Text & Image

Talk about how the events of recent months have affected either your work or your ability to work.

COVID-19 has HUGELY affected both my ability to work and the work that I was doing. In a nutshell, my industry, which had been booming, full swing, prior to March 2020, currently no longer exists due to the virus. Pre-pandemic, I worked part-time as an Experiential Marketing Specialist, or Brand Ambassador (BA) in the promotions industry. This work required a person to be flexible about doing a multitude of tasks while onsite at a promotion. She must have a super positive demeanor, be friendly to everyone and above all, be comfortable working front and center within large crowds of strangers at all times, like at the Westward Music Festival (pictured here). Although my personality skews towards introverted, I have been able to be a strong brand ambassador, regardless. This has been partly because I have been willing to wear so many different hats as BA while having fun in the process. I have done everything from donning an official, Universal Studios minion costume on a float in downtown’s Parade of Lights, to giving hand massages to anyone at a busy festival, wearing a sandwich board while being bounced around in a drunken crowd during St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, taking iPad leads at huge concerts and football games and so much more. Promotional work is social, entertaining and has enabled me to interact with different kinds of people from many walks of life with which I would never otherwise have had contact. I have enjoyed the work and am grateful for which I get booked. ... By early March 2020 when the highly contagious nature of COVID 19 became widely known (especially among large groups), my industry literally crumbled overnight. All work I did have in the pipeline literally disappeared into thin air. I was 100% job-free with absolutely no prospects of finding one drop of similar work to replace what I had lost. Unfortunately, I had tons of company. Everyone in my position suddenly found themselves completely out of work. ... Admittedly, I have had a degree of ambivalence towards working in an industry that sometimes has made its non-benefited workers chase after their pay and that largely exists at all to enable corporations to make more money. Thus, I have been willing to give only so much of myself, my time and energy to promotions. Possessing a master’s degree, I also know that I have other options if this pandemic (or anything else) makes exiting necessary. I can feel only so passionate about what this pandemic so clearly and painfully highlights as easily disposable, “non-essential” work. Despite these comments, I will also say that I have enjoyed striving to be the best BA I can be during the last 6-years and hope to contribute further to events when the work within the industry safely returns.