Worked as Creative Director/Sr. Art Director at Birmingham start-up, The Internet Factory/Bowne Internet Solutions. Managed and mentored a staff of interactive designers, print designers, production, specialists, and information architects. Designed and oversaw the development of key online branding campaigns for clients including Cadillac, Buick, Proctor and Gamble, Kmart and Crain Communications.

Recruited to Borders Online, where I managed the day-to-day operations of Borders online, as well as other strategic initiatives including yearly global commerce and visual redesigns. Designed, developed and deployed Title Sleuth, to over 200 stores; a national in-store search initiative for Borders stores. Generate integrated ideas and promotions for Borders stores and web to develop and deploy.

April 2000-02′: Sr. Creative Director JWT Digital

Led the digital creative team in the design and development of fordvehicles.com and myford.com sites. Developed a group of information architects and organized core teams of designers, writers and art directors for the digital group.

2002-06’ – Creative Director/Art Director Brand Experience

Develop campaigns for non-traditional projects such as Ford Racing, Race for a Cure, Ford events and alliances, golf and brand experience. Execute in TV, print, web, events and contact. Integrate Ford vehicles into existing media and TV properties such as American Idol and ER to develop synergistic stories between Ford and their partners. Develop branded campaigns for Ford celebrity partners such as Toby Keith, Women of ER, Phil Mickelson and Ford Racing drivers.

April 2006 – March 2007  – SVP, Creative Director, Campbell-Ewald

• Managed Chevy Events and Promotions; which included Chevy Events And Chevy Sports Alliances.
• Successfully brought three major Chevy National sales events to market online, in print, TV, and at the dealership.
• Launched several successful online campaigns for Major League Baseball and NASCAR that drove consumers back to Chevy.com.
• Developed MLB.com “Most Dependable Player” Promotion for the Chevy Silverado launch, “Win Dale Jr’s Silverado.com” Promotion to sustain interest in Chevy Silverado and a Tony Stewart Tahoe online promotion to further connect Chevy Drivers to Chevy vehicles off the track.
• Helped Chevy own major sporting events such as the All Star Game, World Series and Daytona 500 with a huge Chevy footprint and integrated contact executions around those cities.

Sumo Sweet was founded in 2007.  First projects included a campaign for Citizens State Bank. This medium-sized community bank was looking for a campaign to keep local customers from going to local credit unions and bigger box banks.  We created the Keep it Local campaign for them, featuring real, aspirational customers, using the banks products and services as advertising in their branches.

We also launched a youth banking campaign for the branch, which included a humorous series of youth posters, content and merchandise communicating “don’t buy the hype” to kids who think the mall or credit card companies have their best interest in mind.

Clients during this time also included a global redesign for Mulligan Home Improvement, the Drivers Advantage, and “Princess”, a print campaign for the Judson Center – a local non-profit assisting children, families and individuals in need.

This was the year for package design. Sumo Sweet designed a series of four top-level product labels for The Armadillo Group. The labels represent their four main lines of products; floor cleaners, floor maintainers, floor strippers and performance products. The labels were designed in a clean, simple and easy to reproduce format that was necessary to create for the variety of product package sizes and solutions available. Our team also designed the new logo for the concentrated cleaning line, as well as put together some very large format trade graphics for The Armadillo Group road show.

Planned Parenthood was also looking for a series of catchy outdoor boards and patient cards.  We wrote some smart, provocative headlines for these cards that became popular to collect in Ann Arbor and other Planned Parenthood locations.

It was joyful to be able to get so much creative energy out designing wonderful illustrations for Michigan Habitat for Humanity, Timonthy’s Glove, and create information graphics for Care Solutions USA.

In 2011, the Marketing Director from Extra Credit Union contacted me to develop their college banking program. I had some experience doing this for Citizen’s State Bank. The program targets college and high school students transitioning from high school banking accounts. I designed and developed the name of the program as well as the branding, identity and print collateral for the new program, which is called “Futurity”.

The bulk of my time this year was spent rebranding a wonderfully innovative software company called i-9 Advantage™. I am still working on projects for this group. This was a designers dream to not only be able to be able to develop the creative strategy with the client, but to also be able to re-design all their print collateral and launch a new site for this client.

Project included creative strategy, new identity for the main brand and umbrella products, as well as delightfully colorful illustrations and print materials for marketing and trade shows.