Author: Chelsea Zukowski

By Juron Traill

TAMPA – Global songstress Alicia Keys returned to Tampa on Sept. 18 for an intimate concert from her Alicia + Keys World Tour to support her new albums.

The 15-time GRAMMY winner opened the show in a bedazzled jumpsuit hugged by a trench coat, strutting into “Nat King Cole” accompanied by crooning strings and heavy bass, as if she’s some type of spy sneaking in for her audience. She belted notes that were sure to shake up the walls of the Seminole Hard Rock Casino.

Occasional listeners might have expected Keys to be dropping ballads throughout the night with her fingers on the ivories but she surpassed expectations. She dropped reggae-tinged tunes like “Wasted Energy”, played gospel collaborations like “Nobody” and danced afrobeat to “In Common.” Her album “ALICIA” was released in September 2020 after many setbacks due to COVID-19 and her latest “KEYS” dropped in December 2021.

“I bought the tickets around three months ago and I want more songs from the ‘KEYS’ album,” said 34-year-old fan Tony Johnson.

Keys sang every new song from her album with lyrical emotions and heavy sonics of the instrumentals which never gave a dull feeling to anyone in the crowd because she eventually transitioned to the big hits that we’ve known her for. She occasionally engaged the audience to keep them curious and even choose which records they liked better.

“I’ve been following her since the Paris tour in Europe and I’ve been to more than 10 shows,” said 24-year-old French nurse Kandia Wague. “I’ve been booking Airbnbs and she’s seen me several times in the crowd.”

It was a special moment for many fans who even left their hometowns just to see Keys perform. Her tour started in June with the European leg kicking off with bigger arenas. She dimmed the audience size for her North American leg that began mid-August.

Tampa was no exception to the smaller size and that evidently created missing tour props. Compared to her arena tours in Europe, her stage was smaller in Tampa which didn’t give her much room to walk, especially around her grey piano. She still embraced the venue’s limitations as much as she could with her 4-piece band in the back.

Keys had a busy weekend in Florida where she played two days consecutively in Hollywood and Orlando before her Tampa show. Most likely tired, it caused her to skip several songs on the setlist including “Time Machine”, “So Done”, “Like You’ll Never See Me Again” and more. She didn’t give an encore at the end even after the crowd was yelling for her.

Despite the venue’s limited scale for an artist as renowned as Keys, she still showcased why she’s one of the world’s greatest virtuosos in the music industry and Tampa proudly welcomed her back.

Social media specialist Brooke Nolan often uses Lily Bella the Shih-Tzu as inspiration for advertising content.

By Mikayla Lewis

PALM HARBOR, FL – While seated at her desk enjoying her boost of morning caffeine, Brooke Nolan is greeted by a small, fluffy thing: Lily Bella. The elderly Shih-Tzu fueled the inspiration for a day’s worth of social media posts at Traffic Advertising.

Nolan, 22, spends most of her day glued to a bright red iPad, producing social media content for over 13 car dealerships in Florida. She’s been with the company for about a year, continually growing in her own craft and expanding her horizons within the companies she works for.

“Traffic Advertising is a full-service marketing and advertising agency in Palm Harbor, providing clients with a range of services including traditional media buying (such as radio and print), social media marketing, digital marketing, and more. We have clients throughout the country ranging from automotive to hospitality,” said Shana Moran, the digital director at Traffic Advertising.

Nolan starts off the day like most by checking her social media accounts; only, she does this pretty much all day. It sounds like a Gen-Z dream to spend all day browsing Instagram and Facebook, but Nolan puts more effort into the posts she makes than the casual food pictures and filter-ridden selfies that saturate social media platforms.

Nolan has gained a reputation in her office for finding opportunities in the mundane, or areas one might not normally explore.

“I look for inspiration all around me. From national days to other brands’ content, to even music. It’s all about trusting the process,” Nolan said.

Nolan used Lily Bella as her inspiration for a stream of Instagram story posts on Traffic Advertising’s account, serving as an example of how Nolan utilizes her surroundings to create interesting content.

A lot of Nolan’s posts revolve around relevancy to months or seasons, holidays, current events or trends by creating eye-grabbing visuals. She most often uses Canva to create Instagram and Facebook content – the company currently only works through these two social media platforms, and soon, they will expand to Twitter.

There was a clear shift in content when Nolan started at Traffic Advertising – she goes the extra mile to create interactive content.

“A lot of content creators in the scene have stuck to the old ways, from advertisement strategies, to not putting effort into social media,” Nolan said. “And I came from a background in film and music. Plus, I’m a lot younger for my role, and that allows me to put my own twist on it.”

She brings a creative outlook to the company through her background working in the arts. The current idea she is working on is an adoption event at Volkswagen Wesley Chapel, which only opened a year ago. May is national pet month, making a pet-related event relevant, especially because it’s for a good cause. She plans on using organic posts to boost the event, as well as creating an Instagram filter and reaching out to local animal shelters to collaborate.

Nolan has put time and effort into curating posts for their clients and has had success in promoting and covering events before.

“My most successful post would have to be a family Halloween event I photographed at Hyundai New Port Richey,” Nolan said. “It got a few thousand impressions organically. I also got to see how impactful events are on the community.”

While Nolan is the creative mind behind Traffic Advertising’s content, Dan Consoli acts as a curator of sorts. Consoli is the social media manager and oversees the content before it is put out. He is a first-time social media manager but has worked with social media at other jobs in the past. He works with the budget and manages all social media content before they are posted to clients’ pages.

“My favorite part of my job is creating a well-performing ad with the ever-changing landscape of Facebook Ads Manager,” Consoli. “With Facebook’s updates that seem to come out of nowhere constantly messing with your ads, it feels nice to be up to speed and use those changes to optimize my ads rather than fall prey to them.”

Consoli has also found success in advertising events with Nolan. Together, they created a buy-back event in March for a client.

“It maintained one of the lowest cost-per-result and highest messaging rates that this company has seen in the last few months,” Consoli said.

The social media team at Traffic Advertising composed of Nolan and Consoli reflects the significance of successful advertising and event planning and execution through social media. Creating interactive, eye-grabbing and relevant content is a key component in sales success within an ever-changing, technologically evolved society. As trends ebb and flow, advertisers have to stay on their toes.

How borrowing a pair of swim trunks and trying to win back your girlfriend can land you on the front page of The New York Times.

By Sierra Laico

SARASOTA—As he flips through pages of notes, types away on his computer, and scrolls through his phone searching for the right contacts, freelance journalist Isaac Eger forages for his next story.

Being a freelance journalist does not offer a typical day-to-day routine, so shadowing one on any given day may not give you the riveting reporter story you would hope for. But Eger enjoys the creative freedom that working freelance provides. As someone who makes a living from writing articles—he has quite an abnormal view of writing.

“My day consists of lots of phone calls, lots of emails. Like, reaching out to potential subjects. I’d say that there’s a lot less writing than there is anything. I find writing to be incredibly painful—it’s probably my least favorite part of the job, actually,” he said.

Eger did not plan on becoming a journalist. Shortly after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in history from Reed College, Eger says he stumbled upon journalism under extraordinary circumstances. While on his first trip to New York, Eger met Joe Sexton, who was the editor of the sports page of The New York Times, by borrowing his swim trunks. About a year after graduating college and going through a breakup with his girlfriend who told him he was not ambitious enough, Eger set his sights on sports writing.

“To prove to her I was ambitious I was like, ‘I’m going to become a sportswriter,’ because I enjoyed writing and talking about sports. So that’s when I reached out to Joe Sexton, I said ‘Hey, remember me? I borrowed your swim trunks, I’m going to move to New York to become a writer.’ I asked him if he had any advice or anything I could do for him, and he said ‘Come to New York, settle down for a little while, and then we can talk,'” he said.

Eger spent the first month in New York playing basketball around the city, and by the time he met with Sexton, Sexton wanted to hear his basketball tales. After telling him stories, Sexton told him to write them down, which Eger did. After receiving some edits from Sexton, Eger got a call a week later from Sexton telling him to buy a copy of The New York Times—and Eger’s story was on the front page.

“It was funny, I couldn’t really appreciate what had happened because all I wanted to do was win back my girlfriend,” he said.

Eger has since narrowed his journalism to a more local lens, and for the past few years has been writing for Sarasota Magazine. His passion for local journalism runs in the family, as his mother worked as editor-in-chief of the magazine from 2018 to 2022. Eger says he enjoys working for the magazine because of the personal relationships he has made there and the trust the magazine has in his writing. This has allowed him to take on stories that would otherwise be a tough sell for other publications, such as a recent story he wrote about the September 11th terrorist attacks and its connection to Sarasota—which is where former President George W. Bush was at the time.

Along with the story connecting 9/11 to local roots, Eger has developed a beat writing about environmental issues affecting Florida as well as beach privatization along Florida’s coasts, one of which won multiple local awards, in addition to the national Folio Eddie award in the category of “Single Article, City & Region, Overall” at the prestigious Eddie & Ozzie Awards.

As for his stories about environmental issues affecting Florida, late last year subsequent to the infamous Gabby Petitio disappearance, Eger wrote a story about how the manhunt for Brian Laundrie devastated Venice’s Carlton Reserve.

“Petito and her family are the victims of this sad story, but so is the Carlton Reserve. The depiction of Florida as a wild and untamable landscape couldn’t be farther from the truth,” Eger wrote. “The last slivers of untouched Florida exist only as archipelagos between sprawling sub-developments. Florida does not need to be tamed. Rather, it is in desperate need of re-wilding. If we continue to think of Florida as a hellhole, it’s easier for developers to convince us to pave over it.”

Eger also has a newsletter called “Apocalypse Florida,” where he writes stories about “Florida and the end of the world.” The newsletter, which you can receive for free or by paying a small optional fee, features stories about politics, culture, the environment, and other topics—most of which find roots in Florida.

What could be next for Eger? Eger says he is “going with the flow,” but has a lot of projects in mind, including two book ideas—one about basketball and Buddhism, and the other about Florida—which he eventually wants to walk the entire coast of to continue his research on beach privatization within the state.