Charlotte’s Premier Landscapes & Exterior Design Specialists
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JUNE 2019 // CHARLOTTE 37
Stylishly dressed, tattooed, with long, wavy hair, Savage, 37,
moves easily between the fast-paced world of social media and
the marketing oces of corporations. She graduated in 2005
from UNC Charlotte with a degree in organizational commu-
nications (the culture within companies), but her rst job out
of college was in marketing, and that’s where she’s stayed. She’s
purchased advertising for Lowe’s Motor Speedway and taught
restaurant and bar owners how to use social media. She gained
insights from clients and agencies before going out on her own.
“When I le corporate life, I thought, 'If I’ve got to work the
rest of my life, I want to do something fun,’” she explains. “Fun”
also meant relevant, and she believes that when people share
on social media, relevance increases. She’s found her place
in “guerilla marketing,” using the art of the unexpected for
her clients. Clean grati, roaming bike billboards, and brand
ambassadors are some of the ways she connects her clients to
their customers.
And moss. “Moss has taken o—it’s taking over our new
space,” she says, sitting at Amélie’s in Park Road Shopping
Center, sipping black coee. Her new oce on West Morehead
Street is already lling up with stashes of dyed reindeer moss.
The gray arctic moss, eaten by reindeer and other mammals, is
beautiful when dried and oen dyed green. Savage uses it to cre-
ate large-scale words, designs, or logos; it’s a hit with corporate
clients like AAA, the travel service, that want a fresh look. “You
don’t have to water it. There’s no maintenance; you don’t spray
it or anything. You hang it on your wall like art and leave it,”
she says. It’s yet another form of ambush. Few people have seen
anything like it, and the eect can be charming.
As she introduces Charlotte to new styles of marketing,
Savage also proves there’s an art to being relevant—and that
it’s fun.LAURIE PRINCE is a freelance writer and editor in Charlotte. A former
Charlotte magazine editor, she has won national and regional awards for
her essays.