Unbelievable stories
2021 was a transformative year for gift card scammers. Their billion dollar industry preys on people’s fear of loss and often succeeds. They’ve grown more sophisticated in feigning authority, in their points of contact being more intimate, and their message more urgent. It’s not until after they have been scammed that people realize how ridiculous it all was.
To encourage people to trust their gut, we needed to train their gut by highlighting the unbelievability of real scam stories, reminding them that if someone - anyone - asks to solve a problem using gift cards, it’s a scam.
MESSING WITH TEXAS
Recently led a 6 week design thinking research sprint to unlock a positioning for a global clean energy brand entering the Texas market. Because #2020, we couldn’t take the team to Texas, so instead we brought insight, tropes, quant and qual research and cultural nuance to them.
Texans don’t need another cowboy hat or someone to tell them not to Dallas their Austin. ‘The greatest country in The United States of America’ just want what’s best for Texans–even if they disagree on the means they can generally align on the result. It’s not in the tropes that creative and brands can shine, instead it’s in showing up with the same level of integrity and respect for Texans that really matters.
showing UP FOR the real south bay
To reimagine the South Bay Galleria, L Catterton Real Estate needed to build a brand from scratch that truly represented south Los Angeles - before the building was fully de-leased and before the architects had completed their work.
As their marketing consultant, I led brand strategy and vision, agency procurement, bringing on Battery LA (who absolutely brought the soul of the South Bay to life), early B2B marketing efforts, brand identity and naming. Because the South Bay of LA doesn’t need another cookie cutter destination that only reflects a portion of LA, it could use a place that embraces the patchwork of the real South Bay and all the possibilities it bridges.
articulating the NATURE OF FANDOM
To land a positioning to unite multiple sports sponsorships, we had to beat words like 'passion' and surpass surface truths like "there's no I in team".
With no money, and a lot of stakeholders to convince, I dipped into the greatest free tool for understanding fandom at its core: youtube. Fan reaction videos helped land a tension I know to be true as a sports fan and rich as a strategist: We aren't addicted to sport–we're addicted to the ride sport takes us on.
TECH IN SERVICE OF CREATIVE CULTURE
Worked through a brand narrative for a tech company looking to improve the way we work. What better place to look than into the agencies and marketing depts where creative professionals spend their lives?
Found inspiration in former colleagues, current coworkers, and anonymous Fishbowl threads to craft a brand narrative as a call to arms for cultural change vs sell us more productivity tools.