Writing
Creative
Strategy
analog thinking
for digital culture
about
i make things
spread through culture
algorithms
news
media
it’s all the same
the right idea
will travel
work
Severance
Ted Lasso
Deadpool
Twilight
on paper
they have almost
nothing in common
the skill that connected them
wasn’t taste
it was empathy
marketing starts with understanding
what you like and why
great marketing starts when you understand
what someone else likes
and why
for the past 15 years
i’ve worked across
entertainment, social
and creative marketing
i started on the strategy side
developing ideas
for agency partners
to bring to life
eventually, I learned editing
and design
so I could close the gap
between strategy
and execution
writing
editing
design
i make ideas real
i don’t think of social
as a subdivision of marketing
i use it to understand
how stories
move through culture
in real time
as an English major
i was taught to look closely
at language
not just what was said
but how and why it was said
subtext
intention
why something lands
and why it doesn’t
for most of my life
i’ve been studying culture
movies
tv
books
commercials
music
like an LLM with taste
i use that instinct
to turn cultural signals
into marketing
that cuts through
Severance
is not a TV show
it’s a cultural phenomenon
it’s hard to sum up
what it felt like to be
at the center of it
but here’s a two minute
video that tries
Role: Strategy, editorial narrative, scripting, creative development, case study video edit
“More TV Shows Need To Take a Page From Severance Marketing”
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How To Make the News
step one: find an old photo of Adam Scott on the internet
step two: photoshop in Ike Barinholtz
step three: send it to Adam to post on Instagram
step four: news reporter thinks its real
On January 14, 2025
we put the cast of Severance
in a glass cube
in Grand Central Terminal
hjere’s the case study
Role: Concepting, Social, Case Study Edit
Press
“The Genius of Severance’s Grand Central Pop-Up”
‘Severance’ Cast Brings Lumon Offices to Grand Central Station”
‘Severance’ Pop-Up Sends The Internet Into A Meltdown”
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Slices
A Case Study
I invented an ad systemthat we ran for two years
at Apple TV
We called it Slices
We wanted to bring
Apple’s simplicity
to entertainment marketing
What would entertainment marketing
look like if it felt
unmistakably Apple?
At first glance
entertainment marketing
on social
all looks the same
Memes
Creators
TikTok trends
Fast edits made for fleeting attention
Golden Globes Teaser
4.5M views
The logic is understandable
Social platforms reward immediacy, familiarity, and emotional reaction
But there was a tension
How do you cut through on social
without compromising
premium storytelling?
For Apple TV, the challenge wasn’t simply attention
It was maintaining a standard of quality
In a feed filled with slop
we wanted to design
something that would pop
The work needed to feel cinematic, elegant, restrained
At the same time
traditional premium marketing
came with real constraints
Original spots required
Budgets, timelines, approvals
and perhaps most critically
access to talent
Social moved too quickly for that production model to scale
There was also another truth
Legally, every organic post was an ad
No matter how “organic”
you tried to make it look
So the question became
How do we make those ads feel like Apple?
It was a humble realization
Nothing we made as marketers
would ever look better
than an Apple TV show
Apple hires Emmanuel Lubezki to shoot commercials
Apple TV hires Emmanuel Lubezki to shoot episodes
A slice wasn’t just social strategy
It reflected a belief
The way something is marketed
should reflect the way it’s made
What if the best marketing
for our shows
was the show itself?
3M views
The insight was simple
Hidden inside
long-form storytelling
were emotionally complete fragments
Already capable of functioning
as miniature advertisements
Tiny moments of intrigue
Humor
Tension
Beauty
Catharsis
Fear
2M views
For example
this was an untouched
montage in the pilot
episode of Cape Fear
Pure footage and pure score
All we did was spell out
the amazing A-list cast
in an SF font
with logos
added to the end
On social
a second can feel like
an eternity
International Women’s Day
4M views
We looked at the space
between dialogue
The quieter less obvious moments
The ones you’d never see on a talk show
Tablescraps from the trailer
cutting room floor
Not applause lines
Emotional residue
Discomfort
Curiosity
Tenderness
Tension
We found value hiding in the footage
We weren’t clipping scenes
We were revealing moments
The system followed a simple set of principles:
- Preserve cinematic rhythm
- Remove context, not feeling
- Use minimal copy
- Maintain elegant typography and restraint
- Design natively for aspect ratio and platform behavior
- Treat the Apple TV logo as the period at the end of the sentence
The goal was never
to overwhelm the footage
with too many elements
Only to frame it
Emmy Nominations 2025
2M views
Instead of adapting
to social’s visual language
we adapted social to ours
Millions of people watched these ads
yet most never experienced them as advertising
We saw the comments
“Apple TV doesn’t market their shows”
The marketing was there
They saw it
They shared it
They talked about it
Pre-Premiere Teaser
3M views
In a feed built on noise
negative space became signal
The goal was restraint
Remove as much visible marketing as possible
until only feeling remained
A pure taste of the product
No artificial packaging
The elegance lived
in the production design
of the show
The wit lived
in the brevity of the ad
A Slice did not explain the plot
It invited curiosity
It trusted the audience
And remained emotionally truthful
to the source material
December 2025
7M views
This was not a format
It was a system
Generating thousands of ads
over a two year span
A repeatable method for translating
premium storytelling
into native social behavior
We looked for cultural backstops
Moments in culture
conversation, mood, or timing
That could connect footage
to the audiences
most likely to care
Timing was everything
Rhea Seehorn Golden Globes Win 2026
4M views
Real-time marketing
The right asset
at the right time
Editorial judgment applied to timing
platform behavior
audience anticipation
and story
We didn’t market around the shows
We marketed through them
The smaller we looked
the bigger the canvas
S2E06 tune-in
9M views
The system proved transferable
across genres and audiences
From comedy to thriller
to prestige drama
Across thousands of executions
for over 300 titles
Ted Lasso, Severance, The Studio, Pluribus, and more
It didn’t feel like
typical marketing
The ad was always as original
as the Apple Original
The results scaled
2B+ organic views
No dependence on large paid campaigns
No compromise in brand expression
They never ran on TV as an ad
Only as news
March 6, 2026
We used slices to announce news
And tout reviews
Critics Slice
2M views
One shot
No cuts
Some moments took on lives of their own
March 2025
4B views
Why did it work?
Because social rewards emotional reaction
Apple rewards emotional craft
Slices compressed premium storytelling
into emotionally complete fragments
Designed for feed behavior
without sacrificing aesthetic integrity
We hooked people visually
Kept them interested emotionally
Rewarded them intellectually
Rather than chasing platform culture,
We found a way to perform
natively on social
without becoming social-looking
Filmmakers loved it
EPs loved it
Most importantly, audiences loved it
We turned the show itself
into the ad unit
iPhone Concept Ad
The idea was simple
The seeing was not
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@TedLasso
For four years
we brought optimsim
to the darkest place
on the internet
Working closely
with Jason Sudeikis
and the writers
We treated social
not as marketing
but as an extension
of the show’s voice
and storytelling
Press
“Diane Sawyer Breaks Lengthy Twitter Silence to Reply to Ted Lasso Date Offer.”
“‘Ted Lasso’ Winks at Jason Sudeikis Hosting ‘SNL’ This Week in Hilarious Tweet”
“Ted Lasso Toasts the New England Patriots, Target and More in Twitter Challenge”
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