Creative Digital Strategies
A CONSULTING RESOURCE FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS
"The promise of digital is to shorten the distance between passion and purchase."
I am a Creative Digital Strategist.
My career has been an eclectic journey working with a variety of startups and Fortune 100 companies to generate new revenue streams that build digital businesses.
My passion is collaborating with brands to bring together their unique internal cultures of creatives, tech folks and business development execs to create innovative products and cutting-edge marketing campaigns.
Digital disruption continues to change the landscape of marketing and advertising. Brilliant, award-winning Brand Storytelling content is an essential strategy to connect and engage today's consumer audiences.
Creative Digital Strategies is a consulting resource to help brands, startups and tech companies with business development expertise, digital audience engagement, brand storytelling strategies, and mobile marketing.
Ty Braswell, Founder, Creative Digital Strategies
tybraswell@cds36.com
Startup Navigation
nav·i·ga·tion "the method of determining position, course, and distance traveled"
“Your title makes you a manager. Your people make you a leader.” — Bill Campbell—”the Coach of Silicon Valley”
I love working with startups.
Startups remind me of my experiences in the music business working with indie bands that just got signed to a major label deal.
Everything seems possible.
Everyone wants to help you.
Then you release your product/album....and then you face your reality.
Here are a variety of elements where I have helped my startup clients:
WHAT does your startup do?
HOW are you doing it?
WHY are you doing it?
WHO is your target audience?
What is your succinct brand narrative?
What problem(s) are you planning to solve?
How do you explain in 2 mins your response to these previous questions?
Who are your top 5 competitors?
How do you describe your startup in 25 words or less?
What are the 7-9 words on the t-shirt with your logo you & your team will wear at your startup booth at an industry event? ie TechCrunch Disrupt, SXSW, Slush, etc.
Is your investor deck the best it can be? Does it have more than 13 slides?
What are the key doors/introductions you think you need for your startup in the next 3 months? 6 months? next year?
What are the fears you have about your startup? And where do you have faith you will overcome your fears?
If your startup implodes, who will this impact?
How are you leveraging your sense of humor and emotional intelligence in your leadership strategy?
Do you feel you are a startup leader that is coachable?
How do you grow as a "smart creative" who combines technical depth with business savvy and creative flair?
How is your diversity strategy defined and deployed in your overall management strategy?
I've consulted a variety of start-up projects that dealt with these elements/questions.
I've also helped to build revenue streams, make intros to key c-suite execs, and open doors to VC's.
One of my recent VC intros resulted in a $16 million investment to close out their Series A round of $20 million.
If any of these items resonate with where your are with your startup strategy....let's connect and discuss.
References/testimonials available upon request.
I'VE WORKED WITH THESE BRANDS ON TRANSFORMATIVE DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT PROJECTS
JASH Branded Sizzle Video + Case Studies from Purina, Chevy & the Truth Anti-smoking campaign
I was a member of the core team that launched the digital comedy startup JASH in 2013. I oversaw the operations and P&L of the JASH branded content division.
JASH is one of the premier comedy studios featuring original content created by partners Sarah Silverman, Michael Cera Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim and Reggie Watts.
My Interviews at the Sundance Brand Storytelling Conference
I had an amazing experience conducting the interviews and strategizing with the producers Rick Parkhill, Mike Pubentz, and Drew Parkhill on the documentary that chronicled the launch of the first Brand Storytelling conference at Sundance.
Ep #1: At the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, 160 marketing experts came together to discuss how they create and distribute great brand stories while exploring "Stories vs Interruptions"
Ep #2: In this episode, we talk with a variety of marketers including Dick's Sporting Goods, Marriott International, and Mondelez to ask "What Makes a Good Brand Story?".
EP #3: "The Power of Influencers" One way advertisers must shift their strategy is to partner with creators whose influence can help promote their brand. This chapter of our docu-series explores how brands can and should work with influencers.
EP #4 The ROI: As brands move away from interruptive messages and invest in content that people will find value in, they must demonstrate an ROI on that content. As this episode reveals, metrics for brand storytelling are less than established and far from standardized, but we're getting there.
EP #5 During Brand Storytelling at Sundance 2016, we asked brand marketers and their agencies about the future of storytelling.
If you've made it this far...
Here's a flashback on a variety of projects I produced during my early days of brand storytelling
The first ever "Concert in the Sky" at 39,000 ft on a Boeing 777 with Sheryl Crow to launch the United Airlines-Sony Connect digital music partnership.
Sony Connect “Big Mac Meal Tracks” global promotion with McDonalds.
In June 2004, just five weeks after we had launched Sony’s new digital download enterprise Sony Connect, we launched the “Big Mac Meal Tracks” global promotion with McDonald’s.
I worked closely with McDonald’s various ad agencies to conceptualize the campaign, and used our contacts in the music industry to find an unknown artist to provide the music for the TV campaign.
The track was “I Like That” by Houston and the TV spot had a surprise cameo by Justin Timberlake. The global ad spend was $30 million+ and the Sony Connect branding was on millions of Big Macs along with signage in every McDonald’s location in the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany.
McDonald's reported the Big Mac Meal Tracks campaign helped to directly stimulate same-store sales 9.2% for that quarter.
“This is the largest promotion of its kind ever undertaken in the history of the music industry. Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted on a multi-national basis before. “Together we are taking the McDonald's restaurant experience to a whole new level via the Connect music store,” says Larry Light, McDonald's EVP and global CMO.
First digital music download campaign for a national TV network offering live downloads of music performances via a partnership with ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Show.
We actually executed music downloads on 63 episodes.
When I was VP of New Media at Virgin Records, I produced a unique live webcast of David Byrne performing to 75 folks at the Microsoft Studios in Redmond, WA to promote his solo album "Look Into the Eyeball" in 2001. (4 years prior to the launch of YouTube)
30 MOBILE MARKETER INTERVIEWS at MOBILENOMICS
At the first MOBILENOMICS conference, I interviewed 30 mobile marketing executives from Coca-Cola, Taco Bell, Intel, Arby's, J. Walter Thompson, Razorfish, OMD, Group M, InMobi, App Annie, Jarden Corp, Ansible and Deutsch.
And finally...
Here's are a couple of articles I have published
"Why 2011 will be do-or-die for TV"--NYTimes.com
Working for the very hip Virgin Records back in 1999, I saw first hand how the Napster phenomenon decimated the old school music label model. It made me a keen observer of how digital disruption evolves as broadband access gets better. Disruption for radio and print followed music. And now television is headed for a big reset. 2010 was the first year of declining US cable subscribers.As pundits debate the SNL Kagen report that estimated over 300,000 people canceled their cable subscription in 2010, the bigger concern is the Credit Suisse survey that estimated that 30% of Netflix subscribers aged 18-24 are using Netflix in lieu of cable. Think about the ramifications. We saw a similar trend in the music biz when college students were the primary audience for Napster. Like a generation of people who abandoned $16 CDs, these young Netflix subscribers might never use cable. For the cable industry, they are the new lost generation.....(more)
"The Future of TV: Dead man walking or bigger than ever?"--VentureBeat.com
For the last two years, the television business has seen a decline in cable subscriptions due to cord cutting. But perhaps even scarier to TV executives is the increasing disruption that companies like Google and YouTube are causing as they jump even deeper into the TV game. YouTube’s $100 million original content initiative, Google's interest in becoming a cable company, and a few gloomy Q3 updates from moguls at TV Networks and cable, have driven new speculation on the future of television. Depending on who you talk to, you’ll hear either pessimism about the current models or about a light at the end of the tunnel that new digital streaming revenues promise. Here are a few thoughts on where the digital disruptions and the TV biz might be headed…(more)
