Branding & Advertising Creative

You offer the world something – a product, a service, a cause ... a brand. You care about it, and you need your audience to care about it too. Helping the right people care about your something ... that’s my something.

I do

In a nutshell, I help businesses communicate with and motivate their various audiences. This involves asking questions and learning what makes my clients special ... the real compelling connections between my clients and their future customers. Then I develop the strategy, concepts, copywriting and creative direction for their trade and consumer advertising vehicles. If you're launching a brand or a product, we start at the beginning to create a brand identity and messaging strategy. If you have an existing brand, product or service ... maybe it's time to project a new message in a new way. Perhaps you need new package design, digital ads, radio spots, web page refresh or all of the above.

R&D

You might have an R&D Department. I’ve got a sketchpad and a mechanical pencil. Almost everything I do starts with messaging ideas – combinations of copy concepts and visuals roughly joining each other on paper. Concepts with promise get more refined copy and sketches. Then other craftspeople bring what they do to the concept and it really gets fun.

A sampling of the brands I've worked with

…in no particular order

The direct pitch

One of my favorite challenges is creating convincing one-to-one communications. When clients have needed to craft important messages to individuals or decision-maker groups – and thousands, hundreds of thousand, or millions of dollars are on the line – I’ve been an effective partner.

When a Division 1 university needed to join a new NCAA athletic conference to remain relevant on a national level …

The direct pitch

One of my favorite challenges is creating convincing one-to-one communications. When clients have needed to craft important messages to individuals or decision-maker groups – and thousands, hundreds of thousand, or millions of dollars are on the line – I’ve been an effective partner.

When a Division 1 university needed to join a new NCAA athletic conference to remain relevant on a national level, I led the creative team to develop the proposal. Our client got the invitation, joined the conference and remained relevant.

When that same university sought private funding for a centerpiece structure for a new on-campus arena, our direct proposal helped get the “yes.”

When a large financial consulting firm purchased another firm, I ghost-wrote the letter of introduction to the other firm’s customers conveying the benefits of remaining with my client. Almost all of them did.

When the owner of a high-end tobacco store and lounge was in a contentious lease negotiation with the management of his high-end mall, I crafted the letter with him that resulted in the perfect compromise.

These are a few examples of very specific communications to very specific audiences. Their outcomes were every bit as important as those of radio spots or digital ad campaigns that reach thousands. It was especially gratifying to work with my clients and help them achieve successes.

Let’s talk, text or email

How can I help your business get the right message out there?

My career

(Which really picked up after this photo was taken.)

If you’re not into stories, you can just download my resume (the normal kind).

Born and raised in quaint, pre-Revolution suburb of Boston, I’m still a New Englander at heart. But at 17, I changed coasts to attend the University of California, Fresno. For the most part, I’ve been here ever since. The University had a great advertising department, if you’re wondering …

My career

Born and raised in quaint, pre-Revolution suburb of Boston, I’m still a New Englander at heart. But at 17, I changed coasts to attend the University of California, Fresno. For the most part, I’ve been here ever since. The University had a great advertising department, if you’re wondering about my choice of university.

As a student, I was on the University’s creative team in the American Advertising Federation’s annual National Student Advertising Competition. Kellogg’s was the client, and they were readying a new high-fiber cereal to go to market. We came up with the name Kellogg’s Complete and a solid creative strategy. We came in 11th at the finals in Washington, DC. A disappointment. Then, about 9 months later, Kellogg’s Complete hit the shelves. Vindication. I was hooked on my choice of careers.

My first job out of college was with a small but mighty advertising agency in Fresno. I loved it. I worked on creative concepts, copywriting and design. This was before everything was done on the computer, so I worked on a big art table creating art boards. Back then, CUT and PASTE literally mean cutting and pasting ... and using an Xacto blade to trim overlays for printer separations. I gained a great understanding of how to come up with the big idea, and how to physically create art that would reproduce in print as I had envisioned it in my mind.

From there I was recruited to oversee advertising and pr for a regional HMO. With the help of our agency of record, a small firm owned by a husband-and-wife team, I wrote and produced all the advertising creative and communications to our HMO members. The HMO’s growth during that time was impressive. Impressive enough, I guess, that I was recruited to do what I thought was the same thing for a much larger health care insurance company in Seattle, Washington. Great people, but I soon learned that my job overseeing their advertising meant going to corporate planning and budget meetings and having little time for input on the actual creative work. My team and our ad agency was having all the fun. Not for me, so I made my apologies and returned to Fresno.

Next I became an in-house marketing director for a group of printing companies. When not creating their advertising, I also developed creative for their clients not represented by their own agencies.

After that, I became a freelancer. It was fun to be working directly with many different clients in many different industries. I was commissioned by companies and ad agencies. The connection with one agency was so perfect, for both of us, that I became the agency’s full-time creative director. With on-staff photographers, video/audio studio, writers, designers and web development pros, it was a great playground for ideas and creative work.

After five great years there, I joined another agency, Revcom. This is the same agency I worked with back when I was on staff at the regional HMO. They had grown considerably since then, as had I, and it was time for me to join their team. That’s where I continued to hone my craft for 17-plus years. In the Summer of 2022, Revcom closed for a number of reasons ... and none of them bad. What a blessing it was to have been part of such a great team. Now I'm serving my clients as a freelance creative director and enjoying an exciting new chapter in my career.

I love what I do in the creative field – helping businesses succeed, working with successful clients and talented craftspeople, and starting with a blank sketch pad to make creative ideas come to life.