Ariana Jurado's Mastery of Short-Form Video Forged a Successful Career with Top Brands
The 29-year-old marketer describes how she’s used this contemporary art form to engage consumers and create her own career path as a creative.
share this article
Ready to unleash the full power of marketing?
I grew up in an artistic, performative family. This was partly fueled by my mom, a former professional singer who sang back-up for Menudo. My house was known for our karaoke machine—we’d have people over and we would sing together—and my parents always encouraged my older brother and me to explore our creative interests. He is currently a cartoon animator at Warner Bros and I decided on the photography and content route for brands.
After studying media and communications at Florida State University, I wanted to find a career that blended business and creativity. Around 2021, while I was getting a master's degree in music business, I was listening to a podcast about the latest trends in the industry. The podcaster kept on mentioning that if you’re an artist and you’re not on TikTok, you’re missing out, because it’s about to blow up. At the time I was teaching myself photography, and quickly realized I should start learning video editing as well.
I looked the podcaster up on LinkedIn and learned that he had his own company, offering digital advertising services for musical artists. I thought, “Everything I want is in that title,” so I emailed him and got an internship there. That’s how I got into the social media marketing space. I did social content production, some strategy, and a few TikTok edits for artists like Avril Lavigne and Sean Paul. That was such a cool role because obviously these are artists I grew up with and I felt so cool being able to be a part of their projects, even on a small scale.
I was most intrigued by the content element of the internship, and afterward, I got my first role at a New York agency, working on building the Kate Spade TikTok account. I was the only in-house social content creator at the agency, an island of one. When I first arrived, part of my job was convincing the team and client to trust my crazy ideas—the best content has a slightly unhinged quality mixed with self awareness, and I wanted to bring that to the Kate Spade brand.
I've honed a storytelling style that blends wit and candor with cultural relevance, finding that my most successful brand videos originate from capturing an authentic moment and building a compelling narrative around it.
Today, short-form social videos like this are everywhere in brand marketing. But when I started, they were kind of new, and having an in-house content creator at an agency was also not common. While I've had great mentors, I'm largely self-taught in my specific craft. I honed my skills as the industry itself was shifting—lo-fi content began outperforming high-production, leaving no blueprint. I learned to be my own teacher, staying nimble and iterating on my work to succeed in a rapidly changing space.
Luckily, I like challenges. I’ve always considered myself an entrepreneur, and last March, I realized I was ready to take the leap and work directly with my own clients. It was time to apply all of the skills I’ve collected and become a one-woman production team, filming, editing, producing, and acting as talent for my own roster of clients.
It is a chaotic time in the marketing industry, with AI coming on strong and changing the industry every day. I do think AI can be used as a tool, but no matter what, I think a human element will always be needed—in my work, there’s an emotional element that you just can’t get from a robot. It’s my responsibility as a creative to pay attention to how much I'm leaning on AI and how much it's stripping away my original creative thoughts.
As a freelancer, I've embraced the freedom to be in front of the camera, which is a key part of my strategy for infusing branded content with a human element. This versatility—the ability to switch seamlessly from behind the scenes to an on-camera role—has opened new opportunities. It's incredibly rewarding to see all of my content skills converge so powerfully at this stage of my career. This is only the beginning, though! I will always remain a student of my craft, and I think this perspective is what has allowed me to stay anchored in an ever-changing industry.
