THE WORK
Every project on this page started as a request for something specific. Mostly the real problem turned out to be an assumption nobody had questioned, because everyone close to it had been working around it long enough that the workaround felt like the job.
I get brought in at three moments. When a pitch has to win and needs a real point of view fast. When a live engagement has gone sideways and nobody can name where it broke. And before a build starts, when the brief is thinner than anyone wants to admit.
Reverie: The Name Was The Easy Part
Reverie Brewing Company almost had a different name. One of my partners had picked one and pushed it through without much conversation. I didn’t connect with it and said so. The trademark came back rejected, too close to another brewery, and the question was open again.
Toyota: The Data Was the Story
Toyota’s marketing teams were spending enormous energy each year collecting and distributing operational data across multiple channels. The process was exhausting and accepted as unavoidable. Nobody had stopped to ask whether the process itself was the problem.
Heineken: The Wall That Wasn’t
Heineken accepted that regulation made direct consumer relationships impossible. That assumption had hardened into organizational behavior. The question nobody had asked was what becomes possible when you treat a constraint as a brief instead of a barrier.
MetLife: The Impossible Map
MetLife was retiring one of the most recognizable brand mascots in insurance history and replacing it with a new global identity. The hard part was not the rebrand itself. The hard part was what came next: teaching a global organization, from senior leadership in a New York headquarters to independent sales agents in Southeast Asia, how to use a brand they had not built and did not yet fully understand.
Comenity: 50 Brands For 1 Product
Comenity was serving more than 50 retail brand clients with what looked like a customization problem. Four teams inside the same organization had built four different definitions of the same product. Nobody had been asked to reconcile them.
Hanes: Before The Day Was Over
A major apparel brand had a year’s worth of marketing budget and too many places to spend it. Multiple channels, multiple agency partners, and a room full of capable people who had been working the account long enough to have strong opinions about what should happen next.