No man is an island.

As I was updating my LinkedIn profile for recruiters and potential employers I began reflecting on the fact that nothing I’ve done throughout my career has been done on my own.

The headlines and copy I’ve written by myself only happened because of the great mentors, creative partners and supportive AEs and clients I’ve had. Pitching websites to clients and articulating why user behavior should drive design happened because I’ve learned from some incredibly talented UX/UI designers. Directing actors and getting their best performances in a booth or on a set happened because I was lucky enough to have worked with so many, much more talented directors than I am.

I’m humbled by and grateful for my past successes and I look forward to a bright future. I don’t know exactly what or where my next gig will be (that’s the nature of freelancing) but I know that I’ll approach it with the same curiosity, openness, passion and excitement I had when I got my very first assignment at my very first agency.

Just like I’ve done with every project since.

If you’ve got an opening for a freelance or full-time copywriter with a wealth of diverse experience and track record of success, I’d be thankful for your consideration.

Redesigning the American flag. Reenergizing sales.

One career highlight for me so far has been pitching and winning AOR for Sun-Maid against agencies you’ve heard of while I was working at one you probably haven’t. As I led the creative teams and developed our creative approach, I also helped develop the brand and overall comms strategy for the pitch. A lot of great work was produced in a short amount of time by a lot of great people with the hope of winning a classic American brand.

When we got the call that we’d won the business, the agency erupted in celebration. Champagne and booze and pigs in a blanket flowed as we congratulated one another while letting out a collective sigh of relief. All of the late nights and teeth gnashing and hair pulling paid off. It was incredible news. It was pure joy.

And then a couple weeks later we got some bad news: Sun-Maid was putting it’s branding and packaging up for a separate review. Not because they didn’t think we could do it, they knew our design capabilities, but they were worried with all the other Sun-Maid work already on our plate that we wouldn’t have time to do it. I asked the client to be included in the pitch and they gave us a shot. Against design agencies you’ve heard of. And we won that work, too.

“If you redesign that little red box it’s like redesigning the American flag. Better be careful.”

Prior to jumping into designs, we conducted focus groups across the country asking people what they thought of the current branding and packaging and how Sun-Maid could change them to resonate better for millennial consumers. We heard all kinds of crazy stuff, as you typically do in focus groups, but that quote about the American flag stuck with me.

I remember sitting in the Sun-Maid war room in the agency one night, looking at hundreds of designs taped to the wall, and thinking about that quote. As I began the process of whittling down the options and preparing feedback for the ones moving forward, I couldn’t help but feel humility and gratitude. It’s not often you get asked to lead the redesign of a true American icon. And I knew that our approach needed to be evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Not only were the redesigns embraced by the design community, consumers embraced them, along with a new brand campaign, too. And for the first time in years, Sun-Maid saw positive sales in the raisin category.

Not bad work for a guy you’ve probably never heard of. Right?

Hello. And goodbye.

What I love about advertising isn’t the timesheets. It isn’t the cold pizza, goopy Chinese food or Cisco coffee at 2 o’clock in the morning. Day after day. Night after night. It isn’t the weekends that aren’t really weekends or annual postponed vacations. It’s not the egos or the politics or the drama that unfolds when they’re combined. It certainly isn’t the missed dinners, missed games, missed milestones.

What I love about advertising is the ads. Print ads. TV ads. Social ads. Digital ads. Ads that aren’t really ads, but really are ads. Whatever — it doesn’t matter. I love looking at them. I love listening to them. I love experiencing them. The only thing better, to me, is making them.

Which is why I’m done with advertising. 

Specifically, I’m done with the business of advertising. I’ll leave worrying about margins, employee churn rates and new business wins and/or losses to the agency Chief Operating Masochist. 

Me? I’m going to have fun. I’m going to focus on the work. Thinking and creating and writing and coloring and playing. Because there’s nothing better than coming up with something from nothing. Solving a brand or a business problem. Producing smart, conceptual, well-crafted advertising — in whatever form it takes.

Going freelance wasn’t an easy decision. I’ve been a full-time agency employee my entire career. But going through a pandemic hasn’t been easy, either, and so far I’ve made it and I’ve learned a lot about myself — about what’s most important to me both personally and professionally.

No doubt I’ll miss the free booze and foosball tables. The epic holiday parties and gossip that follows. I’ll miss being on a team that’s all in the same boat, all rowing in the same direction. Most of all, I’ll miss hanging out with other ad nerds and talking shop on a daily basis. But I’ve learned I can successfully create great work from home without sacrificing a large chunk of my life, or sanity. Should I miss agency life too much, as a freelancer, I can always set up shop in an agency conference room for an afternoon.

If you’re an agency recruiter or creative director in need of a freelance creative director/copywriter/art director, a marketing professional or business owner who needs support, or someone who just wants a fresh set of creative eyes on something, I’m available.

In praise of the one-off.

Print is dead. It’s been replaced by digital content, social content, liquid content, native content, paid content, endorsed content, influencer content, search content and any other NEW medium that houses content that our industry believes will make Millennials content to give up their virtual and real dollar bills. Or likes. Or shares. Or hearts. And if our content goes viral, even better.

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Don’t get me wrong — I love that we get to play with a bigger box of crayons. In fact, over the past few years I’ve done more digital than traditional advertising. And, being the tech nerd I am, I’ve loved every minute of it. Which is why, when something like a single print ad comes across my desk, I love working on that even more.

Print is personal. You don’t just download a template off the World Wide Web Super Information Highway, swap out a logo and a few photos, slug in some SEO-friendly copy and then call it a day. Creating a print ad is a much more intimate experience. At least, it is for me.

It reminds me that I don’t have a job; I have a craft. It reinforces my love for a well-written headline over a tweet. And it refuels my drive to make it back into the CA print annual.

Remember when getting in CA was a big deal?

For this Sauder’s Eggs print ad, I didn’t work with a partner. I was the writer, art director and designer. But not by choice. This ad was a freebie for a client quench was hoping to woo into a long-term relationship. It had to be done quickly and on the cheap. There wasn’t even a brief. And I loved every millisecond of the assignment.

More important, the prospective client loved the ad as presented. Not a single change was recommended or made. And I’m grateful to say, Sauder’s Eggs is no longer a prospective quench client. They’re a client. In part because of a one-off print ad that ran on the back cover of a B2B pub with less than 5,000 readers.

A print ad that also happened to take Gold in the 2016 Philadelphia Addy Awards.

So now we’re auditing Sauder’s current website, monitoring their social media channels, and developing their brand strategy that’ll soon inform their content strategy.

Not too shabby for the walking dead, huh?

Case study: Rebranding Sauder Furniture.

While my official role on the Sauder account at Bader Rutter was Creative Director, I had my head, and hands, on every aspect of the account. From developing the brand strategy to developing and executing the content and social strategy, from creating the brand voice and developing the look — Sauder gave me the opportunity to work with teams across multiple disciplines to reshape the 80-year-old brand for the coveted Millennial audience.

Before we brought the new brand to life, however, we did our homework on Millennials. In addition to creating a psychographic profile and a detailed buyers’ journey, we shared our vision of how Millennials would interact with the new Sauder brand online and at retail.

Once we gained approval to move forward and develop creative based upon our strategic approach and understanding of the target audience, we worked fast and furiously to launch the new brand in less than a year. Traffic to the site and engagement in their social channels have significantly increased since the launch.

sauder.com   Sauder Pinterest   Sauder Facebook   Sauder Twitter

Case study: Johnson Controls launches Panoptix.

In October, 2011, Johnson Controls, Inc. wanted to launch a new product, Panoptix, at the GreenBuild trade show. Panoptix is a comprehensive, cloud based, building efficiency system. It operates on an open platform where a community of Panoptix users can create its own apps, in addition to using the Johnson Controls produced apps, to manage their building systems from any device, anywhere. And it was the first of its kind. Because this software based solution was new territory for a company known more for building hardware, like HVAC systems and refrigeration units, positioning Johnson Controls as a thought leader in technology leading up to Greenbuild was important.

In order to tease the Panoptix offering and create technology-based content, my team at Bader Rutter and I created the "What's Possible" campaign that included a Johnson Controls  blog as well as Twitter and Facebook pages. See the work here. Through those social channels and an e-mail based marketing campaign, we encouraged people to sign up on the blog, follow Johnson Controls on Twitter and like them on Facebook. Those who did received a Botanicals Kit — a device you stick in a houseplant that’s connected to a Twitter account. It tweets you when your plant needs water and again when it’s happily watered. From the campaign about the Botanicals Kit: “We think this crazy green gadget is a great example that, with technology, anything is possible. It’s simple. It’s efficient. It makes things easy to manage.”

For the trade show, we wanted to create a level of engagement with attendees that matched the Panoptix offering. It had to be technology-based, community-based and mobile-friendly. So we created the Panoptix wall. A 10x7 foot interactive wall that we ran from Twitter where we posted content about the Panoptix platform. Attendees, and non-attendees, could post messages to the wall from their Twitter accounts or by SMS. Those at the show could then touch their message, move them around, make them bigger, or shoot them through a virtual slingshot across the wall. We also used the wall for time-based contests at the show that encouraged people to visit the booth. For the booth, we designed it to be open and comfortable, and as a place where Johnson Controls could conduct media interviews.

In less than 3 days, over 6,000 messages were posted to the wall. And over 300 people signed up as customers for Panoptix, despite the fact the product wasn’t on the market at the time of the show. Our campaign generated more foot traffic to the Johnson Controls booth than they’d had in previous years and far exceeded their expectations.

TL;DR: I launched a new brand and created an interactive, social media wall at a trade show

Identity crisis?

I’m an art director. I’m a copywriter. A traditional creative. A digital creative. I’m in production, account service, account planning, public relations and traditional and social media.

I’m also in the minority.

Every time I see a classified ad for a digital art director, traditional copywriter, digital account planner, etc. I’m reminded that as much as our industry likes to talk about progressing beyond the conventional model, it is still largely built upon silos.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe our business needs specialists. But while specializing in one thing, they should know and be open to all things.

As an art director, I’d much rather spend my time kerning than programming. But I know enough about different platforms and technologies so I can have intelligent conversations with developers and programmers about bringing an idea to life. However, I wanted this site to look and function very simply, to not over-shadow the work, but to make it happen I had to write code. That’s not the important part; the important part is that I’m up enough on HTML to know what code needed to be written.

Can someone please explain to me why a “traditional” art director can’t design and layout a website or why a “digital” art director can’t design and layout a print ad? Anyone? While you’re at it, I’d also like to know what, exactly, is a digital copywriter. And digital creative director. Why can’t a social media or interactive campaign come from the mind of a “traditional” creative? It can. And it should.

The best time to be in this business is right now. Though, I felt the same way 5 years ago and the 5 years before that. I’m a geek for advertising and thus a geek for technology. I’m excited by all of the tools and toys we get to play with every single day — and the promise of more to come. Today it might be smartphone app or smartly executed board on Pinterest. But tomorrow? All I know is that I’ll keep my eyes and ears wide open. And my pencil finely sharpened.  

Yes, I still use a pencil. And that probably puts me in the minority as well.