It All "Ads" Up

Chesley Brice named Ad Person Of The Year 2020

If one were to summarize an account professional’s job, it might be to solve clients’ day-to-day problems with help from their creative and media teams. Now imagine your client is the state of Nevada’s vaccination program and the state’s emergency health response organization — during a pandemic. And their “day-to-day problem” is to get all eligible Nevadans vaccinated.  

To say Chelsey Brice faced an uphill battle in 2020/2021 is an understatement. Three years into her role with Estipona Group, Chelsey’s little non-profit client, Immunize Nevada, was facing the largest communication challenge of its existence and — arguably — the largest communication challenge the United States has ever encountered.

Before she became responsible for protecting Nevada from a deadly virus, Chelsey honed her account skills as an account coordinator, and then account executive, for a variety of retail and service industry brands. She arrived at Estipona Group with the better part of a decade of client management experience under her belt, looking for new challenges and an agency environment with the flexibility to start a family. Two years in, she got just what she was looking for, a newborn and a public health crisis.

Overnight, Chelsey was responsible for managing all the state’s COVID-19 vaccine communications, through Immunize Nevada and the Nevada Health Response program — while also supporting her other clients’ urgent COVID-19 communication needs. Her responsibilities included overseeing development of the NV COVID Fighter brand, managing an ongoing integrated paid media campaign, oversight of all earned and social media efforts, and extensive collaboration with more than a dozen partner agencies (including the Governor’s Office, every Nevada health district, the Nevada System of Higher Education, and a collective of Nevada tribal leaders).

Chelsey also got to tackle new and complicated challenges like organizing and executing community town halls and sorting out the intricacies of running a statewide not-a-lottery. Working closely with Governor’s Office staff, Chelsey was called on to execute Governor Sisolak’s vision for Vax Nevada Days — a $5 million eight-week promotional giveaway, in conjunction with the Nevada Gaming Commission and IGT, designed to further drive vaccination.

As if leading Nevada’s vaccine messaging 24/7 wasn’t enough, Chelsey also drove success for the rest of her client roster, including organizations like Great Basin Orthopaedics, Sierra Nevada Nephrology Group and the Nevada Land Trust, along with providing support for the rest of Estipona Group’s clients.

For one person to effectively manage such far-reaching statewide efforts is impressive. To manage such efforts effectively while balancing the various needs, agendas, and priorities of dozens of stakeholders — while ensuring all parties felt heard and taken care of — is a downright miracle. And Chelsey did all this, at the ripe age of 30, with a smile on her face, and a newborn on her hip.

Chelsey is the first to tell you, she did none of this on her own. This is technically true. Both her tight knit Estipona Group team and her clients were also working crazy hours toward that common and pressing goal of COVID vaccination. But keeping the massive ship that is vaccine messaging on course, in the very rough seas of hesitancy, misinformation, and evolving health guidelines, is a pretty spectacular accomplishment.

At the end of each seemingly never-ending day, Chelsey gets recharged and ready to go back into the battle to help Nevadans, even those hesitant to accept help, with the support of husband Kyle, the joy of baby Lawson and the unconditional love of her Silver Lab Wren. Which is a good thing because it turns out, the job isn’t over yet.