Issue #19: An interview with Kristine Keller
Co-founder of Clear Sky Collective, a brand partnerships and integrated marketing boutique consultancy.
Hi all! This week, I’m so excited to share an interview with one of my favorite people who I’ve had the pleasure of working with in my career thus far, Kristine Keller.
Kristine runs Clear Sky Collective, a boutique marketing firm that specializes in brand partnerships and collaborations as well as project management. My team at Mailchimp has worked with Kristine and the wonderful team at Clear Sky over the past few years, so I was so excited to feature Kristine on Brand Baby and hear more about her amazing career, her favorite brands right now, and more.
Whenever I talk to Kristine, I leave feeling refreshed and inspired, and I hope this interview does the same for you! Let’s dive right in.
CA: Kristine, so excited to speak with you! Let’s start with a little bit about your background in marketing and brand partnerships. Where did you get started, and what has your career path looked like?
KK: I graduated from NYU with my master's in psychology in 2011. At that time, I was teaching adjunct statistics, I was obsessed with psych, teaching, and stats, but I wanted to apply those skills in a new setting.
New York was so magical in 2011. Twitter was like two years old. It was pre-Instagram. And even though it was still reeling from post-recession, it felt like such an exciting time to be working. It was the golden age of magazines and I set my sights on Vanity Fair because I lived and breathed pop culture. It was one of those incredibly serendipitous moments because I cold e-mailed the Associate Publisher and her assistant happened to be leaving that very week.
I learned so much at Vanity Fair – skills that I still apply to this day when we work with publishing clients. I got to go to the Vanity Fair Oscar party and I got to work with the best team, who I'm still in touch with to this day.
And then after Vanity Fair, I left to go to the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), building brand partnerships on behalf of fashion designers like Diane von Furstenberg, SUNO, rag & bone, and more. It was also a really exciting time for CFDA. We had this beautiful office on 65 Bleecker Street in NoHo. The CFDA is a trade association for fashion designers and it’s an important moment in a designer’s career when they’re accepted and inducted into the CFDA. A simple way to put it is that it's the governing body of the fashion industry.
The CFDA was the best foundation for building both strategic/barter partnerships and revenue-driving partnerships. I feel like I learned every part of partnerships there. And it was a place where any idea you dreamed of, they would be like, okay, see if you can execute it. I look back on this time with some of the best memories of my life–my colleagues became my closest friends to this day, sitting at all of the NYFW shows, helping to build NYFW: Men’s from scratch, finding sponsors, and helping execute their activations at the CFDA Fashion Awards every year.
I was at CFDA for five years. And then The Wing had started and just was like a rocket ship at that time. And, you know, it was post-2016 election, so it felt like a safe haven. I made the leap to the startup world because it was such a moment in time and because it was the brand everyone was talking about.
I was an early employee – I think in the first 25 to 30. We were still in this little office on Lafayette Street, and eventually moved into a bigger office in the East Village. Some of the partnerships I got to do there are still my favorite to this day, we did that huge partnership with HBO for Big Little Lies and had Reese, Meryl, Nicole, and Laura Dern at The Wing. I greeted them at the door and Meryl said “Hello, Kristine from the Wing.” I mean, just, wildly fun memories.
Obviously, The Wing is no longer around, but I had something great come out of it in that I met Alex, my-founder, as well as really talented colleagues that I care about and still work with to this day.
CA: How did you make the leap from working at The Wing to starting your own consultancy? What was that decision process like for you?
KK: It was a pretty easy decision! It was July 2020 and the world had completely changed. At that time, though digital ad spend was down, brand partnerships were still booming. We learned so much about building a partnerships division from scratch at The Wing and decided to help other companies build their own partnerships infrastructure. Our model really works with clients because often, you want to test out brand partnerships to see if they really work for your business before investing in full headcount down the line. Or, because the market can be volatile, it makes sense to work with an agency partner so that you can scale services up and down as needed.
CA: I would love to hear a little bit about some of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on at Clear Sky.
KK: We’ve worked with the Grammys for four years, and that's always super rewarding because you're taking something on paper and then seeing it live in action.
We've worked with The Infatuation for a few years on EEEEEATSCon. They're such an amazing team. I also loved working with the Pinterest team on several projects, including The Goods, whereby we worked with brand partners like Maude, Outdoor Voices, and more to create a limited-edition product that could only be found through Pinterest. It’s always fun to think of the right brand partners for product launches. Then, I have to mention our work with Mailchimp because those have been some of my favorite projects. We worked with Mailchimp on a partnership with New York Fashion Week and the Black in Fashion Council (BIFC). You wouldn't necessarily think of Mailchimp in that arena. The partnership was unexpected, creative, and really showcased Mailchimp as an engine that fuels advanced marketers and small businesses. Together, Mailchimp and NYFW launched a capsule collection and pop-up shop featuring five Black In Fashion Council (BIFC) selected designers. The capsule collection was beautiful and so creative and as an extension, Mailchimp also sponsored the BIFC showrooms at NYFW. To amplify the campaign, we also worked with Business of Fashion and Hypebeast, which added an extra layer of authenticity to the storytelling.
CA: This is something that you and I have talked a little bit about, but in the early days of your career, did you ever envision yourself starting your own business? Is that something you always wanted or was that something that you stumbled upon?
KK: I think I've always been an entrepreneurial person, even in existing jobs. And I also like to hire people that have that skillset too, because it means you can hit the ground running and you're resourceful. So I think I did always know I wanted to start something. And I also work on Speech Tank on the side, which have we ever talked about that?
CA: No, I don’t think so.
KK: Speech Tank is a speech writing company that I also run. This is mainly for weddings. So this gave me my first taste of starting a business.
Entrepreneurship is something that I really value in people I work with too. I think it's just sort of the resourcefulness and the scrappiness – I love that quality in people.
CA: Your work is so creative and innovative. How do you stay on top of brand trends, and how do you ideate? Where do you get inspiration?
KK: I'm a newsletter junkie and subscribe to a ton and open all of them, even if I'm just scanning them. And I know we both mutually geek out over
, but I pick up a ton from that. I've gotten really into Amanda Goetz and her newsletter. She writes a lot about sustainable work practices and how to build your business. Her newsletter is called Life's a Game. The other newsletter I subscribe to is Jesse Pujji’s Bootstrapped Giants. And I learn a lot from him.I seek inspiration from reading and digesting and keeping my eyes open. I still read print magazines. I still find inspiration from that. I always did and I still do. I had a flight the other day and I was like, let me just pick up a Travel and Leisure, a Nat Geo, and a Vogue. Even though you have all that at your fingertips digitally, it still feels inspiring to thumb through those pages.
CA: Kristine, what are a few brand campaigns that you’ve been admiring recently, and why?
KK: I loved the recent Nike x Caitlin Clark Campaign, “You Break it, You Own it,” when Caitlin broke the NCAA scoring record. I’ve loved all of the recent WNBA and brand collabs for that matter! I’m a huge basketball (Miami Heat) fan and also love all of the Jimmy Butler brand collaborations–whether for his own brand, Big Face Coffee (the collab with Van Leeuwen especially), or his work with Hulu, Hotels.com, and more. I also loved the recent Kellogg’s and Molly Baz campaign! It was such a smart and fast way for Kellogg’s to enter the conversation after the breastfeeding ad controversy in Times Square.
CA: What’s something that you’ve purchased recently and loved?
KK: I wanted a new hobby and a friend just had a baby and was like, I'm not using my piano. You can have it for a little bit. So she brought her piano over and I have been taking lessons. I work with a teacher once a week and I’m loving it. It makes me feel zen!
If I'm just walking from a room, I might try and play a new chord really quick. I'm going to try my best. Hobbies fall off so easily at this age, but I really want to commit to it.
Thank you so much, Kristine!
In case you missed it, my work was published in Ad Age yesterday! Check it out. See you next week!