Choose Your Own Path with Brandon Segres

Brandon Segres, 25, joined Dotted Line in March 2022 as an account manager. He primarily serves our client Worksite Labs and is known around the office for his genial personality and 20-plus years’ experience with the violin.

“I’m a marketer, but I’m someone who thinks out of the box a lot. I like to come up with new strategies, new ways to implement how we work together as a team, new ways to make the client look better.

When I was younger, I liked to vlog, because it pushed me to learn the type of content people would enjoy about an average guy from Richmond like me – how long do I have to make my videos to make them more appealing? I just like the art of creating things that appeal to people; studying strategic communications at Liberty University let me do that, and so does my job here.

That wasn’t the first thing I studied. I had three other majors before strategic communications: biomedical studies, cinematic arts, and business. I started out wanting to be a surgeon. I must’ve seen something on TV that made me want to do it – maybe I was watching Grey’s Anatomy. I thought, if you’re a surgeon, you just know everything about the body. You weren’t going to catch me being a brain surgeon: you cough once, you kill the patient [laughs].

I liked cardiovascular surgery and trauma surgery. With trauma surgery, it’s a new challenge with every patient. You don’t know what’s going to come through those doors. I like the unexpected.

I love the fun, unique challenge of getting people to think or act a certain way. Wait – I’m not a psychopath [laughs].

What I mean is I love using my skills and talents to influence others in a positive way. That plays a big part in my job here, and also when I play my violin (I named it Curvaceous). It’s a classical instrument, but it’s also electric and has a unique look. When I play it for myself and for others, I think, how can I tweak the tone? How can I use my technique to make it sound differently? Can I manipulate the sound to make it my own and appeal to more people, to show them it’s not just classical, that it can be cool?

That part of me also plays into my time spent volunteering at church with the youth program. I think it’s a fun challenge you have with kids. Everyone should choose their own path, but giving kids structure and helping them work through big decisions – ‘Maybe this is the route you should take, try going this way’ – there’s a rewarding feeling, knowing that you made a difference.

My main role is understanding what the client wants, and either making it happen or suggesting new ideas to make their goals happen effectively and efficiently.

If the client says, ‘I want to reach more people on the street,’ I think, okay, how can we do that? Is that a huge billboard? Is that having the client and some of our staff actually go around knocking door-to-door? And, whatever the best solution is, how can our Creative Team help us execute it the best way possible? After we execute and re-evaluate, I ask, ‘Is this working, or do we need to optimize?’ And we go from there.

College definitely prepared me for this job, but there are a lot of times I’ll think, well, I don’t know how to do this, or this person knows how to do this better than I do. But I’ve seen myself grow a lot from mistakes and through challenges. And there are a lot of people who have been at huge agencies who work here now; they’ve given me wisdom, and I’ve observed them in a way that has helped me grow.

I see different team members with their own unique skills and approaches, and I ask, ‘How can I add that to me?’

Community is really important to me. I want to find common ground to build relationships with anyone I spend a lot of time around – at work, at church, or anywhere else.

Here, I think we do such good work because we all share a lot. We take time to get to know each other outside of meetings or Slack channels. We’re friends, and that motivates us to do great work together.”