brand strategy

I sharpen brands' stories by homing in on the tensions that make them interesting. For example, where they zag from culture, how they challenge the conventions of their category, or an emotional struggle they are poised to resolve. 

Building on that, my strategies strike a balance that drives all relationships, really. I juxtapose what makes a brand intriguing with how it is familiar. The result: brands that can organically contribute to culture and invite consumers to see themselves in a new light.

sample work

• Uncovered an emotional value between diverse packaged food products to deliver a new positioning and platforms for future innovation 
• Identified an underlying brand philosophy to create a positioning that bridged an accessories brand's expansion from technical into stretch fashion categories
• Wrote a new story for a personal care brand capitalizing on an emerging cultural conversation so it could deliver on its premium aspirations 

New Product, service, and experience design 

I help brands write their next chapter through authentic and tangible offerings. I’ve designed digital and physical products, experiences, tools and services through brand-led, design thinking and business-centric approaches.

Some of my proudest ideas are ones that push your buttons or make you smile, concepts built around new business models or commercial creativity, and inventive solutions for broken behaviors that make you feel like seeing the obvious for the first time. And because I speak brand and business, I put commercial rigor behind my creativity.

sample work

• Invented new breakfast and snacking formats for a portfolio of packaged food brands to capitalize on trends in health and wellness and on-the-go consumption
• Developed a low-investment loyalty program for a beauty department that solved for deep consumer and customer friction
• Created a luxury cultural membership program including mobile experience for emerging arts patrons
• Designed mobile payment and financial management tools to speak to the credit-wary and encourage switching from debit to credit spending

insights and trends

My research approaches and my storytelling are intimately linked, leveraging my journalistic instincts for where to find the story and how to tell it.

I look for signals that consumers and culture are out of step with one another — there is opportunity in bridging that gap. My approach is often lateral: for example, using high culture to illuminate mass-market products and taking consumers outside of their comfort zones to see things from a new angle.

sample work

• Delved into immersive theater, morning raves, and David Foster Wallace’s writing to identify and apply the principles of a transformational experience to innovate in packaged vacations 
• Extracted insights from YouTube videos, eBay sales, and conceptual art to bring to life the poignancy of the daily shave for a technically driven brand
• Crystallized the cultural and technological forces most likely to disrupt the hotel conferences market in the next three to five years 

Holistic Communication

In my work on campaigns, I create opportunities for creativity to do what it does better than every other tool in the strategist’s belt: forge serendipitously strong attachments between consumers, brands, and culture.

My strategies intentionally cut across discrete disciplines (advertising, digital, social, PR, identity and packaging), approaches (ads, actions, tools, missions), and departments (communication, product, distribution, new lines of business) to bring that magic to bear on the fluid way brands are experienced today.

sample work

• Developed Effie-winning global launch campaign strategy bringing technical personal care brand into personal style conversation 
• Co-designed new digital utility that leveraged social science data to reposition a job-searching site as a self-finding platform
• Authored 360-degree campaign strategy, including bespoke research approach, to make sensitive body-grooming topic more approachable by using female influencers