STRATEGY

Success takes more than creativity. I strategize brand success through consumer research, innovation, sales analysis, and various methods of brand storytelling.

EVOLVING BRAND STRATEGY & IDENTITY

Victorian Trading Company is in a unique position as cultural and consumer trends embrace all things romantic, quaint, and 19th century. In the role of Creative Director, I identified a window of opportunity to expand our relevance in the market by reinvigorating our image while staying true to the brand ethos. The result is an updated brand presentation that simultaneously attracts a wider audience, embraces our current customer, and sets the brand up for a more sustainable future. We soft launched this updated brand approach on social media and saw the following results in the first ninety days: accounts reached +251%, accounts engaged +231%, engagement of men +4%, and a significant shift toward a younger engaged audience.

GRAPHICS GLOBAL STRATEGY

To kick off each design year, Hanesbrand Inc. defines a global strategy. This strategy spans the entire year and includes all brands (Hanes, Champion, C9, etc.), all apparel categories, and all divisions.  As the Sr. Manager of Creative Design, I developed the global strategy for graphics across the entire company. This is an assortment of slides from those presentations, tracking trends within graphics, identifying influencer ideas, and detailing global graphic trend categories to guide development for the next year.

BRAND LANDSCAPE STUDY

Before hiring me as the Womenswear Design Director, Baldwin Denim & Collections retained me as a consultant to help focus their brand identity.  As an initial exercise, I took the four most-used words in their existing brand storytelling (GRIT, GRACE, MODERN, HERITAGE) and created this axis with brand competitors. The graph acted as a truth-teller and tool for focusing brand message and positioning.

DENIM RX

While Trend Manager for Rock & Republic I saw an opportunity at the retailer to increase sales with a specialty line of denim, incorporating slimming technology. I spearheaded the project, creating the name, logo, ticketing, copy, silhouettes, and all design details. This initial presentation booklet was the launchpad for a collection that gained our brand additional floorspace, an additional 50k units in the first season, and five years later has become the flagship product for Rock & Republic at retail.

SALES ANALYSIS

When I was hired by Hanes to manage graphic art for all divisions, the department was completely isolated from sales results and financial goals.  In order to better guide departmental decisions and increase sales, I created monthly sales recaps analyzing sales data from the perspective of sell-thru, total sales, sales by graphic subject, sales by graphic placement, and sales by graphic technique. This allowed the artists to design into success and gave our retailers confidence, which resulted in a higher adoption rate of graphic tees.

CUSTOMER SURVEY RESULTS

This was another project I developed as Sr. Brand Manager at Hanes. I felt the artists were too isolated from sales results, customer feedback, and other methods of analysis to make informed artistic decisions. Previously, I worked for VF Corp. which taught me the value of research and consumer feedback.  I used my knowledge from VF Corp of quantitative & qualitative research and consumer engagement to develop a kidswear focused graphic design survey and interpret the results. This information was used internally to inform artistic decisions, as well as to gain the trust of retailers.