Jamaica Tourist Board
As leisure travel resumed post-COVID, Jamaica needed a fresh brand positioning and ad campaign to drive visitation. Research showed people were emerging from the pandemic with a heightened desire for travel that would heal them and feed their souls. So we positioned Jamaica as the destination that returns travelers to their best selves.
Rather than offering people a cute summation of Jamaica (as past campaigns had done), we sought only to create the desire to be there. We emphasized rich sensorial cues with transportive powers, doing away with taglines in the process.
| Brand positioning, campaign strategy, target audience insights, pitch strategy, competitive audit, qual and quant research
Wells Fargo
While undergoing a rebrand on the retail bank side, Wells Fargo’s Corporate & Investment Bank sought to refresh its own brand—via a reenergized value proposition with updated brand tenets and a brand architecture encompassing its three main business units.
Following a deep competitive audit, I led one-on-one in-depth interviews with dozens of executive- and senior-level staff, as well as key account clients. I partnered with clients through findings, implications, and ideation stages, delivering a new brand strategy that held true to the brand’s past and served to stretch the business for growth.
| Value proposition, brand architecture, in-depth interviews with leadership, C-level presentations
FINRA
Amidst the spread of gamified investment platforms and a growing get-rich-quick mentality among users, FINRA sought to better understand the “new investor” audience and what role FINRA might play in keeping them from getting in over their heads.
I led a national quant study to inform a segmentation and an approach to targeting, and uncovered eye-opening attitudinal and behavioral data to inform brand actions. I led the team that defined the role for the FINRA brand for its first-ever mass media outreach and developed the creative strategy. “Get Your Head In The Trade” connected with this new investor subculture to counter reckless investing behavior and the mindset that feeds it.
| Quant research, 4Cs, segmentation, targeting, creative strategy, brand role definition
988
In 2022, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was converting from a ten-digit number to 988. For a state government agency I reframed this as not just a public health education program but also a brand campaign, leveraging the cultural momentum around mental health to reposition the Lifeline not as a number to call only as a last resort, but as a help line for those with needs all along a spectrum.
I defined the campaign’s audience beyond those most at risk for mental health crisis, including the support systems for higher risk populations and even the general public—recognizing that those who don’t need 988 today may need it in the future. I developed the communications channel plan that defined campaign audiences, with objectives for each, along with mindsets, key messages, and channel considerations.
| Campaign strategy, segmentation approach, target audience strategy, comms strategy, channel plan
The Real Cost – Smokeless
To combat youth experimentation with smokeless tobacco, The Real Cost was up against a host of positive associations among at-risk rural boys who saw dip as a rite of passage, with widespread use among the men they looked up to. Plus: these teens had never witnessed any negative health consequences of long-term use.
My strategy was to forge a mental connection between dip and its worst (albeit rare) health consequences. To make it impossible for a teen who’d seen our work to use dip casually. The result was a visceral and unforgettable warning of the serious health consequences of dip use.
| Campaign strategy
AXA
AXA, a major European health insurance provider, was looking to launch an America-based insurance product designed for un- and under-insured Americans. With no existing American footprint, AXA sought to create a new brand from scratch.
In a qualitative co-creation phase, I led insights gathering, brand strategy and brand name evaluation, product attribute valuation, and gathered input on creative expressions and channels. In just nine weeks we delivered a tested and validated brand strategy including brand purpose and brand house with tenets, as well as a brand name and logo and consumer-facing creative toolkit for pilot launch, inclusive of product description, messaging with story building blocks, key messages, and visual design.
| Qual research design, brand strategy, product attribute evaluation, creative strategy, design strategy
General Mills’ Box Tops for Education
Following its disappointing transformation to an online-only experience, General Mills sought our help to turn around the Box Tops for Education brand and program. My team and I were brought in to assess and recommend new communications protocols.
To start, I devised a net new segmentation, changing the way they see the participants and, thereby, how they interact with them. Further investigation uncovered a root problem: participants felt they weren’t getting much in return for what was being asked of them—and current comms were contributing to the problem. We developed new targeting and a communications framework for all audiences, including objectives for communications and key messages, informed a robust playbook for communications, audience journeys, and a new creative look-and-feel for all branded comms.
Business analysis, segmentation, comms strategy, creative strategy
Amtrak
I partnered with Amtrak to refresh their brand strategy and deliver a fresh story to tell in a new campaign. We conceded that Amtrak doesn’t make the most sense for all travel distances. But for trips between 100 and 400 miles, Amtrak has a solid claim as the best travel option. We targeted travelers in the eastern corridor, Amtrak’s core service region, for whom this claim had real power.
Our strategy was to awaken travelers to the hassles they’ve been putting up with while flying and driving, positioning Amtrak as the solution. And the savvy, clever tone served to modernize the drab brand.
| Brand strategy, qual and quant research analysis, campaign targeting, campaign strategy
The Real Cost
ust as the battle against youth smoking was being won, vaping threatened to create a whole new generation of tobacco users, having become (by 2016) the most common form of tobacco use among youth.
To inform the first ever national vaping prevention campaign in the U.S., I conducted interviews with teens to validate hypotheses, inform the creative brief, and confirm that the brand—historically focused on cigarettes—had the credibility to speak about vaping. The “Don’t Get Hacked” campaign targeted adventurous teens who assume vaping is no big deal and who lack a clear reason not to vape.
| Campaign strategy, brand stretch evaluation, qual research
Hungry-Man
Pinnacle Foods wanted to drive brand engagement among their core Hungry-Man consumer, young men 18-24. In the still early days of social media and smartphones, we created an intentionally ridiculous social-first campaign detailing the exploits of famous figures of the distant past, brought to the present where they experience the modern world and the delights of Hungry-Man dinners.
The absurd adventures of Genghis Khan, Davy Crockett, and Leonardo da Vinci came to life across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Foursquare.
| Campaign strategy