The brief explained what the product did but never why anyone would want it. It had no tension and no point of view.

I anchored both films in one line, women who own their space, and one idea: those women are the light. Luminizer is a highlighter, so the film makes each woman the source of the light, with it refracting off water and powder hanging in the air around her. The result plays like interactive art.

I brought the line to the brief, then wrote, cast, directed and edited both films, Luminizer and Pressed Shadow.

The films earned 255K organic views, a 300% lift over the content the brand had made before. For the first time, the founder’s idea of the brand was on screen.

Two companies with their own histories and customers had to become one brand that creators would believe in.

Creator-controlled commerce: creators own their audience, their checkout and the relationship.

Through Lumatrait, I led the brand strategy and positioning, and that strategy guided the design.

Curated did $3M in sales in its first month.

For three years, the rebrand made no progress while four executive and marketing leaders came and went. The brand story was scattered and out of step with where the company was going. The CEO recruited me to fix it.

Go back to the brand’s roots and hold everything to one line: Deliberately Different.

I led a team of 15+, got everyone pointed in the same direction, and built the brand guide and the playbooks that put it to work. I brought in Contravent as our agency and managed paid media against CAC and ROAS.

We finished in six months, and the guide is still live at brand.younique.com.

Insurance buyers move slowly. A new Verisk product typically waited about four months before anyone bought it.

Give the launch one story and make sure marketing, sales and product told it with consistency, in every channel and every sales conversation.

I led the integrated launch: the story, paid social and search, the launch webinar and sales enablement. I met with sales and product every week so the story never drifted.

We sold 44 seats on launch day, and webinar engagement ran 2.3x higher.

The product rested on gene-expression science, and the audience was older and didn’t want to be talked down to.

Show real people who never stopped living their passions, then explain the science in short social films people would actually watch.

I directed all of it: the documentary profiles, the launch teaser, motion design and social, produced with Nu Skin’s creative teams in Asia.

The launch did $100M in 18 months.

Three audiences, three needs. Verizon had to prove its tech. Disney had to protect the magic. Guests just wanted the experience. A standard tech pitch would have talked past all three.

Make the technology disappear into the story. 5G and BlueJeans became ways to deepen the Galactic Starcruiser experience, not interrupt it. The line we held: “Enhance the story. Never overwhelm it.”

As Director of Content Strategy at Contravent, I built the narrative and the pitch, and kept one story working for Verizon, Disney and Disney’s guests.

Brief to final presentation in seven weeks, on Disney’s decision schedule, at a 70% profit margin: the agency’s most profitable project of its type to date.

Complaints about makeup application, lighting and art direction came in every month, and downstream teams got their photos with only three days to use them.

Fix the problem at its source. A team that shoots makeup should know how to apply it.

I trained every member of the team as a makeup artist, myself included, and reviewed every look before it went on camera. I replaced our retouchers with faster, better and cheaper ones, which freed the team to spend its time on creative work.

The complaints stopped. The whole company got a predictable shoot schedule, downstream teams received assets three weeks ahead instead of three days, and retouching cost $7,500 less every month.

The volume was huge and one person held the standard. That person was me, and it didn’t scale.

Brief first, then make. Our strategists weren’t writing creative briefs, so I wrote them and handed them back, and the whole team started moving in one direction. As VP, I turned those briefs into playbooks.

I built the brief and playbook system so every team knew what we were doing and what its role was.

We made more than 4,000 assets a year, and teams outside my department ran their daily work on the playbooks. Production data showed us where the process broke, so we fixed it. I still work this way. Below are four pages from the launch playbook I wrote for Thirsty Girl.

Our campaigns were pedestrian. They aspired to beauty but had nothing to say, and nothing in them stopped the scroll.

Pair a visual this audience had never seen with a real point of view: paint exploding in slow motion to stop the scroll, and powerful women owning their space to give it meaning.

I did the research, wrote the concept, directed the shoot and cut the film.

The VP of Product watched it and asked, “What are you doing?” Then he asked how I planned to top it, and I told him that was a problem for next time. After Splash, no one tried to water down the work.

The brand needed thousands of videos and images a year and had no team built to make them. The existing creative team was ready for a higher standard.

Build a studio in-house and run it like a business, with clear roles, written briefs and measured output.

I hired the entire video team and brought in vendors and freelance photographers. With the existing creative team, I set a higher standard and coached people up to it, and I hired new talent as people moved on. I managed a budget of up to $3M, tracked production data and fixed the process wherever it slowed down.

The team grew to 15 people and produced more than 4,000 assets a year. People I mentored went on to lead: Logan Perez is now CXO at Curated.