Meeting Recap – Brains Behind the Brand with Kate Waller, Edward Carter, and Griffin McNamara

On Tuesday, September 30, 2025, PRSSA welcomed Eddie Carter, Griffin McNamara, and Kate Waller to a panel where they provided insight into their work at the agency level. Eddie, a 2022 UGA graduate, is a copywriter at Marketwake, a digital marketing agency in Atlanta. He writes everyday for social media, emails, paid ads, and website copy. He provides a support system for brand messaging, though everyday is different. Griffin, a 2019 & 2020 UGA graduate, is a content strategist at Marketwake. He supports brand messaging, content planning, and copywriting. Everyday is different for him as he builds blog content strategies for clients. He is involved early in campaigns and content planning, collaborates with account managers, copywriters, designers, paid media team, and strategists. Kate, a 2024 UGA graduate, is an account management specialist at See.Spark.Go and serves clients on different fronts. She deals with media outreach, meets with the content team, and examines client relationships. She looks through the lens of relationships and results when telling stories. She builds playbooks and campaigns, and focuses on social media storytelling and building relationships with media. 

Eddie Carter, Griffin McNamara, and Kate Waller in Studio 100 of Grady College on Tuesday, September 30.

Could you give us an example of copywriting and content for you?

Griffin: “Copywriting comes in shorter form, more persuasive like headlines, billboards, and social posts. Content tells the brand’s story, blogs, videos – they work in tandem. If you write a blog, that’s content. How you are going to get people to read it, that’s copywriting. Getting people to stop scrolling in their tracks. Something that drives you to take action and doesn’t feel like an ad.”

Kate: “Content at large is what the client owns. Carousels, reels, videos, blogs that client shares and copy that is paired with that falls under content. Copy is persuasive and can be in paid advertising.”

Once you decided to go to UGA, did you know you wanted to be in Grady?

Kate: She was involved in DECA in high school and loved learning about marketing and being creative. She always knew numbers weren’t her thing and loves to write, so it felt like a good fit for her.

Griffin: He always felt like he wanted to work in media. He started as a journalism major in 2016, switched to EMST, and had imposter syndrome due to the influx of talented and creative people. He switched to advertising because he liked Super Bowl ads, knew he wanted to create something for people to enjoy and be entertained by, and went into copywriting with an internship at Marketwake.

Eddie: He was a political science major coming into UGA, looked through all the majors on the UGA website, and the description for the ADPR department had “creative” in it. He claims not to be good with numbers or design, so he tried writing and liked it. He was a copywriting intern at Talk (offered a junior copywriting role), interviewed at Marketwake, and took the agency role first.

Could you share about your favorite client, a moment you’ve enjoyed or an impactful story?

Griffin: He had a client for stool donation and wrote headlines about people getting paid to poop. He currently loves working on a car wash – there’s no differentiators. He is creating a story to go with the brand, telling a story about the messes of life and not being scared to make a mess in your car, that life has ups and downs and to embrace it, and is adding personality to their brand, making them the “Bucees of car washes”.

Kate: She serves a bunch of different industries without any specific niche and can take ideas between clients and be rejuvenated. She loves working on Maepole, a source of healthy comfort food. She is telling a small part of their story, as they are not even 10 years old yet. She started with them in June and got to be a part of different phases, like figuring out their goals, their voice and tone on social media, and speaking in different ways at different times on different platforms.

Eddie: He works on a lot of IT and cybersecurity clients and does cybersecurity for devices that don’t have keyboards. He thinks it is a fun challenge to explore their brand positioning, finding what makes them different, and working with them on creating a new suite of products.

Speaking of agencies and how things are constantly changing, how are you incorporating AI? 

Eddie: He claims that it is a balancing act, as Marketwake is a very AI-forward agency, and makes them more efficient as copywriters. He doesn’t copy and paste blogs, he has oversight and uses it as a tool. He’s a researcher and has ChatGPT help him write after researching. He doesn’t use AI as much for brand messaging, as he needs to be an expert in the client he’s working on. He believes that people are going to need to use AI to become efficient copywriters. It is important to train your brain to write without it and become an expert at the things you write first before giving AI prompts and information. 

Griffin: He says AI is only as good as the person driving it. He uses it for research, as it speeds up the process in getting an idea of their competitors, audiences, and strengths, instead of digging through websites. Marketwake has an AI task force and an internal linking tool that suggests content on websites to link to. Google has become an AI search engine and it’s important to learn how to conquer it. Creatively, it depends on the client you work for, other clients embrace it, so tread carefully when using for a final product.

Kate: They are embracing AI as a tool at See.Spark.Go. It sets you apart as a student and professional is knowing how to use AI while still maintaining those hard skills, like writing. It is valuable to know how to prompt AI well, so lean in but make sure you have the hard skills first, keep making human connections, and be the expert behind the services and content you provide.

Kate, you had many different internships in college, how did you know you wanted an agency, what stood out to you about See.Spark.Go?

She dove in head first, didn’t know much about Talking Dog, had a full life outside of school, very involved off-campus, and interned fall of her junior year with an event production agency in communications in-house. She created social media content, created games for events, and loved telling the brand’s story. She connected with RaceTrac corporate in Atlanta, specifically the marketing team at their office. She explains that connections are everything (professionally, classmates, friends), and her senior year she went to AdPR Connection and applied to intern at See.Spark.Go

Griffin, can you share what the Double Dawgs path was like and how it prepared you?

He graduated during the pandemic, so it was mostly online when he was completing it. It seemed like  a no-brainer to him. He experienced a lot of writing and wasn’t ready to leave UGA, so his advisor encouraged him to participate. He attended summer at the circus at the creative circus in Atlanta and stayed for his master’s to secure job in the industry.

Eddie, How did Talking Dog help you transition into the post-grad life?

He says that Talking Dog is great for your resume and helped him with landing internships. His first internship was at HBO Max as a copywriting intern. It introduced him into practicing copywriting in a safe environment, he leveraged experience on internship applications, and proved he was doing something other people weren’t. He was copywriting for an agency, even though it was student-led, which made him stand out, and he had a passion for it. It was a big differentiator, and there is a need to sell yourself because you’re the only person who is going to.

If you’re interviewing a student to intern at your company, what do you look for?

Eddie: He looks for passion. You have to care about marketing and show that you’ve tried, why you like it, and what makes it interesting to you. What are your personal interests outside of work? What makes you tick as a person? As a copywriter, you’re putting your life experiences on paper. It’s important to have something that you excel at learning that influences the way you write, and his is the Game of Thrones books. There is a need to humanize yourself, be different, and sell yourself. Do things you might think you want to do, check it off that you tried it, and know you don’t want to do it. Trial and error is key, so make yourself stand out.

Griffin: They have a set of values they look for, such as grit, sense of humor, and empowering everyone to be the leader in the room, whether you’re an intern or a manager. Speak up as long as you can back it up. When presenting work to a client, they’re going to push back, and be able to stand behind your work. It earns you respect and more opportunities.

Kate: Be a leader, and lead up. Lead yourself, then you can lead others well too. The 4 C’s lead hiring – Character (who you are when no one is watching), competency (do the work that you are being given), chemistry (collaborating with the team), and calling. Be a human being, embrace who you are, and be yourself.

How do you deal with writer’s block and burn out?

Eddie: ChatGPT is the cure to writer’s block. If you’re passionate about it, you won’t get writer’s block. You’re allowed to take breaks.

Griffin: The best ideas come when you’re driving or in the shower. Creativity on demand isn’t a thing. Go for a walk and put the work down.

Kate: Pause, look at a wall, and allow your brain to decompress. We are constantly stimulated. Think about the person at the heart of the brand and the person at the receiving end of the messaging.