Ideas built for people.
Over a decade, I've helped plan, create and execute many proejcts across multiple industries. Working with large national brands to small, scrappy teams alike.
King's Hawaiian had equity in a beloved product but an open question about where it could grow next. To expand into new categories and consumption occasions, the brand needed to stop relying on intuition and start listening directly to consumers, particularly younger ones who weren't reaching for King's Hawaiian outside of dinner.
King's Hawaiian was entering a brand new snack category with the launch of Pretzel Bites. The product needed to earn consumer awareness and retail velocity before it ever hit shelves, in a competitive snack market where new products live and die by trial.
To sample Pretzel Bites at scale across a multi-city tour, King's Hawaiian needed a sampling format that didn't exist yet. The product had a 7-day shelf life once unfrozen, which made logistics complex, and with no existing brand template to work from, this was a new product development project in every sense of the word.
King's Hawaiian had a licensing partnership with Illumination and Universal for Despicable Me 4, and theatrical was an untapped channel for Pretzel Bites. With one of the summer's biggest animated films as the vehicle, there was an opportunity to put the product in front of millions of moviegoers nationwide at the exact moment they were looking for something to snack on.
The holiday season is the most competitive retail window in the toy category. The Floor is Lava needed to stay top of mind with both kids and parents simultaneously during the critical Thanksgiving window, with fresh creative and enough media weight to cut through.
The Lunar Dial was a new board game entering a crowded market with no existing audience to market to. It had a distinct aesthetic and a clear niche, but without shelf presence yet, awareness and pre-sale demand had to be built entirely through digital and earned channels before the game ever reached retail.
Hot Wheels RacerVerse was Mattel's most ambitious licensed toy launch in years, a brand new line where characters from across pop culture could become Hot Wheels racers. Building it required aligning internal teams, major entertainment licensors, retail partners, and global distribution channels simultaneously, all before a single unit shipped
Hot Wheels Mario Kart needed a data-backed roadmap for 2024 product planning within the Super Mario Bros license. The question wasn't simply which characters were popular — it was which themes had the strongest commercial momentum, the broadest consumer appeal, and the most natural fit with the existing product ecosystem.
The toy industry evolves quickly and staying relevant requires knowing what is coming before it arrives. Hot Wheels Monster Trucks needed a forward-looking view of where the category was heading and a clear framework for how the brand could get ahead of it in product development.
The holiday season floods grocery shelves with competition and promotional noise. Sparkling Ice needed a way to capture shopper attention and drive measurable sales lift in key regional grocery chains without getting lost in the seasonal clutter.
Sparkling Ice's new Coconut Limeade flavor was a natural fit for Cinco de Mayo, but cultural relevance alone doesn't move product off shelves. The brand needed to convert that occasion alignment into actual foot traffic and sales at Save Mart locations during the holiday window.
African-Americans are critically underrepresented on NMDP's donor registry, creating dangerous gaps for Black patients with blood diseases who need a compatible match. NMDP needed to engage the Black community in a way that felt genuine rather than transactional, and do it within a concentrated timeframe.
NMDP had never launched outside the United States. Mexico was the first. The market came with real barriers: deep cultural reluctance around donation, low institutional trust, and limited awareness of blood diseases and transplantation. A translation of the US strategy was not going to work.
NMDP needed to grow brand awareness and drive bone marrow donor registrations among younger audiences. The challenge was creating urgency around a cause most people have never personally encountered, at the most crowded media moment of the year.