Three Years of Backpack

Saying Backpack has been a big part of my college career would be an absolutely massive understatement. I’ve spent three out of my three and a half years of college working with the agency, and over that time, the agency—and myself—have grown and changed drastically. A week before graduating from the University of Minnesota, I’m reflecting on the ways the agency has evolved since I joined and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

4.5: Advocate for Yourself, and Say, “Yes.”

Each semester of Backpack’s existence is marked by a version number; like a new tech product, the agency grows and evolves with each stage. I joined in 4.5, spring 2018. When I joined the agency, CLAgency at the time, we had a team of roughly 25 students, each writing feature stories for a CLA department. I was hired on as an account executive, a title later changed to content creator (CC). Now, our CCs make up the majority of our staff and are still the core of our agency.

As my first journey into PR and advertising, I learned a ton about the industry in a short few months through agency tours, board meetings, and professional development presentations given by my peers. In 4.5, I worked on a number of projects in addition to my feature stories, like editing video interview stories for CLA, and taking every chance to get to know my coworkers I could, such as late night study sessions in the basement of Johnston Hall. However, I still wanted to learn more about the advertising industry and all the facets of our agency, and I vocalized my interest in working with some external clients, a capability of the agency that was just budding at the time.

5.0: Take Ownership of Your Opportunities

In 5.0, fall 2018, I had the opportunity to lead the agency’s video efforts with CLA storytelling. Although video production didn’t end up being the right path for me, I am grateful I was given the opportunity to own a project and lead a portion of the work the agency was executing. I also got to shadow some of our leaders on our growing external accounts team while still writing my CLA features. This led me to become an account manager in our soon-to-be external accounts team.

Additionally, this was the first time Backpack participated in The Battle, a Twin Cities marketing and communications industry event that raises scholarship funds for diverse students studying to enter the industry. It was an exciting, new, and innovative event that the agency was able to staff and help market within our industry. Backpack even received several awards and nominations for the first year of The Battle in collaboration with The BrandLab.

5.5: Be Open to Changes

In spring 2019, I began working as an account manager with our external client The Toaster, and I was able to see our growing creative team jump into branding and naming an innovation space that now sits in the lower level of Walter Library. At the time, like most students at the agency, I worked on multiple teams. As a full-time student, my weekly workload became large as I served on our external accounts and our CLA account simultaneously.

Like every organization, Backpack saw growing pains, including a need for restructuring. At the end of 5.5, we changed to our current structure, breaking CLA, external accounts, and creative work into separate teams. This big shift for the agency let me experience structural changes within an organization and the communication that comes with those major changes. Backpack is about experimentation and evolving, and looking back, the effort to consolidate our structure from leadership helped us streamline our processes and make our workload more manageable for our student staff.

6.0: Continue to Always Reinvent Yourself

In fall 2019, I joined the agency leadership team as operations director and was able to work closely with peers I admired to help progress the agency to our next era. In our new structure, it became increasingly important to ensure opportunities for collaboration across our teams and ensure everyone's ideas were heard. As a student-run organization, allowing opportunities for growth and perusal of interests is important for each and every member of our team.

At the same time, our team was working on brainstorming a new identity for CLAgency. CLA will always be the heart of our organization and our largest client. However, with our new structure, we wanted a name that embodied our identity as students, whether working in or outside the college. Countless nights of brainstorms led us to whittle down to a few select ideas for a new agency name. After meeting with our board to discuss ideas, we decided to start again from square one. I’ll always remember rushing to Burrito Loco from class to meet with our team one school night. Hauling all my school equipment in my backpack, I ran upstairs to meet with our team for yet another brainstorm, and they laughed as the bag that carried essentially my whole life in it was larger than myself at that point. Later that night, our account director mused, “What if we named the agency Backpack?” From that night, our creative director ran with it, and the rest was history.

Tabling for CLAgency at the HSJMC Student Org Fair

6.5: Rarely Does Anything Ever Go to Plan, and That’s OK

In spring 2020, Backpack participated in The Battle again. That semester, we announced our new name and put up our own student band in the competition that took home the battle of the bands crown at the end of the night. It was an incredibly exciting night for our team. We also began to host our weekly lab meetings in The Toaster, a space the Backpack team had named and branded ourselves, that semester. It seemed things could only go upward from there.

However, like the rest of the world, a few months later our newly-named agency felt the effects of COVID-19. Our rebrand marketing plan was put on hold, our board meetings and events were canceled, and our team began meeting exclusively via Zoom for our weekly lab meetings—and everything else. We said goodbye to our class of 2020 and our founder, Scott Meyer, in sweatpants and T-shirts on a Zoom call rather than dressed up for a senior send-off night, such as in years prior. This shift showed the resilience of our students, as we continued our work online and thought of new ways to engage with each other in our newly all-digital world.

Our last in-person lab, touring Weber Shandwick MPLS

7.0: Compassion and Honesty Are the Most Essential

This fall 2020, I stepped into the agency’s general manager role and began overseeing the entire organization, now almost 40 students strong, and leading our weekly labs. My last semester with Backpack has been anything but expected.

I’m disappointed I’ve had to say goodbye to my friends and coworkers through a video screen for my last year with the organization. But I’ve also shifted priorities in the last year—in my opinion for the better. Checking in regularly with your team is important. Giving people space to take care of themselves is essential. Being honest that it’s been a tough year to stay motivated with so much more going on in the world is OK. I am proud to see our agency continue to work through this year digitally and shift priorities to ensure it’s an environment where everyone is able to continue to learn and professionally develop, with the understanding that we need a stronger focus on not just understanding our work, but understanding each other as peers and coworkers as well.

As I signed out of my last Zoom lab this semester, I still felt a sense of incompleteness in the goodbyes that were left unsaid and the plans for events and projects that were left undone. But seeing the way our agency has been able to succeed in providing a space for community and growth of our students during this time has given me hope that the best days are yet to come for our agency. Still, I’ll always be eternally grateful to Backpack for the opportunities I’ve had, the lessons I’ve learned, and, most importantly, the people I’ve met.