HBO × American Red Cross: Bleed for the Throne

Client: HBO / WarnerMedia / Giant Spoon

Campaign: Bleed for the Throne (Game of Thrones Season 8 Launch)

Role: Studio Lead, Experiential Concept, Design & Fabrication

To launch the final season of Game of Thrones, HBO shifted from traditional broadcast promotion to a massive cultural movement. Bleed for the Throne translated the iconic tagline "What would you do for the throne?" into real-world action by asking fans to bleed for a cause.

Executed in partnership with the American Red Cross, the integrated campaign combined an immersive, award-winning SXSW activation with a massive 43-state national blood drive—creating the largest promotional blood donation effort by an entertainment company in American Red Cross history.

The Concept: A 15,000-square-foot experiential immersion in Austin, Texas, recreating the world of Westeros where attendees walked the path of fallen characters and pledged their blood.

Earned Media Engine: Framed by top-tier tech and cultural press (including Wired), the experience tied real-time physical participation to global blood collection scales, establishing high-intent narrative framing for national media.

Historic Scale: Highlighted by Deadline as the largest blood donation promotional initiative by an entertainment brand in American Red Cross history.

Industry Recognition & Awards

Clio Entertainment Awards (2019): Grand Winner

D&AD Awards: Wood Pencil / Archival Selection for Experiential & Direct Campaign Architecture

AVG: Tiger vs. 3.5 Million Toothpicks ("We Protect Us")

Client: AVG Security Software

Agency Partner: The Richards Group

Role: Concept Development, On-Screen Spokesperson & Narrative Strategy

From early concepting at a pub about a crazy idea to actually being cast as the spokesperson inside a cage—looking directly into the eyes of a 600lb tiger less than 10 inches from my face—this project was easily one of the most amazing experiences of my career.

Digital security threats are abstract, invisible, and notoriously hard for people to understand. AVG’s product strength lies in networked security—strength in numbers. To make that tangible, we asked a simple, visceral question: "How many toothpicks does it take to stop a tiger?"

In a world saturated with polished digital content and paid influencers, the key lesson here was simple: don't be afraid to try a crazy idea, have fun, and be completely real about it. We gave people a story they could be moved by, and then let those who were curious look behind the curtain at how it all came together.

"I JUST WATCHED A 3MIN COMMERCIAL. AND LOVED IT!" — Fan reaction to the spot

By all measures, the video was a massive success, vastly outperforming client goals and shattering brand awareness targets:

4.8 Million Video Views & 3,500+ likes (with hundreds of organic, highly engaged comments).

+50% Brand & Product Awareness Lift (Client goal: 3% — exceeded target by 16.6x).

+20% Unaided Brand & Product Awareness Lift (Client goal: 10% — 2x target).

The biggest lesson from this campaign points to a broader challenge brands face with digital content. While this video was an enormous success, it was the only one we produced in what was meant to be an extensible creative franchise.

Brands need more courage to double down on great ideas. The underlying architecture—"How many [X] does it take to stop a [Y]?"—was built to scale into an entire series: Rhino vs. Legos, Sharks vs. Grains of Sand, Gatorade Cups vs. Troy Polamalu, Inches of Stick Tape vs. Mike Modano.

Bringing abstract threats to life through relatable, human-scale examples works. We just need to give those stories room to keep running.

(If you want to hear more of the wild behind-the-scenes stories from inside the cage, let's meet for a Singha or a Tiger beer.)

Cheetos: Los Cheetahs Freestyle Soccer National Activation

Brand: Cheetos (Frito-Lay)

Agency Partner: United Entertainment Group

Role: Concept Development, Experiential Production, Brand Identity, Design, Assets and Video production.

Imagine the most talented freestyle soccer players in the world, clad in bright orange with the iconic Cheetos mark across their chest—a mischievous, ultra-playful squad taking the pitch against their arch-rivals, a team representing the exact antithesis of fun.

Two years in the making, Los Cheetahs was brought to life to celebrate pure playfulness at the intersection of lifestyle, sports, and Hispanic culture. Centered around high-flying trick plays, unexpected spectacle, and legendary talent, the campaign debuted with a massive custom beachside stadium build in Southern California before scaling into a major national tour partner—generating over 500 million PR impressions.

The Beach Build: On a warm afternoon in Long Beach, California, a custom pop-up turf stadium was built directly on the sand to host over 5,000 live spectators for the official nationwide tour kickoff.

Unscripted Entertainment & Spectacle: The experience combined a vibrant pre-game Futbol Fiesta, food trucks, and interactive family zones with an action-packed 60-minute match featuring exploding soccer balls, fan penalty-kick challenges, and an unscripted moment where a 70-year-old senior citizen stole the show as a freestyle hero on the pitch.

Legendary Talent Signal: Icon Jorge Campos, the legendary former goalkeeper for El Tri (the Mexican National Team), anchored the launch event—establishing instant cultural authenticity and driving massive cross-market press coverage.

National Expansion: Following the momentum of the Long Beach launch, Los Cheetahs took their signature brand of chaotic, high-energy freestyle soccer on the road for a nationwide tour.

Premier Partnership: In year two, the campaign locked in an official partnership with the Mexican National Soccer Team’s U.S. Tour, integrating Los Cheetahs into major stadium venues across the country.

500M+ Earned PR Impressions: Exceptional earned media reach fueled by the unique pop-up stadium build, high-concept narrative, and star-power participation.

5,000+ Spectators: Max capacity attendance at the custom Long Beach beachside venue.

Tier-1 Tour Expansion: Successfully scaled from an ambitious single-day pop-up into a multi-year national tour feature alongside international soccer royalty.

This was a redesign of the traditional Coca-Cola online retail store for a more youthful oriented active lifestyle. Aware that younger generations around the globe were spending less time buying traditional Coca-Cola branded merchandise, the assignment was to design a new more youthful web storefront.

I believe the problem wasn't just the storefront itself. Although the old Coke Store was very antiquated in it's design, it also lacked and merchandise I myself would purchase - except for the 70's era Mean Joe Greene bobble head.  So I took the opportunity to also design new merchandise; including new clothing and fashion items like, jeans with a subtle branded mark and red cloth interior, shoe partnership ideas, hats, etc. 

AGENCY PARTNER: imc2

This was an incredible and amazing project to be a part of. To be fair the franchise restaurant business is a whirlwind of non-stop activity, so the challenges of rebranding the archetype of the casual dining space was challenging to say the least. This project started a few years ago with a major rebrand and new site design. But the entire design was laid on top of the existing antiquated architecture and bandaided code base.

The first step was really to do the research and find the right way to rebrand the TGIFridays restaurants into a more modern space while being authentic to their local-bar roots. 

The second step was to redesign the restaurants, the menu and finally fully redesign the website so that it was mobile friendly and could serve as a base for all the marketing and landing page needs from various media campaigns running throughout the year.

There is still a lot different I would have done with this design, but to look at it in contrast to what existed before is a complete breath of fresh air. Congrats to The Richards Group team who puts so many hours and incredible thinking into this client.

AGENCY PARTNER: The Richards Group

I was asked to be a part of some strategic thinking, planning and creative work to demonstrate a few celebrity integration ideas for the Cheetos brand. Our concept was based on the brand pillars of family fun and mischief. Using an iconic Chester Cheetah costume, we presented an idea about this playfulness and mischief that lives inside us all. Alec Baldwin, Ellen DeGeneres and Jon Hamm were great celebrities to help deliver the idea that family fun and mischief is a character we can all play. 

AGENCY PARTNER: United Entertainment Group

As a broad part of AT&T's "It Can Wait" campaign I was asked to help work on several strategic partnership ideas. One of these included this sticker which has now been translated into over a dozen languages around the world. It's fun to see a simple idea take on a new life.

Here's a simple reminder. Please don't text and drive. It really is super dangerous. And whatever communication you feel the urge to immediately respond to, really can wait a few minutes.

AGENCY PARTNER: United Entertainment Group

This was really one of my most favorite site designs of the last several years. Aside from the stunning photography we used and the glimmer of the fashion industry, i thoroughly enjoyed learning the history of Max Factor himself, as well as the brand he build through his impact with the early years in Hollywood film. His thinking of makeup took the industry to an entirely new standard.

To highlight not only a vast product line with interactive tools, I also designed the navigation and logo to have a three-dimensional sheen to it. Using subtle lighting effects behind the logo we could cue the user through navigation or exploring with logo interactions to enter into the the "behind the scenes" approach to the history of the brand. In this view, the users pov would be transported up and through the light coming out of the MAX FACTOR logo and into a brilliant white canvas where the history of the brand could be represented.

AGENCY PARTNER: imc2

Sometimes a little humor and honesty goes a long way. Especially when your delivery is beautifully styled and interesting.

We never needed to say what the creative brief asked for; "Normal glasses lenses are heavy, ours are super thin and lite." We all know what makes those little red indentions on the bridge of your nose. 

AGENCY PARTNER: Avrea Foster

The client request was for a new smarter website, that brought some sophistication to the brands color palette. The traditional rhodamine color of the logo needed some darker layers of light, paired with some beautiful off-set mono chromatic imagery. It also needed a few smart tools to help new visitors find their way through large product line - specifically being able to match it to a dog's age and size.

This was the first of several major projects we worked on for Eukanuba while I was at imc2. I had an incredible team of talented writers, designers and developers who brought several great ideas to life for this happy client.

AGENCY PARTNER: imc2

I always find ecommerce site design an incredible UX + Design challenge. There are so many given metrics about performance and product sales tied to pixel space it becomes a difficult challenge to make things simple and understandable from a Design POV. Animated feature banners, product highlights and every conceivable category as a navigation header are always challenges handed to the UX and Design teams.

This is an older site I designed, on along with some brilliant Information Architects. But I feel like, because of its simplicity and balance of a lot of complex information, it still holds up today. A few aspects look a little dated, but the fact that this template could be ripped off today for another major ecommerce brand i feel like speaks to the thoughtfulness of our solutions, as well as the standardization of UX in recent years.

AGENCY PARTNER: imc2

I often hear designers struggle working within the pharma industry. I've worked on dozens of pharmacutical brands over the years and I can say, it does have it's difficult challenges with legal and government oversight. But when an idea can be based in an authentic desire to be helpful and informative, you can often find a great deal of flexibility.

In this case, there was staggering research that connected cervical cancer to the hpv virus. This effected women of all ages, but the prevention aspect really started with young women as they were just choosing to become sexually active. Information was an incredible tool. 

Hyatt's Gold Passport reward program needed a little honesty. Reward program ads and direct mail are always full of the same old junk and messages. 

Let's just call it like it is, It is all about you. You earned those free nights and you should enjoy them however you like. There, done. See advertising doesn't have to be so hard, now does it?

AGENCY PARTNER: RAPP Worldwide

This was a concept that had been bounced around inside the halls of the agency as well as Samsung North American HQ for some time. The real insight for this idea came from a desire I had for the brand of Samsung electronics to become more of a visible partner instead of always trying to sell you something - which of course is the major point of an electronics manufacturer.

The additional insight came from all the traveling we did with this team. Airports at the time were antiquated in their design for human traffic and modern electronic needs (most still are). Outlets as we all know are limited. So, what better way for Samsung to be relevant and helpful than to provide charging stations in many US airpots.

We designed the pods with our internal engineers, and then partnered with an application company to develop a running application on a large touch screen within the charging station where users could find basic information like weather, news and play games while their devices are charging. Additionally this became a great place to integrate the Samsung partnership with CNET, displaying current reviews of all the latest electronic equipment.

AGENCY PARTNER: Cheil Agency

I put this slide together as part of a presentation I gave to the DSVC National Student Conference. It gives a quick glance at some of the clients I've done work for over the years. As a design challenge to myself, I skipped all the formal presentation apps and built this entire presentation with the Paper app on my ipad. There were lessons learned in this process. Namely, that it's ok when things aren't perfect, and not to take yourself too seriously.

I love speaking to students. Mentoring, being involved in the design community and helping share some of the lessons I've learned over a long career are part of the fun for me.

I've won dozens of industry awards, including some big ones, but I stopped keeping track of them long, long ago. In the end, the awards don't matter. Relationships do.