My Process:

I believe in solving business problems with creativity. Here’s how I approach a brief with some specific examples from my career.

STEP 1

Get to know the people who make the products as well as the people who use them. The goal is to make both of them love the brand.

My career has taken me all over the world and I’ve met and learned from some amazing people:

  • Got my motorcycle license and learned to ride with Harley-Davidson

  • Interviewed hundreds of Apple employees

  • Took countless tours of avocado groves

  • Toured the Highlands of Jalisco for Patrón

Learn as much as possible.

STEP 2

Make a mess.

  • Go wide before you go deep.

  • Don’t start with individual executions or the media buys.

  • Focus on finding an insight.

  • Write everything down.

  • Think big.

  • Figure out what matters to the people you about learned up in step #1.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

STEP 3

My experience on Jack Link’s in the 2000s taught me the steps to thinking smarter and bigger.

We learned kids loved to eat jerky before heading outside to do stupid stuff with their friends. This led to the position of “Fuel for Rebellious Fun.”

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Next the insight was translated into language our brand could rally around. Our tagline? Feed Your Wild Side.

Finally we could create a campaign that made this message memorable and break through. Hello Sasquatch!

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STEP 4

A brand’s voice is crucial. You can hear it everything they do from headlines to social.

For Patrón, I led multiple teams to create 360 campaigns with a tone that’s confident, clever and genuine.

Find the voice.

STEP 5

Tell stories.

Once the brand’s voice and tone is understood, I led teams to create work that motivates—not just sells.

STEP 6

The days of shooting one spot and calling it a day are over. I always maximize productions to get the most content for my clients.

So when I joined Stuffed Puffs Filled Marshmallows, they had a great product...but no sense of who they were. I saw a brand with a cool story and a ballsy persona. They figured out how to get chocolate inside marshmallows when brands like Hershey’s said it couldn’t be done.

We squeezed our shooting schedule to create multiple assets that were filled with more color, more energy, and more surprises than anyone else on the sleepy baking aisle. Because at Stuffed Puffs, Life’s More Fun Filled.

Create Everything!

As a startup, we didn’t have the budgets like Kraft or Hershey’s. But what we lacked in resources, we had speed and a willingness to “go there.”

We created content faster and with more edge than the other guys, with a focus on TikTok because that’s where risks were being taken on social. The strategy worked:

TikTok Video Views 📈 +7,911.84%

TikTok Likes 📈 +2,177.61%

TikTok Followers 📈 +22,989

To Social…

…to packaging.

My Process Works for Big Brands

For Facebook’s Marketplace launch, our team focused on people—not the products they sell.

My process works for smaller brands, too.

When I was creative director for California Avocados, we found consumers couldn’t taste the difference between ours avocados and other growers like Mexico. Ut-oh. 

But when we noticed people got excited when they “got it right” and disappointed if they preferred the competition, we knew we had an idea. Our strategy would have nothing to do with the literal taste. It would be about how eating a California Avocado makes you feel. Because our avocados aren’t just made in California. They’re made of California.  

Insight

Idea

We partnered with dozens of California artists to turn the “CA” in the word AVOCADO into representations of what people love about California.

These art pieces would serve as the foundation for the entire campaign.

Creative Director, Copywriter & Strategic Thinker

This is just a sample of the advertising I’ve created and the brands I’ve helped shape. Drop me an e-mail to request other samples, to discuss this work and my process.