Jeannette Tschida, the new vice president/media director at Minneapolis ad agency Preston Kelly, looks for the firm to win new business and new clients as she expands its media department and capabilities.

Tschida, who has more than two decades of industry experience, said she brings a “consumer-welcome perspective” with a focus on data, innovation and creative digital media to Preston Kelly’s media department.

Tschida oversees paid media planning and buying for clients including UCare, Wings Financial, Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch and NoDoz. She also helps guide the agency’s integrated-strategy team.

“We’ve got so many people across disciplines who are excited to work with media and I think as a result of our working closely together we’re going to build some really great products and campaigns,” Tschida said. “As a result of that we should see a lot of growth.”

In building out Preston Kelly’s media team, Tschida said she also intends to add more in-house capabilities, especially in digital media, data and analytics.

Tschida joined Preston Kelly in August. She most recently was media director at the Kruskopf & Co. agency in Minneapolis, where she worked on Fortune 500-company brands. She also has worked at Carmichael Lynch, Bozell Kamstra and Campbell Mithun.

“Everything we do starts and ends with ‘Good Wins,’ and we know [Jeannette’s] innovative approach to building data-driven, target audience-centric media strategies will bring immense value to our agency and clients,” Jennifer Spire, Preston Kelly partner and CEO, said in a release.

Q: How important were Preston Kelly’s values of courage, originality, openness and positivity in your decision to join the agency?

A: I’ve always admired the work that’s come out of Preston Kelly. In conversation with Chris [Preston, partner, chief operating officer] and Jennifer what really drew me in was their belief in the power of good and that notion of “Good Wins,” which is about making brands positively matter by creating meaningful experiences that are welcome in people’s lives. From a media perspective the driving force in my career has been about making meaningful connections with our clients and customers.

Q: How is the pandemic affecting your work?

A: As marketers, we have to revisit how we communicate with customers, especially how we engage with them, because their media habits have changed. We’re all at home, we’re relying more on TV and digital for news and information and to entertain ourselves. Understanding that consumers are spending their time a little bit differently and adapting fairly quickly with not just creative and messaging but how we spend our media dollars for clients is something that we’ve had to do quickly and constantly.

Q: How do you use data and strategy in media planning and buying?

A: We have a lot of resources and expertise internally. We do a lot of our own research with The Good Brand Index (the agency’s nationwide study of how consumers define a “good brand”) and sources that we subscribe to. But we have the best success when we take these things and work with clients to be more collaborative with the data that they have about their consumers and business.

We try to tie those things together and over time measure and optimize our campaigns, our plans, our messaging so that it ladders up to where we’re finding the best results and traction.

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Lake Elmo. His e-mail is [email protected].