Copywriting will always be first love and greatest strength. Eight years in the newsroom taught me the fundamentals of good writing, from the 200-word crime brief to long feature stories. It’s also where I learned interview skills like improvisation, sitting in silence, and setting up interviewees for great quotes.
Those same skills served me well in marketing. Most recently I lead marketing and communications for Student Success and Well-Being at the University of Central Florida. Our division serves close to 70,000 students, and around 750 employees. My role is split between coordinating communications among our units to students and leading internal communications.
Magazine
After Action Report (AAR) is a quarterly magazine distributed to more than 80,000 warriors and supporters. Under my editorial direction, AAR expanded from a basic newsletter to a dynamic and engaging 28-page magazine. My responsibilities started with drafting a strategic plan for each issue that aligned with our organizational vision and assigning all stories and photos. I also contributed by writing and editing content, supervising photo shoots and guiding the graphic design and layout.
Click on the photo to view the full spread.
Page 2-3: The “In Community” page previously had little context. As editor, I added a short story to better engage with our audience.
Page 18: The story on the left is an example of a story I wrote to demonstrate a program’s impact.
Cover stories come in a lot of flavors and styles. For this issue, I used four different stories to illustrate the theme of finding employment.
Annual Report
My job also involved developing the Fiscal Year 2012 and 2013 Annual Report from creative vision to press check. My message to donors was that their dollars made an impact and that WWP spent their money wisely.
In my first issue I introduced the theme of “ripple effect,” to show that one life impacted would have a continued effect on other warriors. The second annual report focused on a “lifetime of commitment” and used a combination of stories and quotes to highlight that the issues facing our veterans would continue long after the wars ended. In each issue, as well as the quarterly magazine, I wrote the letter from the CEO.
The “ripple effect” them resonates with donors, who want to see the long-term impact of their investment.
I worked closely with the executive team to identify the key messages from the CEO and chairperson of the board.
Policy Agenda
Finally, I worked closely with our Washington team to create a Policy Agenda that would positively influence policymakers. Our goal was to layout the issues injured service members would face for years to come and present solutions. To make the often dense text easier to read, I guided the layout, supervised photo shoots, and edited the content to make the document engaging and easy to navigate.
Kyle P. Martin 