Behind the Bark: Bella Moreno Builds Zeke the Wonder Dog’s Brand
MSU PR student, Bella Moreno, creates content for unofficial university mascot on social media
By: Adrienne Siemen
When the opportunity to work for Zeke the Wonder Dog arose at a MSU Public Relations Student Society of America meeting, PR student, Bella Moreno applied to be the lead designer faster than a frisbee flying.
As a member of the PRSSA creative design team, Moreno’s primarily designs merchandise, including everything from frisbees and dog bandanas to coloring books for children. She also works to create trademark, catchy phrases for Zeke that can be used in merchandise and social media content. To play off MSU’s “it’s football season” tag, Moreno came up with “it’s frisbee season” for Zeke.
When working on designs for merchandise or social media posts for Instagram or Facebook, she says she enjoys developing content through her creative process where she debates details like the perfect colors to use with the best fonts. This often means creating several different variations of content until she can decide what looks best overall for the message the team wants to convey through Zeke’s branding. Moreno stressed the importance these small details.
Moreno attributes many of her skills to her MSU classes. Notably, she says PR 335: Advanced Social Media and Public Relations Techniques helped her explore working on creative platforms such as Canva and Adobe. She says PR 225: Writing for Public Relations, deepened her writing skills with homework assignments that included writing for social media.
Balancing schoolwork and field experience isn’t always easy, but Moreno says she enjoys the flexibility of learning the job. She says gaining experience while learning in the classroom has been her favorite part of the job.
“I love seeing how far we can go while creating content to test creative strategy,” Moreno said. “Sometimes you want overall consistency with content and sometimes you want to take a creative risk.”
PRSSA gives student members access to benefits such as agency tours, exclusive internships and partnerships, skill-building workshops, networking and mentorship. To learn more about PRSSA and get involved, visit the organization website here: https://michiganstateprssa.wordpress.com/.
