The ubiquitous Lays Brand had an identity problem - they didn’t have one. Post Covid research showed that our consumer had changed. These consumer only want to maintain relationships with their beloved brands which are rooted in authenticity versus perceived perfection. This insight led to our positioning that you can find complete joy... even when everything isn’t perfect, ie, NO MATTER WHAT.

Unlike any Lays messaging before, there are now ‘intentional imperfections’ throughout the creative like blinking in a photo, rain on a picnic, or decorations falling down during the party... which all communicate our position of authenticity.

Our new framework and Brand Eco system leads all of Lays North America’s communications including marketing, packaging, digitals, partnerships, retail, and activations.

For 2020’s incarnation of Stacy’s Rise Project (for which I was a co-creator in 2019), we made the strategic shift from “Supporting Her” to“Amplify Her”which became our benchmark for all touch-points and tactics moving forward.

Working with rising illustrator Libby VanderPlogg and agency David + Goliath, we incorporated QR Codes directly on the bags which identified all female-founded businesses within a 10 mile radius of the consumer.

This QR Code initiative then went a step further in 2021, when we created the ‘Founded By Her’ Directory which features over 13,000 female founded businesses which be accessed by anyone.

We has an incredible partnership with David + Goliath and you can view just a few of the amazing activations we did in partnership - all with the collective goal of helping as many Female Founders as possible.

Also in 2021 we partnered with Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine for continued awareness and amplification.

Between 2020-22 we mentored 60 female founders and provided business resources to an additional 1,500. During this period we doubled impressions year-over-year reaching 3.3 billion—and our initiative became the marquee activation for Purpose at PepsiCo personally earning me two prestigious PepsiCo Chairman’s Awards.

Ruffles Potato Chips, PepsiCo’s most recent billion dollar brand, was at a crossroads because research indicated that consumers loved the product but did not love the brand - which hadn’t even seen a television campaign in almost a decade.

For this initiative, I assembled a team of culturists, strategists, and design-thinkers to identify a highly influential design target which informed the new Ruffles positioning and visual identity. OWN YOUR RIDGES became our rallying cry and inspired our extra ‘Ridge-y’ VIS ID.

The Ruffles Brand Book and Ecosystem we created now leads all communications including marketing, packaging, digitals, partnerships, retail, and activations.

Working with our in-house team and agency partner Motive, we produced Ruffles first 60 sec spot - Own Your Ridges which aired on Christmas Day 2022.

GT's Living Food has unequivocally dominated the kombucha market, and over the past year, I have had the privilege of collaborating directly with GT to elevate and personify his portfolio in a truly distinctive and unforgettable manner.

Throughout this transformative year, I led a dynamic team of designers, videographers, art directors, and writers, orchestrating the creative process to breathe life into each product in a unique way

After Ruffles became the Official Chip of the NBA, MTN DEW and RUFFLES came together BIG with The Block­— a three day experience in one of Cleveland’s hottest neighborhoods during the 2022 NBA All-Star Weekend.

Our in-house design team led by the incomparable Brandon DeLoach in partnership with Motive agency built The Block as a hub to celebrate our Ruffles fans with all-things basketball, music and culture both on and off the court. Combining the two brand’s (complicated) visual systems while giving a nod to Cleveland’s rich history proved to be a huge success by creating a dynamic energy throughout the space.

Some of the biggest names in sports, culture and gaming took part in experiencing The Block including live streaming, performances and SNACKS!

This event won a prestigious ‘EX AWARD’ from Event Marketer for Best Use of Event for Content.

I was selected to design the identity for the 40th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards. Creating an overall consistency for the Emmy brand, I applied my methodology to all graphic elements of the show.

Celebrating 40 years of Daytime—the 40th anniversary stone of the ‘Ruby' was embraced in concept, color, lighting, and texture as a graphic device in all elements including room decor, set design, lighting, on-screen graphics, and printed materials. Additionally, I designed a classic-yet-contemporary type treatment for the logo that embraced old-Hollywood deco-styling with clean modern type.

Future-proofing PepsiCo Food’s businesses required significant growth in Better For You (BFY) categories with prominent retail support and a more nuanced approach to standing out, and creating impactful connection both direct-to-consumer and at retail.

For this, we focused on a sustainability story via regenerative agriculture practices, and innovating compostable-packaging. PepsiCo’s in-house design team, Chase Design and RG/A worked together to bring fresh vibrancy to the experience through a thoughtful positioning, visual expression and new packaging design celebrating the planet and the consumer—all in synergy with our audience.

‘Off The Eaten Path’ was created as PepsiCo’s first and only sustainable brand. Since its 2018 release it is the most successful launch to date delivering 167% higher than already aggressive projections and successfully unlocked the Whole Foods partnership as a key retailer.

Design and brand accolades include Graphis Design Annual, Red Dot Award and Creativity International.

Smartfood, America’s #1 selling popcorn, hadn’t had a brand identity refresh in 25 years. The brief was simple: Make the brand more modern but don’t lose a single customer… and we don’t have a budget to outsource to a traditional agency.

With my my incredible in-house team led once again by Brandon DeLoach, we applied my proprietary brand building methodology to develop Smartfood’s new brand eco system. The new positioning and visual expression was based on a highly aspirational Gen Z design target called the Smart Kids.

The result: We did not lose a single customer. We not only maintained our proud position as America’s #1 Popcorn we grew marketshare in this very competitive category. Plus, our in-house execution cost 80% less than a traditional agency, was 15 weeks faster to market.

Working with The Marketing Arm we developed a ‘Smart’ campaign that consisted of four :15 sec spots based on the new positioning. In addition to developing the new brand strategy and vision, we created the following elements:

· Brand Identity + Brand Book

· Package Design

· Photo Library

· Advertising Campaigns

· Brand Activations

Launched in 1991, SunChips was a pioneer brand that broke ground in areas of sustainability. What’s more, for more than 30 years, SunChips was one of PepsiCo/FLNA’s most beloved ‘Better For You’ brands. Though wildly successful, thirty years later sales had matured to a somewhat flat year-over-year state.

The goal was to create excitement, modernity, and renewed interest in the brand in order to create growth within a now-competitive space. For this, our creative team at PepsiCo, Clark McDowall and Chase Design leaned into “Tribe Marketing Principals” and identified an influencer Tribe called ‘Label Breakers’ to lead a brand new positioning called Be Your Own Wave.

This positioning focused on embracing one’s individuality, and the program she built to support this positioning grew the $750 million dollar brand over 3% (over $22 million dollars) in its first year.

In the summer of 2022 we produced a :30 spot with many of our real life ‘Label Breakers’ by partnering with The Marketing Arm.

Elements from the re-positioning included:

· Brand Strategy

· Brand Book

· VIS ID

· Television Advertising

· Digitals including Social Content

After the success of the Ruffles re-brand we commissioned famed sneaker creator, The Shoe Surgeon, to create 20 limited edition custom pairs of sneakers for the Ruffles Sneaker Drop during the NBA All-Star Game. During the All-Star event, Ruffles premiered their first spot in over a decade and it featured Anthony Davis. The spot closes with an epic medieval knight scene...and reveals Anthony wearing our custom medieval style sneakers.

The brief was simple - design a shoe so cool that our design target would covet in order to create a buzz-worthy activation delivering our visual language. In other words, build brand love with Sneakerheads.

On the first day the website was live we received 250,000 entries to win the sneaker drop. The activation was picked up by HypeBeast, Complex and garnered 4.2 billion impressions overall.

Stacy’s Pita Chips is PepsiCo’s only female founded brand. And after learning that only 2% of VC investment goes to female founded businesses in the US, I was proud to co-found the Stacy’s Rise Project in 2019—in an effort to make a real change for female founders.

Stacy’s Rise Project seeks to address the entrepreneur gap by meaningfully supporting female founders.

We created a 360° messaging system from strategy to marketing to tactical elements including socials, video content, and award-winning bag designs depicting the female founders journey when driving towards success.

We identified six unique phases of this journey: Inspiration, Courage, Grit, Nourishment, Success and Community which supported the launch of the 2019 Rise Project during Women’s History Month. Each of these phases was interpreted by a different rising female artist which we developed, nurtured and ultimately won over 20 international design awards including Red Dot, Graphis, Pentaward and ADC. This project has continues with year-over-year growth each year since its inception.

Milk Jar Cookies, the beloved bakery on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles was the originator of the ‘Big Cookie’ craze back in 2013, but they were feeling the heat as a few East coast cookie competitors beginning to invade their West Coast territory.

We repositioned the brand around ‘Spreading Kindness’ and the belief that a cookie can be a radiating force for this kindness. The new positioning and identity leans into their West Coast heritage by taking inspiration from architecture and signage of the 50’s and 60’s in Los Angles but with a touch of milky goodness in the logomark.

With their new positioning and visual expression in hand, Milk Jar Cookies will be opening new stores and begin franchising at the end of 2022.

Elements from the positioning and visual expression include:

· Consumer + Competitive Research

· Brand Positioning

· Brand Identity

· Package Design

· Tone, Voice + Tagline

· In-store / Interior Design

· All Messaging + Brand Guidelines

Inside the walls of PepsiCo, IMAG!NE was the little brand that could. Created by parents wanting to give their kids a healthier snack, the brand was built with a mission of ‘Fueling the free thinkers of tomorrow’.

Working with our in-house team and Chase Design, we created a visual expression is highly imaginative through the use of youth inspired cut paper, bespoke fonts, and a lot of free-thinking and creativity.

Elements from the positioning and visual expression include:

· Design Target + Positioning

· Brand Identity · Package Design

· Photo-library

· Social Media

· Visual Expression

· In-store Display + Signage

· Website

· Brand Book

After the successful launch of the Let’s Move platform, Michelle Obama needed two more equally compelling platforms as part of her First lady duties.

While working with the ‘White House’ agency of record, I created the visual identities for the two remaining platform identities - Joining Forces and Reach Higher. By applying humanity to the brands with the goal of showing that this administration is doing things differently than previous administrations.

Joining Forces - Provided Support for our Service Members, Veterans, and their Families Joining Forces works hand in hand with the public and private sectors to ensure that service members, veterans, and their families have the tools they need to succeed throughout their lives.

The Reach Higher initiative is the First Lady’s effort to inspire every student in America to take charge of their future by completing their education past high school, whether at a professional training program, a community college, or a four-year college or university.

Growing from a on-line babysitter-placement firm to a full service caregiver support, Care.com required a new identity that expresses their expanded service offerings. I was asked to create a brand that connects emotionally to their broad consumer base. I worked directly with Sheila Marcelo and her team at Care.com to express a new positioning with a new tagline, new logo and complete visual identity system and photo library.

Trial Runners is a Contract Research Organization that are experts on ophthalmology-based clinical trial located in the heart of North Dakota. With their human, hands on approach to ophthalmology research they wanted their brand to represent the personalized experience they give to their clients and patients. My team and I provided a clear strategic direction for Trial Runners as well as creating an identity that is fresh and inspiring. I hand painted the logo to form the iris of the eye.

Aegis, a brand known for bringing health care innovations to market, was well-positioned to expand their overall offering but required a stronger brand idea and identity that spoke to direction, strength, innovation, and importantly—inventiveness. For this I created the "Origami A" as their new logo and mark. The "A" is suggestive of a mountain for strength, a true-north arrow for direction, and the origami design suggests innovation and inventiveness. I also created an animated :30 brand video that announced the new Aegis brand and positioning.

With its recent acquisition of specialty coffee label Alterra, Mars Inc required a mass-market strategy and creative positioning that maintained an image of small craft coffee production. Honesty and quality is the visual approach to this brand concept of “hardworking coffee”. With the help of illustrator Nate Williams, over 40 different designs were created by using bold colors, deliberate and iconic imagery to tell the brand story.