Case Studies
These are the stories behind the numbers: what the problem was, what I decided, and what actually happened. Including the parts I got wrong, and what it took to fix them.
Fair warning: there's a laundromat, a diner menu and a bribe in here.
I use AI every day and have since 2022.
It doesn't decide what's true, what's interesting, or what I'm allowed to claim.
That part is still the job.
The parts of the job nobody puts on a slide.
Cross-Functional Execution
Branding & Positioning
Judgment & Results
Building demand for something the customer can’t see.
Branding & Positioning
create the strategy
$4.2M in new revenue and a four-point share gain in three quarters.
They Heard You. So Why Didn't Anything Happen?
Everyone hears the safety briefing. Ask 23C to point to the nearest exit and they'll point at the drink cart. The four questions I ask so a message actually gets acted on.
Brand messaging
Read the story
What Happens When Your Brand Crosses a Border.
Taking a U.S. brand into Mexico through Pegaso, Sprint PCS's Mexican wireless partner. What changes when you stop translating a campaign and start building it with the people who know the market.
Cross-border partnership
Read the story
Getting execution out of teams that don’t report to me.
Cross-Functional Execution
coordinate the execution
40 markets. Nobody reported to me. On-time launches went from 70% to 92%.
Six Teams Wanted Six Different Things.
One Page Fixed It.
Retail, sales, creative, PR and the agency each wanted something different, and none of them were wrong. One page settled the story before anyone built a thing: who we're reaching, what they need to believe, and how we'll know it worked.
Cross-functional alignment
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
Fast Runners Drop the Baton Too.
HQ to me, me to 35 regional managers, managers to reps, reps to the customer. Every handoff was a chance to drop the message. One page per handoff, one specific ask, and the field’s answers wrote next week’s page. On-time launches went from 70% to 92%.
Field enablement
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
Three Documents Walk Into a Hotel. Two of Them Are Lying.
A Department of Defense recruiting program in Chicago, with all five military branches under one roof. The rooming list was clean, except for one line: two equally senior officials, and only one presidential suite. Checking for mistakes is the easy part. The real review is asking what people will make of it.
Final review
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
I Couldn't Make Forty Markets Do Anything. So I Bribed Them.
Forty markets, 35 regional managers, and no authority over any of them. How I got them to adopt one playbook anyway, and on-time launches went from 70% to 92%.
Adoption without authority
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
Our Launch Budget Covered the Free Pizza. So I Went to the Phone Makers.
Headquarters funded the network. Store launches got almost nothing. So I stopped treating handset makers like suppliers and started treating them like partners buying access to a room full of ready buyers.
Co-op and partner funding
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
We Planned a Grand Opening Day. We Threw a Six-Week Festival Instead.
I planned a single grand opening day, then threw it out and built six weeks of events, one for each handset partner. The first weekend drew more than 10,000 visits.
Launch activation
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
Deciding which ideas are worth defending to finance, and proving it afterward.
Judgment & Results
prove it worked, or pivot
$1.2M saved, and campaigns out 35% faster.
I Run Every Big Idea Through the Laundry First.
My step between the brainstorm and the build: every idea goes through finance, legal, ops and the field before creative starts. It's how a coverage map we couldn't win on became a campaign that moved market share from 37% to 41%.
Choosing which ideas survive
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
We Spelled Arizona Wrong on Every Page. Everyone Signed Off on It.
Every time our sales piece said Arizona, it said Arizonza. Everyone signed off, the reprint wasn't cheap, and my boss never said a word. The piece underneath became Coverage Where It Counts.
Owning the mistake
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
We Played Rock, Paper, Scissors for the Cab to O’Hare.
At a healthcare agency in Chicago, every sales aid had to clear review before a rep could use it. One miss cost three weeks, and sometimes a cab to O'Hare. The four rules I still use to get it cleared the first time.
MLR review
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Positioning an invisible product
Sports sponsorship
