PUMA Global Campaign
Messaging Work: See the Game Like We Do
This was Puma’s first global campaign in over 10 years. It was also my first global campaign and one of very few copywriters on the project. Enter: Baptism by Fire.
The scope was enormous. All the pieces rested on a piece of messaging, something to set up their Brand Truth [sic]: “FOREVER FASTER,” which was a real head scratcher.
The insight at the center of the creative concept: that Puma allows athletes to see the game differently. The line we kept going back to was something like “when you’re Fast, the game moves slower the ball looks bigger.”
I worked on the team that generated the line that imbues “FOREVER FASTER” with meaning.
“See The Game Like We Do.” It is an invitation to fans, athletes, and countrymen alike, to join the merry band of Puma-clad athletes. And it was remarkably effective; it is the most successful campaign (numbers wise and aesthetically) that the brand has ever had.
Link to ︎ Post
Campaign Video(s)
Because the campaign messaging invited viewers to sit in the driver’s seat, the film needed to feel visceral.
Again, the scope was huge, the team shot 14 internationally renowned atheltes in their native environments over the course of 6 exhausting months.
The flim had many, many variations before filming began, which I scripted and concepted. Then while the team was running around the world, I was at home scripting and rescripting and rescripting storyboards to reflect the shots we were actually able to capture in the microscopic time windows we had to shoot.
In the end it was the also the brand’s most successful campaign film of all time, with 14 million views within 5 hours of release. The many variations of the film will be airing during the 2024 European Championship, The Copa America Championship and The Olympics, as well as general coverage during sporting events.
MATTE Editorial (writing and art direction)
“Why isn’t it hitting?”
As someone who grew up among the eldest Gen Z’s, I have always felt that I occupy a unique vantage point--to liase across the rubicon.
The piece muses about the impact streaming has on our collective taste, and ways to reclaim lost ground.
︎ to piece
Bose - Sound is Power Series
Bose is putting together an avengers-esque group of athletes. To announce new members, we created these 30s spots (+cutdowns) that delve deeper into each athlete’s specific relationship to sound.
Any imagery with a beautiful film grain is courtesy of generous and brilliant photographer/Art Director Lewy Westhoff @dingusdingus
Dame Lillard
Music means more to Dame Lillard than most athletes, as he also moonlights as a very legit rapper named Dame Dolla.
I concepted and wrote the script for this piece, trying to elucidate this special relationship he has with music: as both motivation pushing him forward and the muse he follows.
Link to ︎ Post
Joe Burrow
The client wanted Burrow’s spot to be about his robust personality. However, talent would not be ‘acting’ in the piece. The creative hurdle, then, was to concept and execute a piece that was not about Joe’s right arm, in which he wouldn’t act, with only four hours of availability.
Enter: Joe’s Fashion Sense.
The spot winks at NFL Hype Reels, with roving-rotating camera moves and three distinct lighting designs. But instead of yards and TDs as the subject, it was Joe deciding what outfit to wear on opening day.
Link to ︎ Post
Coco Gauff
The concept behind Coco’s spot is rhythm. What little narrative that remained after the n-teenth round of feedback-con-ritual-sacrifice, finds Coco in a battle against the self, playing out of tune against a ball machine.
As a tennis player, there’s no sound more familiar than the metronomic *whirr-thud-pop* of a ball machine session; we played with the sound design, offsetting that metronome with a sneaker squeak, clash of the net. In comes Bose QCEII(earbuds) and the winter sensation of 2022, courtesy of Lil Uzi Vert, replete with snares and bass, to put Coco back on track.
Link to ︎ Post
Stellantis-Ram
The Tomorrows After
This is a spec piece I did because I just love truck commercials.
Truck drivers tend to be wary of change, especially when that change involves their truck. The script therefore takes a hopeful, proud perspective, leaning into the most foundational attribute of any truck lover’s truck: utility. The ‘electric’ of it all comes in soft, as a natural extension of utility, a means by which a truck owner can work harder, better and longer.
Genesis
Paid social? more like billboard of the instagram era. I did these for Genesis USA.
Genesis House
Brand Book
Hyundai motor’s luxury subsidiary, Genesis, opened an ultra-haute space in the Meatpacking District a few years ago. The space is home to a Michelin star restaurant, a one-of-its kind enormous 180 immersive LED screen, showroom, tea room and a gargantuan high-line terrace. They host fashion events, robotics and art installations, and lots of other stuff. All this is great, but has proved tricky to weave into a single brand identity.
Based on the very few (and rigid) Genesis Global design principles established in the relatively new brand (2014) I created a brand identity, including all the usual trimmings: core principles, tone of voice and guides for application across platforms and communications.
Social Writing
I also write all the copy for their instagram.
(some if not most of it is butchered by their brand team but whaddyagonnado)
︎
Stella Artois
Let’s do dinner
A stately dinner party was to be the culmination of the Stella Artois 2022-23, Let’s do dinner campaign.
Over the course of nearly a year and approximately 17,000 pitches, we developed an experiential concept, that ‘brought’ the campaign ‘to life,’ with an enormous celebrity dinner purposed at inspiring people to connect over food (again).
Beyond experiential, we concepted invite seeding kits, collaborating with the Brooklyn legends at Frankie457; we also concepted and executed a content piece around Ludacris, representing the event through his POV.
Stair Master Perennial
SMP is a project my brother and I started a few years ago. We were frusturated with the music streaming paradigm, feeling cloistered by our algorythims, who had us too figured out.
We wanted short, concept-driven mixtapes from friends, with notes attached.
Site
SMP is a project my brother and I started a few years ago. We were frusturated with the music streaming paradigm, feeling cloistered by our algorythims, who had us too figured out.
We wanted short, concept-driven mixtapes from friends, with notes attached.
Site
The Paragone and the Formation of The Artist-Genuis Myth
Published in Babel: Journal of Early Modern Studies. 2020.
This essay makes a geneaogcial argument: key characteristics of the modern Artist Genuis Myth may have stemmed from the Paragone, a historical debate waged in Renaissance Italy.
Essay starts on page 43.
La Ville Oublieé - Novel Excerpt, 2021
My first novel, set in 1965 and 2014, explores the philosophical and historical relationship between means and ends, through the lens of small town America in the throes of the opioid crisis. The book is a work of fantastic realism, or perhaps maximalism, which are genres that lend themselves well to the underpinning philosophical examination of causality, at the book’s core. I created two characters raised on opposite side of the tracks and describe, in fragmented narrative, how they become involved in an ancient conspiracy at the town’s heart. In this storyline, a history is revealed and a thesis is presented on genealogical inequity, as it pertains to systems of power and governance.
My first novel, set in 1965 and 2014, explores the philosophical and historical relationship between means and ends, through the lens of small town America in the throes of the opioid crisis. The book is a work of fantastic realism, or perhaps maximalism, which are genres that lend themselves well to the underpinning philosophical examination of causality, at the book’s core. I created two characters raised on opposite side of the tracks and describe, in fragmented narrative, how they become involved in an ancient conspiracy at the town’s heart. In this storyline, a history is revealed and a thesis is presented on genealogical inequity, as it pertains to systems of power and governance.
The Space Between - Writer, 2018
Zine, 2018 Published by Fathom Journal
Growing up, my brother and I used to make ski films every winter. It was ritualistic; a tug-and-pull that kept our spirits, and toes, warm in the bitter cold temperatures spanning from November to March. But as time passed, the local mountain tops too quickly faded to urban skylines, and a four hour time difference soon stood between us instead of a short line for the chair lift.
This is simply our little attempt to recover a time in our lives we took for granted. This, while being a series of photographs from a summer in New York City and an essay of sorts from a camp counselor’s lodge in Northern Vermont, is our attempt to sever the space between.
Zine, 2018 Published by Fathom Journal
Growing up, my brother and I used to make ski films every winter. It was ritualistic; a tug-and-pull that kept our spirits, and toes, warm in the bitter cold temperatures spanning from November to March. But as time passed, the local mountain tops too quickly faded to urban skylines, and a four hour time difference soon stood between us instead of a short line for the chair lift.
This is simply our little attempt to recover a time in our lives we took for granted. This, while being a series of photographs from a summer in New York City and an essay of sorts from a camp counselor’s lodge in Northern Vermont, is our attempt to sever the space between.
Excerpt from La Ville Oublieé- Novel, 2021
Chapter 5:
Late Autumn. Afternoons were hotter than the morning, sweaters came off, ties loosened. A light breeze blew the fastidiously swept leaves around various greens, as students bustled to their last classes of the day, along narrow pathways connecting the19th century brick buildings to new-age, glass monstrosities, paid for by generous alumni.
There was a buzz in the air, a collective trust that the dark months might not come this year. Maybe every day would be like these fall afternoons, where the sun warmed bright orange leaves into an inferno of color, swirling around shins and up in the trees that stood organically placed on the lawns in front of deep-red brick buildings with white window frames.
A bell rang. The general pace quickened. A cry hung in the air. Shrieks of laughter at the prospect of last-period and then lounging on the green with sleeves rolled up and music playing and all the blue sport coats haphazardly strewn about. Heads lying in the laps of smiling co-eds, so happy to publicly display their affection, to feel the weight of hands around waists and on thighs covered in khaki or up plaid skirts, a promise of greater pleasures to come, jubilant conversation, flutter-ing up toward the infinite blue sky.
Lane always got to E period early because he had D period off and he normally spent his free time alone in the library. All his friends had C period off. They were wont to throw balls and wrestle in the quad, in the fall, smelling ripe for D and E, with grass stained pants. He’d been se-cretly happy to get D period off. When his friends had found out, they’d treated him like a piece of china, as if he’d just lost an uncle to a random house fire set by a rogue pyromaniac on spree. Free time in high school was synonymous with performance, whatever performance aligned with your caste. It felt like free time really amounted to a pedestal. Boys who were temperamentally averse to theatre made their stage there on the green, flexing and huffing for passing girls, pawing at the lush turf with soiled Nike-hooves. This is not to say that Lane was not athletic. He was. But Lane was always a bit embarrassed by fall free period antics. Maybe it was because he was a reader, and thereby had access to a type of reserved 3rd person perspective only available to those who’ve consumed so many narrative descriptions. Or maybe it was because he was a writer, and he could imagine how the scene would be depicted: boyish and insecure, awkward attempts at recognition.
Chapter 5:
Late Autumn. Afternoons were hotter than the morning, sweaters came off, ties loosened. A light breeze blew the fastidiously swept leaves around various greens, as students bustled to their last classes of the day, along narrow pathways connecting the19th century brick buildings to new-age, glass monstrosities, paid for by generous alumni.
There was a buzz in the air, a collective trust that the dark months might not come this year. Maybe every day would be like these fall afternoons, where the sun warmed bright orange leaves into an inferno of color, swirling around shins and up in the trees that stood organically placed on the lawns in front of deep-red brick buildings with white window frames.
A bell rang. The general pace quickened. A cry hung in the air. Shrieks of laughter at the prospect of last-period and then lounging on the green with sleeves rolled up and music playing and all the blue sport coats haphazardly strewn about. Heads lying in the laps of smiling co-eds, so happy to publicly display their affection, to feel the weight of hands around waists and on thighs covered in khaki or up plaid skirts, a promise of greater pleasures to come, jubilant conversation, flutter-ing up toward the infinite blue sky.
Lane always got to E period early because he had D period off and he normally spent his free time alone in the library. All his friends had C period off. They were wont to throw balls and wrestle in the quad, in the fall, smelling ripe for D and E, with grass stained pants. He’d been se-cretly happy to get D period off. When his friends had found out, they’d treated him like a piece of china, as if he’d just lost an uncle to a random house fire set by a rogue pyromaniac on spree. Free time in high school was synonymous with performance, whatever performance aligned with your caste. It felt like free time really amounted to a pedestal. Boys who were temperamentally averse to theatre made their stage there on the green, flexing and huffing for passing girls, pawing at the lush turf with soiled Nike-hooves. This is not to say that Lane was not athletic. He was. But Lane was always a bit embarrassed by fall free period antics. Maybe it was because he was a reader, and thereby had access to a type of reserved 3rd person perspective only available to those who’ve consumed so many narrative descriptions. Or maybe it was because he was a writer, and he could imagine how the scene would be depicted: boyish and insecure, awkward attempts at recognition.
The Space Between - Zine, 2018
On a muggy August morning my brother and I were sandwiched into the 5 train, downtown-bound. Stops came and went and, despite interminable construction, our journey lurched forward. And now,
sitting at my desk, working away at an unevenly cut grapefruit, I think back on our conversation, the other patrons, the setting, our faces, looks being cast our way. Desperately, I try to recreate a thought-strand that came over me that morning, of which I was unable to think clearly over the din of the train, in the presence of that work-bound peloton. I suppose I had grown used to the type of thinking typical to a summer spent variously in the foothills of Vermont and at our family’s small house in the islands of Lake Champlain. Though the noise shook me into a delirium of awareness, my mind became more cognizant of the multiplicity of strands that had always been there, which were all at once taught.
I felt more susceptible, more malleable, more penetrable than, I suspect, many of my co-habitants, Jeb included, as if this damning vision, this crushing immobility, had opened a new understanding of the innate oneness of everyone in the train. Although at the time this was quite frustrating, I now realize I may have stood at a privileged place, albeit hazardous, to come to some interesting conclusions. I think I was thinking about love and sacrifice; spurred by the ostensible dynamics of New York’s public transportation—each person in their seat, engrossed in whatever media best distracts them from the ostensible despondence out of which they try to carve a sliver of light which might cover their cowering existences.
Earlier, I had been reading Simone Weil’s work on malheur mère and I was struck by that blind mechanism which had done so much for some and so little for others, yet left them all equal access to a subjective experience of human happiness, if only they were to take hold of it. What follows is your image, your first-person account, which you can strap to the main narrative: a seriously tender boy unwittingly receives an inhale of factory smoke, harsh on his pink lungs, and after a few moments of real anguish, he exhales. Please do not mistake me for the flower, and please do not cry disanalogy, but, re-tether your mind to the fact of the matter.
And as I looked at a small old man clutching a fistful of flowers, I began to dream. Tumbling down through the mysterious channels of my inattentiveness I came suddenly upon the same old man, and now, with a resigned and regal passion, he spoke.
“And here is an ode to flowers laid on a grave, doomed to wilt in perfect synchrony with the corpse rotting six feet below. Who are you? You brave and beautiful thing. I love you. Where have you come from? From where have you amassed the bravery to be beautiful in this place, full of the dead, or to commit your life to dying alongside the dead, in a hushed solidarity? Oh, yes, I love you endlessly, and after ends meet ends my love for you will sift abstractly through the space you once inhabited. For you are love for its own sake.”
“You are a love which exists to be sold to demonstrate the hope that one’s love might do that very thing—sift abstractly to the beloved, I mean. You are grown by an entity who prostitutes your love thus, who cares not for you, but takes advantage of the love which you selflessly give to the world, expecting nothing in return. Fostered in that indignation, that greed, that merchant’s driving force, which whispers gently in his ear, live, you became love purest. You became love that passes through the distance we ourselves cannot not traverse. Sentimentality is only a love which is felt passing by—caught, as it searches for its beloved. And you feel it at some stage in its perilous journey, unshelled, uncloaked, vulnerable.”
The man now began to weep softly into his handkerchief. He composed himself and looked up at me with renewed sureness, and carried on in a louder tone.
“And sometimes, when love is not easy to find—because maybe it was poorly directed from its onset—it will look and look, and its residual effervescence, following always in its wake, will grace the hearts of all those it encounters along its way. Maybe when the love you feel most strongly strikes with its strength, that love is meant for you, and has not gone a long distance. And maybe when love is harder to discern from hate, from jealousy, from lust, it has travelled a long way, and has been pared down from all those whom it graced on its long journey.”
“But, still, it finds its way to you, a glimmer of something it once was, what it was intended to be. When you feel this love, the love of the flower you see on a grave, who is looking for its beloved and not for you, you can take it as a smaller love, or you can let it permeate your being, and flow endlessly through you, to feed a love within you, that can grow immeasurably. But, ultimately, be grateful to those flowers laid down to represent this love, the passionate love who lives only to transmit or represent this love, who dies a martyr of the one true cause that brightens any human life.”
Coming back into the light of the present moment, I felt the damp air of the train give way to the hissing sound which trumpeted my exit from the tube. And time was perverted as I took the inaugural step over the crack between the train and the platform, as my foot dangled loosely over that indeterminate space, and I thought again of the old man, who had remained on the train. But fighting all premonition, I pushed forward into the crowd, remembering the sentiment that he had helped me find that morning, amidst the dirt and all the screens, thinking always.
On a muggy August morning my brother and I were sandwiched into the 5 train, downtown-bound. Stops came and went and, despite interminable construction, our journey lurched forward. And now,
sitting at my desk, working away at an unevenly cut grapefruit, I think back on our conversation, the other patrons, the setting, our faces, looks being cast our way. Desperately, I try to recreate a thought-strand that came over me that morning, of which I was unable to think clearly over the din of the train, in the presence of that work-bound peloton. I suppose I had grown used to the type of thinking typical to a summer spent variously in the foothills of Vermont and at our family’s small house in the islands of Lake Champlain. Though the noise shook me into a delirium of awareness, my mind became more cognizant of the multiplicity of strands that had always been there, which were all at once taught.
I felt more susceptible, more malleable, more penetrable than, I suspect, many of my co-habitants, Jeb included, as if this damning vision, this crushing immobility, had opened a new understanding of the innate oneness of everyone in the train. Although at the time this was quite frustrating, I now realize I may have stood at a privileged place, albeit hazardous, to come to some interesting conclusions. I think I was thinking about love and sacrifice; spurred by the ostensible dynamics of New York’s public transportation—each person in their seat, engrossed in whatever media best distracts them from the ostensible despondence out of which they try to carve a sliver of light which might cover their cowering existences.
Earlier, I had been reading Simone Weil’s work on malheur mère and I was struck by that blind mechanism which had done so much for some and so little for others, yet left them all equal access to a subjective experience of human happiness, if only they were to take hold of it. What follows is your image, your first-person account, which you can strap to the main narrative: a seriously tender boy unwittingly receives an inhale of factory smoke, harsh on his pink lungs, and after a few moments of real anguish, he exhales. Please do not mistake me for the flower, and please do not cry disanalogy, but, re-tether your mind to the fact of the matter.
And as I looked at a small old man clutching a fistful of flowers, I began to dream. Tumbling down through the mysterious channels of my inattentiveness I came suddenly upon the same old man, and now, with a resigned and regal passion, he spoke.
“And here is an ode to flowers laid on a grave, doomed to wilt in perfect synchrony with the corpse rotting six feet below. Who are you? You brave and beautiful thing. I love you. Where have you come from? From where have you amassed the bravery to be beautiful in this place, full of the dead, or to commit your life to dying alongside the dead, in a hushed solidarity? Oh, yes, I love you endlessly, and after ends meet ends my love for you will sift abstractly through the space you once inhabited. For you are love for its own sake.”
“You are a love which exists to be sold to demonstrate the hope that one’s love might do that very thing—sift abstractly to the beloved, I mean. You are grown by an entity who prostitutes your love thus, who cares not for you, but takes advantage of the love which you selflessly give to the world, expecting nothing in return. Fostered in that indignation, that greed, that merchant’s driving force, which whispers gently in his ear, live, you became love purest. You became love that passes through the distance we ourselves cannot not traverse. Sentimentality is only a love which is felt passing by—caught, as it searches for its beloved. And you feel it at some stage in its perilous journey, unshelled, uncloaked, vulnerable.”
The man now began to weep softly into his handkerchief. He composed himself and looked up at me with renewed sureness, and carried on in a louder tone.
“And sometimes, when love is not easy to find—because maybe it was poorly directed from its onset—it will look and look, and its residual effervescence, following always in its wake, will grace the hearts of all those it encounters along its way. Maybe when the love you feel most strongly strikes with its strength, that love is meant for you, and has not gone a long distance. And maybe when love is harder to discern from hate, from jealousy, from lust, it has travelled a long way, and has been pared down from all those whom it graced on its long journey.”
“But, still, it finds its way to you, a glimmer of something it once was, what it was intended to be. When you feel this love, the love of the flower you see on a grave, who is looking for its beloved and not for you, you can take it as a smaller love, or you can let it permeate your being, and flow endlessly through you, to feed a love within you, that can grow immeasurably. But, ultimately, be grateful to those flowers laid down to represent this love, the passionate love who lives only to transmit or represent this love, who dies a martyr of the one true cause that brightens any human life.”
Coming back into the light of the present moment, I felt the damp air of the train give way to the hissing sound which trumpeted my exit from the tube. And time was perverted as I took the inaugural step over the crack between the train and the platform, as my foot dangled loosely over that indeterminate space, and I thought again of the old man, who had remained on the train. But fighting all premonition, I pushed forward into the crowd, remembering the sentiment that he had helped me find that morning, amidst the dirt and all the screens, thinking always.