Packaging Copy

This was a fun project with a great team.

Edmundson + Martin, a super-talented design duo in South Florida was hired by Village Farms, a leading edge greenhouse grower, to create this upbeat rebrand. They, in turn, hired me to write the copy for this project. Their work scope included identity, naming, brand language, package redesign, interactive, tradeshow, photography, illustration, and B2B advertising and writing.

Dropbox Content Strategy

Over 500,000 teams globally use Dropbox Business every day. Interestingly, most people don’t realize how powerful it can also be for small business and personal use, too.

Dropbox Paper, for example, is an innovative product that facilitates collaboration in a way that Google docs can’t touch. Yet I’d never heard of it until I came to Dropbox. (If you haven’t tried it yet, you should.)

I work with Dropbox to keep the brand voice fresh and alive, writing original content that helps tell the Dropbox story. The work I’m currently doing lets users know how they can use Dropbox to meet the demands of the digital age, especially where speed, efficiency, and data security are key.

Brand Identity + Website + Biz Cards

Paddle Works of Winter Park, FL needed a brand identity and a website. To help them stand out from their competition, we created a classic, yet modern, logo that would translate as readily to the web as it would to t-shirts, boards, and business cards.

My role: The client hired me to help them launch this business as creative director, copywriter and project manager. I hired two art directors and a programmer to develop the logo, design and program the site. 

Short Form Video

Social media has made our lives infinitely shareable. Short form video is a big part of that because it can be done really quickly and cost effectively.

Here are some videos I wrote for MoneyLion that educate and entertain consumers about a variety of financial topics like knowing how their credit score is calculated or how to save and invest with MoneyLion products. Short form video simplifies these messages into a fun visual form that’s easy for people to understand

Pretty Mommies Founder and CEO was looking to establish a brand identity for her new skin care line geared toward pregnant and nursing women. She wanted the brand to reflect an accessible organic quality that was also distinctly modern and intelligent. She had started working with a graphic designer but their first attempts were too cottage industry in feel. She was looking for something much more sophisticated and polished.

To get her on the right track, I partnered with an award-winning art director, Maya Whitman, in San Francisco, someone with whom I have worked on a consistent basis for the past 12 years. Together, the three of us (the founder, Maya and I) collaborated on how the brand should look, feel and sound.

The work here showcases the initial creative genesis and the final product for Pretty Mommies' first 3-product launch. This exclusive product line is available online and in select physician's offices around the US. 

John Lewis, painted by Rob Shetterly

Client: Kane-Lewis Productions

“What defines a great American?”

For artist/activist Robert Shetterly, it’s a citizen with the moral courage to confront issues of social, environmental and economic fairness. Shetterly has painted 250 portraits of such Americans, past and present, with their words inscribed into the dark background of the portrait. These Americans Who Tell the Truth have been exhibited throughout the United States for almost two decades.

A Kane-Lewis production, Truth Tellers is both a story of Shetterly’s art and activism and a history lesson in what it means to be a citizen of a democracy. In bringing Shetterly’s message to a wide audience, Truth Tellers will spark a national conversation on truth telling.

Credible, a student loan refi tech start-up, was looking to generate awareness during their peak student loan and refinancing season. I worked with a creative director and art director to come up with a promotion and contest called ‘National Cosigner Awareness Month’ targeting students and their cosigners to create a sense of urgency for students to show some love to their cosigners, the people who helped them get the financing they needed for college.

Deliverables included a contest landing page, ecards and an infographic.

These social campaigns helped consumers to see how MoneyLion could be a useful financial tool in their daily lives.

Campaign 1

MoneyLion wanted to find out how much people actually knew about overdraft fees by sending consumers to a quiz that was sure to both educate and infuriate them.

Campaign 2

‘Grow your stack’ was a concept using augmented reality to create a visual representation of your bank account in stacks of cash to inspire people to save more money.

Ad Campaign + Sell Sheets + Trade Show Booth

Smart thinking is one thing but quick thinking is another. In the case of Nufern, it had to be both. This highly specialized, technically intricate company was in a critical time pinch: they had a mere 4 days to put together an ad campaign.

In four days, my team cranked out an award-winning campaign. In four weeks, we re-vamped their ‘family of fiber’ nomenclature and created a sophisticated tradeshow booth. In four months, Boeing applauded them on their ‘Plane Thinking’ concept.

Kudos:

‘The results of Photonics West, the fantastic reception we’ve seen at the booth, the ads, the sell sheets and spec sheets indicate this will be a banner year for us. Thanks again for all your hard work. We’re looking forward to more creative ideas and flawless execution.’ - Carl Crossland, Ph.D, Product Management/Technical Sales

‘A veteran engineer from Boeing Phantom Works, among scientists and engineers and F-125 and F-18 people, held u the sell sheet and said ‘I love this graphic,’ then went on to quote ‘Plane Thinking Amplified’ from memory. Keep up the good work!’ - Martin Seifert, CEO + President, Nufern

These are a few examples of the articles I wrote about Alzheimers for A Place for Mom on the Alzheimers.net website.

I was the lead copywriter at LendingTree for almost 3 years. I developed the brand voice and created lots of effective direct response TV.

Here are some examples of DRTV, social short form video, a recruitment video that was produced in-house (and I am also in), and a concept spot for a potential new brand direction for the company.

Brand identity + Tagline + Collateral

Osiris, a biotech leader in cell-based therapies, planned for multiple transitions as it moved from pure research to consumer sales and sought a fresh brand identity that would not only define it as a legitimate player in the market, but would also remain relative and effective throughout these transitions.

I came up with their tagline: “Smart Medicine. Right Now.” This tagline illustrates exactly what mesenchymal stem cells’ do: they home to the site of injury providing immediate, mediated, one-to-one healing unlike any other natural or synthetic therapy. This tagline also highlights Osiris’ objective of delivering game changing therapies to medicine.

In 2003, Blackstone Medical was a small, privately-held spine device company competing for a place among some of the biggest dogs in the industry: Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Stryker. 

The reality was: Blackstone had smarter, better products.  But in a market where the perception that parity is rampant and FDA-cleared devices signify "me-too-ism," it was difficult for Blackstone to get noticed.

I worked with a great team to lift the Blackstone brand out of obscurity by helping them get specific with their message and big with their voice.  "Breakthrough Thinking" captured the spirit of this tenacious young company by letting surgeons know that there may be "me-too-ism" out there and then there are companies who are actually doing things better.

In fact, our work was so successful it led to the purchase of this little company by orthopedics giant, Orthofix, for $333MM in August of 2006.

The $6.4 billion dollar question.

Anyone who lives in Central Florida is fully aware that DisneyWorld fuels a massive part of their local economy. Orlando wouldn't have nearly the amount of great restaurants, shopping, or upscale amenities if not for this huge tourist attraction. Likewise, St. Petersburg/Clearwater, rated "America's Number One Beach," is also a big tourism destination.

We found that the locals were "irritated" by this influx of traffic to their otherwise quaint city and way of life. Well, too bad. We had to remind them that these so-called pests were responsible for funneling a whopping $6.4 billion into their economy.

Putting a fun spin on this campaign, we acknowledged that sure, the tourists can get tiresome - but they’re also so worth it. Even the tourists themselves found this sensibility entertaining and not at all off-putting. After all, any one of us who travels from time to time knows that we’re not at home, we are all 'tourists.'

Naming + Brand Strategy

“Naming a business is a lot like laying the cornerstone of a building. Once it’s in place, the entire foundation and structure is aligned to that original stone. If it’s off, even just a bit, the rest of the building is off, and the misalignment becomes amplified.”

- Entrepreneur Magazine, “8 Mistakes to Avoid When Naming Your Business.”

CallRingTalk needed a brand name and a look and feel. I acted as creative director and writer, leading an art director through this exercise. The client ended up selecting CallRingTalk.

Web Copy + Social Copy + Launch Blog

Nourish needed new website copy their product lineup as well as for the launch of their new skincare line, Nourish Botanical Beauty.

I wrote new product copy, social copy for their Instagram feed and launched the new Nourish blog.

I have had the great fortune of working with incredible, interesting, fun, and truly good people as clients. And when they say nice things about me, I definitely feel the love. But what makes me happiest is doing the kind of solid, strategic work that helps make them even more successful than they already are.

Late on a Friday back in 2011, a trusted colleague called me up to request that I take on an 18-month project for one of his highly technical clients, an aerospace and defense company. He said there would be a big learning curve and asked if I might be up to the task. I’d be interfacing with marketing people in Connecticut as well as engineers in California. There were a lot of products. And it was a lot to take on.

I assessed the workload over the weekend and I came up with a solution: I just needed a crash course in ‘blowing sh*t up’ (Michael Bay style). So I called up my colleague and agreed to the job. Then I hired a friend of mine who was an engineer at Lockheed Martin. I paid him the following week to spend 10 hours with me drawing pictures and dumbing down all this complex info into digestible parts from which I would at least have a baseline to communicate with EBAD’s engineers.

It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever called me ‘industrious.’ But that’s exactly what my old colleague called me with equal parts joy and admiration in his voice. And it was a word I really liked. I decided I wanted to be industrious from then on.

The client loved the work - it struck the right tone, it was just technical enough but with the right touch of marketing. They barely changed a word of my copy - a rarity under any circumstance. It was 18 months well spent.

And, what do you know: here it is 2020 and the original copy is still there. Have a look.