategy capable of driving participation, sellouts, and long-term growth.
That means understanding what makes each event worth choosing and carrying that promise through every touchpoint from discovery to race day.
Approach
I lead brand and campaign strategy for Bakersfield Marathon, BRA Run LA, and Screenland 5K across organic social, paid media, email, community marketing, and on-site content.
I lead digital marketing and partnerships, shape the calendar, and develop races from concept through names, logos, promotional design, positioning, campaigns, and on-site experiences.
I develop ways to bring ambassadors into race promotions and extend campaigns through their channels and communities.
I helped shape an end-to-end offering that lets run clubs retain ownership of their events while Mercury supports execution.
Impact
The work has contributed to registration growth, stronger community engagement, and sold-out 2026 editions of the Bakersfield Marathon and BRA Run LA. It has also created a connected system across strategy, marketing, community relationships, and race-day experience.
Challenge
Warner Bros. needed to activate some of the world’s most recognizable fandoms without making creator content feel like advertising.
The work had to protect the integrity of franchises like Wizarding World, give creators room to make content their audiences would genuinely enjoy, and turn that attention into product discovery and commerce across global markets.
Approach
My work expanded from a single global campaign into a broader creator-marketing system:
I designed and directed a $150K Wizarding World campaign across Instagram and TikTok, coordinating 41 creators in 11 countries. I owned the work from strategy and planning through execution, including campaign concepts, creator selection, content planning, and reporting.
I managed outreach, creator and agency relationships, negotiations, contracts, payments, onboarding, briefing, brainstorming, content reviews, and campaign delivery. This less visible work ensured that the strategy translated into strong partnerships and content that worked for both the brand and the creator.
Following the campaign’s success, Warner Bros. asked me to develop its Wizarding World Creator Toolkit. The playbook provided a scalable framework for creator selection, campaign development, content planning, and future consumer-products activations.
I extended the approach across Warner Bros. properties, developing creator, in-kind, and ambassador programs for DC Batman: Bat-Tech Edition, WB Shop’s House of the Dragon collection, DC Universe, and GameStop collectibles initiatives.
Impact
3.4M+ reach · 273K+ engagements · 12.4% engagement rate
The campaign’s success led to additional Wizarding World work, the commissioned creator toolkit, and new programs across other Warner Bros. franchises and retail partners.
The House of the Dragon campaign contributed to product sellouts, while GameStop sold out of multiple featured collectibles. Together, the programs demonstrated how creator marketing could translate fandom into product discovery, participation, and commerce.
Challenge
Following a controversial course change, the Los Angeles Marathon needed to rebuild excitement and strengthen its connection with the local running community while driving registrations for the 2024 race.
Social needed to do more than promote the event. It had to answer practical questions, reduce race-day anxiety, celebrate the city, and remind runners why the Los Angeles Marathon was an experience worth choosing.
Approach
I developed and executed a community-first social strategy designed to make the race feel useful, welcoming, and exciting at every stage:
I built an organic content plan around local pride, participant preparation, runner stories, course education, and the energy of race day. I created Reels, graphics, captions, and recurring content that helped runners feel informed and included.
I collaborated with ambassadors to develop authentic content ideas, surfaced participant stories, and used community management and UGC to make runners active contributors to the race narrative.
I created live content from the expo and throughout race weekend, translating the scale and emotion of the event into an immediate social experience.
While running the marathon myself, I published Instagram Stories from every mile, capturing runners, spectators, neighborhoods, and landmarks across Los Angeles in real time.
Impact
First sellout in four years · Second-largest field in 39-year history
During the campaign, Instagram grew by approximately 25% in two months, TikTok grew by more than 300% in one week, and the content produced some of the account’s strongest-performing posts in views and engagement. More importantly, social became a living extension of race day, reconnecting the event with the runners and communities that give it meaning.
Challenge
A packed release slate required both ongoing audience intelligence and rapid answers to immediate campaign questions.
The task was to turn changing conversations, cultural signals, competitive activity, and performance into useful direction for marketing and creative teams.
Approach
I owned weekly social-listening and audience reports across the release slate.
I conducted rapid analysis for films including The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.
My research identified the playful chaos of the child characters as a compelling audience hook for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
I led audience, cultural, and brand-fit research for a proposed Twilight x Crocs collaboration.
Impact
My recommendations informed social strategy for two theatrical releases. The Twilight research helped secure approval from author Stephenie Meyer herself, and multiple shoe styles from the resulting collection sold out quickly.
Challenge
Brands and game publishers come to IGN because they want access to its audience, but gaming communities are quick to reject advertising that feels forced or disconnected from their culture.
The challenge was to find the idea inside each brief that could accomplish the client’s goals while still feeling entertaining, credible, and unmistakably native to IGN.
Approach
I led creative strategy and partnership development across proposals and campaigns for consumer brands and major game releases:
I translated client objectives into audience insights, campaign territories, content concepts, and partnership opportunities. I worked across sales, creative, production, media, and client teams to build ideas that were both strategically defensible and genuinely worth watching.
To promote Wendy’s 2-for-$6 offer, I connected the “pick two” mechanic to gaming’s most memorable pairings. I developed the creative concepts, shaped the content strategy, and authored the proposal that secured the business and became an integrated editorial and video campaign.
After early concepts missed the game’s irreverent tone, I developed a new creative direction built around its chaotic humor and cinematic world. Once selected, I partnered with the production team to guide tone, structure, and creative cohesion through delivery.
I also led creative strategy and partnership development for Old Spice and Xbox’s High on Life, finding ideas that connected each brand or title with IGN audiences in a credible way.
Impact
$2M in Wendy’s and Old Spice business
The Wendy’s concept became a multiplatform branded-content program, while “Zompacalypse” moved Dead Island 2 from stalled ideation to a produced campaign aligned with the game’s distinctive voice.
Across the work, I demonstrated that effective branded content does not begin with finding somewhere to place an advertisement. It begins with finding an idea the audience might have chosen to watch anyway.
Challenge
Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out arrived with expectations for mystery, cultural commentary, and a story audiences could analyze and debate.
The social strategy had to honor those expectations without revealing too much, while making the film’s visceral horror accessible to a broad audience.
Approach
I defined a social identity that was heart-pounding, thought-provoking, and intense, using familiar language in unsettling ways.
One direction presented terrifying mainstream horror; the other emphasized symbolism, artistry, and social commentary.
I moved audiences from curiosity and speculation into fear, cultural urgency, release momentum, and home entertainment.
I translated the strategy into platform-native territories spanning visual motifs, participation, talent content, and release messaging.
Impact
$71.1M domestic opening · Approximately $256M worldwide
Us set a record at the time for the largest opening by an original horror film. Its imagery, symbolism, and ambiguity also generated widespread interpretation around duality, identity, class, and American society, reflecting the exact opportunity identified in the strategy.
A few more
Additional selected work
Creator programs, social systems, and audience research across consumer brands and entertainment.
Hypothesis Scrubs
Creator & Social Launch Strategy
Designed and led a 100-person in-kind creator program for the New York launch, along with the supporting social strategy, content calendar, UGC approach, and platform best-practices playbook.
Legends Apparel
Social & Content Strategy
Developed the brand’s social strategy and content system across Athlete, Training, Apparel, and Community.
Apple TV+ & HBO Max
Audience Research
Led audience, brand, and positioning studies, translating consumer insights into campaign and social-strategy recommendations for original films and series.
