Marlene Byrne and the Serious Business of Playing Outside

Kick the Can is an unusual item in an advertising founder’s portfolio. It has no subscription tier. Its equipment requirements are merciful. The neighbors have to supply most of the entertainment themselves. For Marlene Byrne, who built Celtic Chicago and also writes books, those are persuasive qualities. She made the game the subject of a children’s book, one of five in a series intended to send its readers outdoors.

There is a pleasing contradiction in a book that succeeds by persuading a child to put it down. Byrne’s Project Play stories introduce games and the children who play them. The reader gets a story, then something to try. It is a modest ambition with a concrete result: a backyard occupied, a group assembled, an afternoon that no adult has to turn into a production.

Her professional life has included agency leadership, brand writing, and a planned transfer of responsibility. Her books reach into childhood, homeownership, and the years after children leave home. These subjects share a concern with participation. Someone has to join the game, deliver the promise, welcome another person, or decide what happens next. Byrne keeps giving that someone a starting point.

A childhood worth passing on

Byrne grew up in Brillion, Wisconsin. She describes a community in which people cared about one another, and remembers neighborhood games as part of its ordinary life. Later, as a parent, she wanted her children to experience the same freedom. That wish became Project Play. The small-town memory had acquired a practical assignment.

The five titles are almost a roll call shouted from a porch: Treasure Hunt, Ghost in the Graveyard, Kick the Can, Just a Baseball Game, and Follow the Leader. Together they make a small library of things children can organize with friends. Their appeal depends on other people turning up. A solitary reader is welcome; a solitary game of Follow the Leader would test even the most accommodating imagination.

The stories leave room for the less tidy parts of playing together. In Just a Baseball Game, children work through disagreements against the background of overenthusiastic adults in organized sports. Treasure Hunt includes sample clues. Follow the Leader makes room for a rainy day. Byrne gives the activity enough structure to begin while leaving the children something to invent.

Chicago supplied another setting. Her description of Ghost in the Graveyard connects its neighborhood Halloween party with her children growing up in Edgebrook. The Wisconsin childhood and the Chicago household meet in the same project. The point is to pass along a way of spending time together, with enough story attached that a new group might want to make it its own.

The promise has to survive the conversation

In her business writing, Byrne asks a similarly practical question: can people carry out what the message promises? Her 2016 essay about employees and branding places the decisive encounter between a customer and the person representing the company. The logo may be finished. The work of keeping the promise is still taking place.

Her advice follows from that distinction. Define what the company offers. Examine which promises employees can reliably fulfill. Train people in actions that make those promises visible. It is an argument with little patience for an identity that looks convincing only while nobody is using it. A customer eventually asks a question, and someone has to answer.

She also wrote about photographing people where they work. In a 2019 Celtic article, she described how familiar surroundings can help people relax, and how location contributes to a brand’s story. The agency’s work for ArcelorMittal furnished an example: employees photographed in their work environment. The setting gives the viewer something to understand about the person beyond the fact that a camera has arrived.

Byrne’s advertising criticism has a lighter side. In 2019, she favored Hyundai’s Super Bowl commercial, with Jason Bateman taking prospective buyers on an elevator ride through disagreeable experiences. In 2024, she liked Michelob Ultra’s meeting of football and soccer audiences, with Lionel Messi and Dan Marino. The common attraction is legible: a recognizable situation, a little humor, and an audience given a reason to follow along.

Letting the next team take the room

Celtic Chicago was established in 1992. In 2017, Byrne announced its appearance at number 4,552 on the Inc. 5000. She credited the team and described an expanding mix of digital, social, and branding work. The achievement belonged to a company learning to bring more disciplines into the same client assignment.

By July 2024, a different announcement concerned who would lead it. Byrne moved into an advisory role. Jim Heitzman became president and CEO, alongside partners Danielle Vitogiannes, responsible for digital and associations, and Jeremy Hogan, responsible for content and media. They were experienced colleagues identified in her succession plan.

The handoff gives her career an ending to one responsibility without requiring an ending to every connection. She would continue supporting the leadership team as an advisor. There is something fitting about that arrangement for a writer interested in transitions. A change in role can require real decisions about what to retain, what to release, and who now gets the final word.

Her community work offers other examples of gathering people around a shared activity. She participated in ShamROCK Chicago, which brought civic and business figures together with Irish organizations and Tourism Ireland. Her 2018 invitation described Chicago landmarks lighting green, holiday events, and a call for people to share photographs. The campaign gave a city-sized audience several ways to join in.

A home with room for another story

Some of Byrne’s books begin much closer to her own front door. Her involvement with Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, or NPH, connected her with the people whose experiences informed her writing. She served on the Midwest board of NPH USA. With Ronald Hicks, she coauthored Change the World. Start with the Children., about Father William Wasson and his approach to raising children.

Do Not Discard, published in 2023, follows Sam, who grew up in El Salvador and later had the opportunity to study in the United States. Byrne has said that he lived with her family in Chicago. That connection gives the book a different origin from a subject found at a distance: the person and the writer had shared a household.

A September 2023 Book Party Podcast conversation centered on that book and its account of perseverance. Byrne also invites book clubs to discuss it and makes herself available for virtual conversations. The invitation extends the writing into another gathering. Readers bring their questions; the author gets to hear what stayed with them after the last page.

The water valve and the bucket list

Then there are the books for changes that happen in an ordinary family calendar. Welcome Home begins the Life Point Books series with a new house. Its contents include recipes, stories, maintenance advice, and room for homeowners to record their own early days there. The book recognizes that becoming responsible for a building can involve both affection and bewilderment.

Among the practical matters Byrne wants new owners to understand are the main water valve and the electrical circuit box. These are sensible companions to a housewarming sentiment. The flowers will eventually need replacing; knowing where the water stops can retain its charm for years. Her 92-page hardcover makes space for the mechanics as well as the meaning of arriving home.

Empty Nesting approaches a later household change. It combines a cookbook with practical guidance and a bucket list for parents thinking about their next phase. Byrne calls the subject personal as her children become adults. The two Life Point titles make an interesting pair: one welcomes a household into a house; the other helps parents imagine a different rhythm within it.

“I write to inspire and put a smile on your face.”

Marlene Byrne

The writer takes a walk

Her advice to writers begins with enjoyment. “Write because you love the story,” she tells readers in her public author questions. When concentration falters, she recommends getting outdoors: walking, hiking, swimming, or watching people in a park. The author whose children’s books encourage a trip outside prescribes much the same change of scene for herself.

Her answers also reveal some limits to her literary appetite. Horror holds little attraction after seeing The Shining in high school. Given a chance to visit another story world, she prefers a historical destination involving Winston and Clementine Churchill. Alongside the purposeful writing is a reader with particular tastes, a book club, and permission to leave the desk.

That is a useful place to leave Byrne’s story: with people free to take part. Her agency has its next leaders. Her readers can gather around a book, a meal, or a game. A childhood pastime has become instructions for another afternoon. Somewhere between the finished page and the open door, the audience gets its turn.