Now I'm here for Generative AI.

Over twenty-five years leading creative for M&M'S, Toyota, SharkNinja, and dozens of other brands. I have gone from writing Jose Cuervo's first website to writing a master's thesis on how generative AI is changing creative concept development.

Where I've been.

Welcome to Cuervo

◀▶http://www.cuervo.com/

2000–2005DraftDigital

Web 1.0

Jose Cuervo · Verizon

Wrote Jose Cuervo's first website, a CD-ROM history of the brand, and the digital campaign that launched CuervoNation. Then Verizon. Every new phone was being shipped with a CD-ROM manual nobody could follow, so I rewrote it until people could answer their own questions instead of calling. Call-center volume dropped 10%.

2005–2012Atmosphere BBDO · Deutsch · G2 Interactive

Web 2.0

M&M'S · Skittles · Tylenol · E*TRADE · Target

Interactive work for Tylenol, E*TRADE, and Target. Launches for Dark Chocolate M&M'S, Wild Cherry M&M'S and Chocolate Skittles, each built to get a new flavor into the cart. And I was the creative director who put M&M'S on Twitter for the first time by giving Ms. Green an account of her own. Three new flavors on shelves, and ushering M&M'S and Ms. Green into a new era.

2012–2018Saatchi & Saatchi

Programmatic

Toyota

Toyota's dealers needed test drives from an audience that skipped ads. Corolla pre-roll said everything in the five seconds before the Skip button. Innovid rich-media units and auto-endemic banners. A Camry test drive inside Google Street View that started in your own driveway. And Eli Manning on social for the first time. All of it for 420+ dealers in 22 states, while managing a team of 18.

2018–2021UM Worldwide · Xfinity

Addressable

SharkNinja · BMW · Johnson & Johnson · Epic Games · Xfinity

Epic Games with the tightest turnaround of my career. Pitching J&J on a fully realized addressable campaign. And Ninja needed indoor grilling to feel worth the price. Nine Ninja Foodi videos became 63 versions on Hulu, swapped by audience, program genre, weather, and time of day. Aided awareness rose 7.4%, and interactive dwell time beat the benchmark by 61%.

2021–2023The Mars Agency

Augmented Reality

M&M'S · Mars Wrigley

The job was selling candy. An augmented-reality M&M'S lounge for everyone without a festival wristband, with dwell time of 2:41, 34% over benchmark. A two-year-long Sweet Tour across 60+ stops, from Bonnaroo and Gov Ball to the Walmart and Kroger parking lots. Sales up 7.8%, with a 7.5% lift at tour stops.

Here's the 2019 Ninja Foodi Grill brief.

Ideas0

AIThe deck is a skating rink.

SnowThe WindowAI

ColdTwelve MonthsAI

ColdThe GaugeAI

HeatApartment 4CAI

2023–NowIndependent

Generative AI

Ninja Foodi Redux · In Pixels We Trust · Master's Thesis

I handed my 2019 Ninja Foodi brief to my 2026 AI workflow. Same product, same audience, and the same job of making indoor grilling worth the price. It came back with 99 ideas. I judged every one alongside the four scripts my team produced in 2019, with three questions. Does it sell a category people didn't know they were missing? Does it earn the price? Is it true? Four made the cut. None of them were mine.

See the case study