Copy Director, Senior Copywriter, Big Idea Guy & Storyteller
Currently, I establish and curate the brand voice of eight separate lending entities and joint-venture partners. I'm involved at all levels of marketing execution on the copy side, from ideation and concepting, to generation and refinement. These projects embrace both B2B and B2C lead funnels to drive engagement and increase market share.
I worked with brilliant scientists to sift through complex information, find the heart of the story, and create content that would excite a diverse audience. I have a passion for museums and history that is almost as natural as breathing for me, so it continues to be a rare privilege to work on these exhibits. And there’s more to come…
At this role, I collaborated with scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and project owners to create a wide range of marketing collateral and campaigns in support of global marketing initiatives, including emergency learning resources for teachers switching to virtual classrooms during the pandemic. Also, I refreshed the TI brand voice to appeal to a younger more modern audience.
I collaborated with Hilti brand managers to create and codify their official veteran’s outreach program and drive recruitment. I created the testimonial format, conducted interviews, and found the right voice to connect with a military audience. Within two months, I developed all content and got the go-ahead from global headquarters. Below is a “drill down” succession of the homepage, the launch space, and one of the veteran stories I created.
I oversaw the writing team responsible for up to 3000 SKUs per year including: social media, blogs, marketing materials, games, instruction sheets, packaging, SEO content, product copy, video scripts, POP displays, and character creation. I managed internal brand guidelines and numerous partner requirements from big-box retailers including Walmart, Target, Lowe's, and The Home Depot.
I collaborated with top executives to create this 30th anniversary “sizzle reel” touting the company’s history and achievements. It played at high-level meetings to elevate engagement with existing first-tier clients and close new national and international accounts.
This is a good overview of the kinds of projects and products I worked on while at this role.
This was a series of dice games for Walmart. They all had a dice agitator module enclosed under a clear plastic dome (not unlike the board game “Trouble”). I wrote the rules for the games, play-tested them, and paired with designers and illustrators to create the packaging that would give them a distinctive look both individually and as a series.
This was a piece of signage for Gemmy’s buyer showroom. It speaks to an inflatable Santa that was 16-feet tall, at the time the largest of its kind the company had ever created. The creative director wanted some special copy for it, and gave me the latitude to write something out of the ordinary for the line. This coined the term ‘Giraffe Copy’ whenever we needed something over-the-top and funny for one of our projects.
This was a standalone kiosk-style POP display for Target. Each side had different Summer-themed decorations, and needed specific copy for the individual items as well as the bay itself.
LightShow continues to be one of Gemmy’s flagship brands. This bay is typical of holiday display for Lowe’s stores. We did these every year, and I would write all the copy for the individual packaging, come up with names for sub-branding, and create any additional in-store signage. Some displays of this kind also included video presentations, also created by me. I even created the instruction manuals for the entire program.
LightShow was mainly for seasonal Christmas decor, but also included a number of fun Halloween pieces. Fog machines (some which would project light patterns onto the fog stream), misting cauldrons, strobe lights, projectors, and mood lighting—pretty much anything needed to build your own haunted house, we had it. During my time there, Gemmy maintained an unmatched share of the category.
Before Gemmy narrowed its focus to seasonal decor, they produced lots of novelties and toys for kids. This one was a project that required lots of research into baseball. I also collaborated with illustrators to get the hand positions correct.
This ad appeared in Disney’s FamilyFun magazine. A large part of Gemmy’s business model was to apply licensed characters to existing technologies. This was particularly the case for Christmas, which regularly saw Airblowns in the shape of Mickey, Snoopy, Rudolph, and Frosty the Snowman.
I worked with the Michaels e-commerce and signage departments to create email campaigns, banners, direct mail, in-store communications, and cross-channel communications. While there, I ran point on the entire Black Friday email program by creating all headlines and body copy, supporting multiple product teams, and managing content and workflow. I was able to crack their brand voice in a week, and part of the copy I created was featured in the quarterly executive report.
This is an example of the short copy blocks I created for emails and their website. This is one that made it all the way through the process and was not modified to be more promotional.
I wrote this Christmas Eve email, which was one of the most important deliverables of the year. All of the copy went through the approval process without a single change, which was a Christmas miracle just by itself. Notice the subject line copy and also the “waiters gonna wait” tagline in the body of the email.
This was a promotional email that had minimal room for messaging. I paired with the designer to concept and execute the email from a more visual messaging perspective. This also sailed through the approval process largely unchanged.
Michaels closed the standalone Aaron Brothers framing stores in favor of moving them into Michaels stores, to further bolster their custom framing brand. This direct mailer was the announcement to inform customers. It’s also a good example of how Aaron Brothers maintained a different tone and feel even after their incorporation to Michaels stores.
While at AdvoCare, I did a little bit of everything. This included: catalog copy, brochures, marketing collateral, websites, landing pages, and celebrity testimonials. In addition, I created a trio of magazine ads for the Drew Brees Charity Golf Tournament. The one with the bent golf club was the one that Drew Brees selected himself.
I produced creative content for each of Score Entertainment’s game websites, including DragonBall Z, DragonBall GT, Yu-Yu Hakusho, Inuyasha, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Additionally, I was responsible for creating copy for newsletters, convention signage, and other strategic marketing and game materials for use at conventions and tournaments. I also learned game development and playtesting skills here as each staff member was expected to embrace multiple roles. The entries here are all magazine ads that ran in magazines like Wizard, Scrye, and Inquest to announce new card sets.
I was writer on the Virus Wars campaign for McAfee’s e-policy orchestrator. The following are two direct mail pieces I worked on at that time. The first was a brochure (the image is of the interior), and the other is a post card-style mailer. This campaign had a response of over five percent.
During my time at Rapp-Collins, I worked on the Dell Home Systems catalog. It was the first time (but certainly not the last time) that I would write about computers and technology trends. While the account has changed hands numerous times over the years, I still receive it in the mail. The direction our team set back then still echoes in the current iteration of the DHS catalog.
This page is for a number of my smaller or independent projects. I have quite a bit in the works, but they aren’t quite ready/approved for publication just yet. So, consider this a work in progress. Watch this space.
