Liza Smith Leads Monkton’s Marketing and Creative Efforts

Composing Monkton’s creative, content, and marketing footprints

Liza Smith, Chief Marketing Officer and Creative Director, is no stranger to formulating a creative concept or marketing strategy as she’s been intrigued by creative spaces and processes since early childhood. A trip to Japan at age 16 turned that spark into a flame.

After high school, Liza pursued her creative passion through the dual disciplines of linguistics and East Asian studies (yes, she still speaks Japanese!), then went on to earn her Master’s in Advertising. As she made her way into the creative professions, she focused first on copywriting, and quickly expanded into content strategy and creative direction. Her artistic flair and technical savvy found a rich home in crafting the narratives and concepts that shape customer experiences, across a wide range of spaces that include technology, automotive, home security, entertainment, custom apparel, newspapers—even the circus.

Before joining Monkton, Liza’s career ranged from launching award-winning products to developing highly successful B2B, B2C, and B2G communications. Highlights include creating Honda’s “Life Is Better” multi-region integrated television campaign (which aired for more than seven years), to managing and growing creative talent across multiple marketing teams.

At Monkton, Liza’s mission is to build conversations and integrated promotions around advanced technologies and custom-built products while amplifying Monkton’s unique brand story—not just providing education on what’s possible, but inspiring and driving action through authentic human perspectives and experiences.

Below, we take a deeper dive into Liza’s career, processes, and inspirations.

Q: What inspired you to become a creative?

Liza: In fourth grade, I discovered a love for poetry, and it helped me realize I had a knack for stories shaped by cadence—the way words and their rhythms create something uniquely memorable. I’ve also had a lifelong love of languages. My brain craved that combination of learning and culture from a young age, and it fueled me all the way through high school and college.

Poetry was just one avenue for inspiration in high school; creativity and curiosity are twin flames, and I excelled in journalism and essay writing for any topic. My journalism teacher advised me to pursue PR or marketing writing, but I wanted to immerse myself in liberal arts before narrowing my focus into an advanced degree in marketing. That path allowed me to expand my knowledge around anthropology, human development, and sociology, all of which felt important for a truly well-rounded advertising education.

With a wonder for words, I’d often find myself perusing promotional prose on shampoo bottles, editing my college buddies’ papers (in return for home brew), mentally fixing the typos of my friends’ social posts, and yearning for a part-time gig writing culinary copy for Trader Joe’s. I’m very grateful for opportunities early in my career like writing fan fiction for Kaiju Big Battel and event marketing for Life is good, both of which gave me special chances to let my words make an impact in especially creative ways.

Q: What is Monkton’s top goal?

Liza: Monkton specializes in highly secure digital solutions for public and private sector customers that are Cloud Native, Edge-ready, and deployable anywhere. We use a proprietary Cloud Based Edge Capable (CBEC) approach to develop future-proofed, scalable solutions from the ground up and help meet missions faster for the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, Space Force, Department of State, and more.

Our ultimate objective is to enable customers to have a trusted and verifiable process in building secure mobile solutions.

There are many people doing important work at large agencies and organizations. They deserve systems and technology that offer the ease of personal mobile devices and apps—but they also need to meet the most stringent, world-class security standards to protect the most sensitive data. We’ve developed faster ways to do that, whether people are scattered around the country in cubicles or deployed on a remote mission with zero connectivity.

Monkton embeds compliance and security from day one by leveraging standards like NIST, NIAP, FedRAMP, and HIPAA. We partner extensively with trusted experts from Amazon Web Services, Samsung, Google, and more. Monkton’s end-to-end services include strategy and concept planning; UX and UI design; information architecture (IA) design; DevSecOps; training; and ongoing support and maintenance to support all projects.

With our patented technology Anchorage that provides Zero Trust authentication and proof of identity for IoT, mobile, and Edge Computing devices, as well as a $500,000,000 Phase 3 SBIR IDIQ for bringing secure mobile technology to the entire federal government called MATTER, Monkton’s offerings are rich with a variety of creative storytelling opportunities, with inspiration for both technical and non-technical audiences alike.

Q: And how does your role enable Monkton to achieve its objectives?

Liza: My job is to build authentic conversations and integrated promotions for new technologies and unique products, while directing the execution and amplification of our brand story.

Earlier this year, we created a new (now award-winning!) brand identity, logo, and website. Monkton partnered with Mortensen Designs and The Mega Creative Company, two firms that share our love for creative vision and technical complexities. Our new logo spotlights a star-shaped brandmark we dubbed the “lodestar blossom,” paying homage to the lodestar’s original definition—a star used to guide ships—to amplify our belief in creatively guiding clients in the right direction. The new brandmark was also inspired by cherry blossoms, a forward-looking nod to our team’s commitment to the spirit of Washington, DC (and a welcome callback to my own creative origins). The "burst" at the center of the brand mark represents the multiple paths to progress we offer each of our clients.

Q: Tell us about what inspires you creatively.

Liza: I like being surrounded by my favorite music (90s pop and hip-hop) while working to keep the energy flowing throughout the day. I also thrive in brightly colored environments. I’m inspired by all things yellow. I wrote an essay in college about The Yellow Wallpaper, and I was tickled beyond belief to learn that yellow signified “crazy” in addition to “happy,” as I find joy across both of those inspiring sentiments! Color naming is one of many small joys of brand storytelling, and while I love the name Sunray for our yellow, I’m most passionate about our Monkton Petal, which is a gorgeous hot pink. (If you also live and love in color, The Secret Lives of Color is an incredible rainbow of a read.)

Q: What's your favorite part of the creative process and why?

Liza: The ideation. In those first moments, when ideas start to bubble up reading a brief, I begin evolving (and editing) immediately. Maybe it’s the words, maybe it’s the strategy, but I appreciate a well-thought-out, tight creative brief that sparks the creative and focuses our energy so we can get to work on big ideas to bring back to the team.

Q: Do you think your country and its cultural heritage has an impact on your creativity process?

Liza: Somewhere in the middle of ideation and inspiration is a sweet spot that’s amplified for me personally by education and culture. Without a doubt, the U.S. champions education, and for me, learning is more than academic. I’m a lover of experiential learning, and consider each day a chance to expand my knowledge in some way. Whether I’m reading, writing, or rambling and daydreaming through the great outdoors, it can be refreshing and enlightening to really study life and people in the U.S. And beyond reading, writing, and adventuring, I’m moved and motivated by the creative and cultural aspects of music, art, advertising, food, dance, and travel. (“Yes, and!”)

Q: What marketing trends are unique specifically to your country?

Liza: We love our phones, don’t we? And yet, marketers in the U.S. face a surprising challenge, one that actually relieves me as a mom. It seems some from younger generations are not spending as much time on their phones as we’d expect. What we can expect is the where and how of screen time to shift, and marketing will evolve accordingly. The definition of “experiential marketing” or marketing “experiences” will also be redefined, as the kaleidoscope continues to reshape the sorts of experiences people are seeking. And of course, I expect streaming services to suggest and even create new advertising tactics of their own, in a more aggressive way, in the near future.

Q: You briefly mentioned above that Monkton received an award for its brand identity. Can you explain the significance of receiving a 2023 MUSE Creative Award and why you chose to enter this project?

Liza: At Monkton, we say “ideas start with problems.” Our original big idea was simple: Highly sensitive and classified legacy IT systems are not user-friendly and they’re expensive to maintain. But trying to achieve the necessary level of security, compliance, and privacy has made easy solutions—like downloading an app onto a work device—inaccessible for most enterprise customers. That’s why we “build faster ways to fix things” (our tagline!). We wanted our brand to signal simplicity and efficiency while consistently adapting in a digital world… the same way we build our products and our brand.

The Monkton team is always thinking about how we can raise expectations and deliver transformative solutions that make a greater impact—that begins with reimagining everything a company and an industry can be. By utilizing agile in-house design, engaging directly with actual end users (and incorporating their feedback), and collaborating with other technology leaders in both the federal and commercial spaces, we can provide “security by design” that’s easier to use, better-looking, and operates at a fraction of the cost of legacy IT.

We chose to enter this project because 2023 was the year we grew our brand and recorded our story. We developed hundreds of assets; documented, expanded, and applied corporate key messages; and created content that put our products and use cases front row center. By collaborating with external art and writing partners, we got the benefit of expertise across various design disciplines. And we moved fast, in true Monkton fashion—we delivered our brand in months, and made an immediate, measurable impact.

We’re absolutely thrilled to celebrate this recognition at a time when our company is growing its capabilities and product set. We strongly believe in the concept of “iterate, improve, repeat.” We did that with our new brand and website, and we do it every day with our clients.

Q: How has winning an award developed your practice/career?

Liza: Winning this award inspired pride across multiple levels, and it fuels me personally and professionally. There’s self-pride and recognition for extreme hard work in molding what I think of as a big, bold ball of clay. And I’ll never forget the starry eyes from my daughter, as she often overheard brainstorms and got to preview creative concepts along our journey to the brand launch. I also take enormous pride in our creative partners (many of whom I have worked with in the past), so I’m thrilled that they get this recognition for their continued collaboration and the pure fun of what we do together. I know the thrill of that first award win, and sharing that glow with others is one of my favorite feelings. And lastly, the cheering on and celebrating by our family and friends keeps us all inspired on a daily basis. (Some still don’t understand what I do for a living, but this opportunity helps translate, too!)

Q: What product are you the most excited about right now?

Liza: Monkton EdgeMX, hands down. We are truly transforming maintenance and streamlining operational processes, in a way that’s going to change the government game. Monkton’s Edge Computing solutions deliver efficiency and productivity anywhere work is performed. The EdgeMX app streamlines complex processes and enhances rapid decision making with simple mobile app functionality—saving both time and money. It was created with our Hypersonic product, which is also incredibly exciting and powerful, and seeing our products build on each other is beyond exhilarating. With the ease of getting things done under our MATTER IDIQ, I can’t wait to see where EdgeMX can take us and our clients. No more paper processes!

Want to work with Liza? Email support@monkton.io about collaboration opportunities and to learn about Monkton’s product marketing services.