Los Angeles, California, United States
I’m a leader of 72andSunny, a modern marketing agency delivering creativity that wins. In my time at the company, we’ve been named Adweek and Ad Age’s agency of the year twice; made the list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies twice; and brought home the most awards for US marketing effectiveness twice. I wouldn’t mind a threepeat. I’m a good listener. A friendly debater. An old-fashioned evangelist for brand building and new-fashioned evangelist for innovation. But most of all, I’m a committed believer in the power of creativity to grow businesses and do good in the world—and not just through the work we make. Everything can be a creative act and be better for it. That’s why my personal mission is to bring creativity into our strategic practice: our talent and their development, our research and insights, our products and presentations. In my 20-odd years in marketing, I’ve: ► Run, grown and—after a tough patch for the industry—re-grown a 400+ person agency. ► Provided thought leadership for tech giants like Google, unicorns like Dropbox, entertainment icons like Activision-Blizzard, Gen Z change agents like truth, and blue chip marketers like Unilever. ► Partnered with and learned from some of the most courageous, inspiring and gloriously weird people in marketing (you know who you are). ► Mentored two generations of star talent, many of whom still work with me. ► Guided the strategy and wrote/edited the cases for 40+ Effie winners, including a Grand Effie for Call of Duty and a Sustained Success Effie for truth. ► Led the strategy for work I and a lot of other people love, like Google’s “Year in Search” and Call of Duty’s “Soldier in All of Us” campaigns, and truth’s “Treatment Box” program. I’m passionate about addressing the burnout crisis in our industry, obsessed with Gen Z (and their Gen X echoes), and lucky that I get to have so much fun for a living.
With my leadership team, run a talent-based business and oversee everything from training programs to annual planning, cross-office business development to culture-building rituals. Make growth meaningful in boom times and create stability in challenging ones by marrying a competitive vision for our business with an unyielding commitment to our brand and people. With my ESD partner, lead and grow a 30+ person department of weird, wonderful and ever-more diverse thinkers and makers, and set an obsessively high standard for our strategic product. Innovate how we solve problems by developing new tools and products, including a model for identifying a brand’s purpose, a framework for making choices around social impact, and a brand strategy + design offering. Together with some of the best senior marketers in the world, guide the brand strategies, marketing plans and creative development for a portfolio of ~20 global B2C and B2B companies. Run about half of our pitches with a healthy hit rate, including recent wins for Samsung Appliances, Indeed and See’s Candies; past wins include eBay, Dropbox, Square, Stubhub, Cresco Cannabis, and NatGeo. Guide and champion initiatives to keep our internal culture vibrant for employees and magnetic for prospective hires. Recent efforts include a recommitment to diversifying our company and our creativity, and a radical streamlining of our way-of-working.
Along with my partner, stepped into a leadership role during a period of exhilarating (and at times disorienting) growth; drank a lot of coffee. Introduced data strategy to the agency and made it stick by demonstrating how data can fuel—and defend—effective creativity. Integrated the strategy department, uniting all disciplines (brand, comms, social, data) with a shared vision, toolset, career path, and culture. Developed an immersive approach to consumer research inspired by (but far scrappier than) ethnography; a new, radically simple brief that united brand and comms thinking; and an effectiveness model made for the digital age. Grew the number of brands I shepherded, including Google, Blizzard, Activision, truth, Adobe, Starbucks, Allstate, Infiniti, Dolby, and Tuft & Needle. (Not all at once, and with a lot of help.) Created our brand consulting offering and successfully road-tested it with the SyFy Channel’s joyous reclamation of genre fandom.
Returned to strategy, working on the "Web is what you make of it" campaign for Google Chrome.
Created and produced campaigns for Westin, Sitter City, and Baileys. Became far more empathetic for people in creative roles and gained a newfound respect for their craft skills.
Built on the agency’s legacy of combining commercial rigor and creativity by partnering with my creative directors and developing a new, collaborative way of generating ideas. It shook out unexecutable strategies, got to great faster, and made the messy business of applied creativity a lot more joyful and a bit less messy. Rebooted the strategy department’s internship program to find and grow talent from a wider range of backgrounds. Co-led our “agency of the future” project, designed to understand and get ahead of the shifts in the industry without losing the soul of our brand.
Baptised in creativity at a legendary agency. Shoveled coal in the engine room of retail for Staples and Quiznos, and helped make some creative diamonds along the way.
Found my way into marketing through the backdoor of book publishing, supporting the promotional efforts of Viking, Penguin, Random House, and the Library of America. Launched big books with tiny budgets, smart targeting, and personal brand building (love him or hate him, we can learn a lot from James Patterson).