Creative Director

I currently share my passion for developing creative solutions in communication at Super Micro Computer, Inc. where I act on a variety of responsibilities in that space including conventional and digital advertising, as well as video production. The biggest challenge since 2006 has been to lead the creative direction in evolving a brand that was culturally routed in eastern traditions and perspectives to one that was better accepted by western culture. I was successfull in launching a campaign called “Evolving” which won a Gold Marcom Award from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. Nevertheless, it’s still been a tedious but steady progression that has required flexibility and patience. I’m most proud of a campaign I developed to carry a new gaming product line. Also in my journey, was the CEO’s passion to develop energy efficient computing server products as data centers around the world increase to consume power equivalent to that of the United Kingdom and growing. We captured a bit of that story in a campaign called ‘Mission: Green Computing’.

During this time several changes happened in my life that I also used my talents to express.

Labor of Love
Red Egg and Ginger

VP, MARKETING

While still engaged with Supermicro I accepted an after-hours opportunity to help a friend grow his design studio business, Belm Designs. As he was a talented individual, there was little need for me to engage on the creative side. Although I did manage to still design a car wrap, and package logo. However, for the most part I lended my past experience in running my own firm to bring in more clients, improve relations with his existing clients and grow his staff. During my time we increased his staff to 400% percent, landed three new accounts, expanding his client base to food, computing technology with and increased revenue of 823%. With the additional staff and capital bought in by the revenue of new accounts, his biggest client, Barracuda Networks, offered to absorb his business and staff providing them with a 10,000 sq. ft. creative studio which he had the opportunity to design from floor to ceiling.

ART DIRECTOR

Prior to Supermicro I lead the creative efforts at Century Helicopters creating product ads and packaging for their radio controlled helicopter lines. This job was particularly fun because of my own child born interest in RC Sports passed on to my brother and I from my father. What was interesting was that overall corporate branding fell second to individual product branding. Each product had a story to tell of it’s own so connecting to the audience for that particular product was essential. It was here that I honed my art direction skills in product photography as well as honed my skills in copy writing. The biggest challenge however was developing a product for the first time in my career. The task was to create a new fuselage for their line of 3D acrobatic competition helicopters. It turned out to be a successful endeavor becoming the leading seller to date.

Creative Director

Along my career journey with Supermicro and Belm I dove into another project with The Flow Integrated Media Group. In 2007, the co-founder who had no expertise in the digital realm, just an idea and he asked me to help him improve on it. Together we were able to expand his idea and tackle his target audience with new products. The result was a patent pending 3D interface called 3D Thumbnail Flow, a mobile app called BattleBoyz and digital animation called Mac and Shack. These projects added to my experience design expertise as well as in-depth character development and story telling which became very useful at Supermicro.

VP, MARKETING

In 2004 I was approached by some clients of mine to partner in another business as their VP of Marketing. Their expertise was marketing in South America or marketing expertise to those who may be in the US but of South American decent. Together we created a company called Latin Reach. We partnered with the city of San Jose and the Story Road Association to create to cultural events, the Soccer Festival and the Tamale Festival. I honed by business plan writing and presentation skills presenting to the the city’s Redevlopment Agency to secure the funds to host the event. The purpose was to establish Story Road as a destination in San Jose. We also built a mobile production in South America called Planet Patagonia. The event featured dinosaur fossils discovered in Patagonia, Argentina. I was fortunate to write the treatment for that the script for the 3D IMAX film created around the discovery was taken.

Partner

One of the most fun episodes in my life is during the time I ran an independent record company. In 2003, my group of band mates and our manager banded together to create US Records. It was here that I developed my skill for writing lyrics, as well as understanding sound and the composition of music. I also lead the organization in both conventional marketing including creating collateral, designing promotional items, scheduling local tour dates, appearances, placing in-store displays and early executing efforts of digital marketing growing a local fan base of 120,000. We had hits on the, then popular, MP3.com where we topped out at number one on the R&B charts and #2 behind Snoop Dogg’s ‘Drop it Like It’s Hot’ on the Hip Hop Charts.

PRINCIPAL

I didn’t know it at the time because my career was young, but more often than not opportunity always found me. I didn’t have to go looking for it too often and the start of my own design studio was no different. I worked at a small design studio eager to learn the entire business and I did. Not more than a year passed and a client offered me their business if I went out on my own. After some thought and deliberation, Hooks Creativ was born. I found a niche in serving Pacific Rim companies eager to get into computer retail stores. I started out as a designer designing packaging and retail collateral but developed skills in art direction, copy writing, messaging and the full gamut of product marketing strategy, planning and implementation. I became involved in positioning start-ups to get acquired and others to attract their first round of investment. Along the way picked up clients like Paramount< Universal Music Group and IBM. It was the exciting time of the dot.com era and I road the wave all the way to its bust.

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