Tinkerer.Creative.Speaker.
“Turning chaos, culture, and curiosity into brand intelligence”
The
Story
I’ve spent more than 11 years working with brands at moments of transition, reinvention, and sometimes complete fragmentation. The systems no longer speak to one another. The voice has drifted. The audience has changed. The business is moving in one direction while the story is still somewhere trying to catch up. That is usually when I get called in.
I synthesize the chaos.
Because where others may see a marketing problem, I usually see people first. The humanity of it all. The nuance. The individual and communal lived experiences. The behaviors, tensions, desires, contradictions, and tiny cultural signals that eventually become something much bigger.
That’s the culture.
And then there is curiosity, probably the most important part. My work lives at the intersection of clarity and curiosity, bringing structure to complexity while leaving enough room for experimentation to uncover something we did not know we were looking for. It is how I lead with the mind of a strategist, operate with the instincts of a creative, and build with the perspective of someone who understands that a brand is both a business system and a living relationship with people.
It wasn’t simply helping rebuild EBONY’s digital presence and grow the audience of one of the most important legacy Black media brands in America.
It wasn’t helping D’USSÉ move from celebrity-led luxury toward culturally grounded lifestyle storytelling. It wasn’t working across Disney/ABC properties and learning how different audiences, stories, creators, and campaigns could live inside one entertainment ecosystem. It wasn’t helping Barbie find a more human, culturally fluent social voice, or thinking through how a character like State Farm’s Jake could evolve while still protecting the recognition and trust already built into the brand.
It wasn’t even those early years managing social strategy and copy for luxury hospitality brands when social media still felt a little like the Wild West.
The thing that stayed with me was the pattern underneath all of it, and that curiosity changed my career. The work evolved from posting to pattern recognition, and I quickly learned how to lead the strategy and bring the team behind it, one band, one sound, aligned around an idea people could actually believe in, that is what it takes to build brands that matter.
Everything I build, from brand frameworks and business strategies to campaigns, partnerships, essays, conversations, and podcasts, begins with a fairly simple belief: people are not data points who occasionally develop emotions. They are emotional beings whose decisions, identities, fears, desires, communities, and aspirations become the data.
Good strategy understands both.
I tend to look at brands through both the micro and the macro. I want to understand the mechanics of the moment in front of us, but I am equally interested in the ripple effects: what it means for the audience, the business, the community, the category, and the larger cultural conversation. Over the past decade, I’ve worked across entertainment, publishing, CPG, spirits, financial services, wellness, media, and digital transformation. I’ve helped build audiences, reposition brands, create partnership ecosystems, shape executive narratives, develop integrated campaigns, and translate cultural insight into measurable business growth.
And after all of it, what I know is this:
Brands do not rise by accident.
They rise because someone cared enough to study the business deeply, listen to the people honestly, recognize the patterns early, challenge what no longer works, and build something clearer in its place. That is the work I love.
Work Experience
2020–Present
Independent Advisory Practice: AskJoshDavid Studios Founder & Principal Brand Strategist
Selected Brand Experience
Disney / ABC • EBONY • Conciously • D’USSÉ Cognac • Barbie • State Farm • YouTube • Robinhood • Ancestry • Miss Universe • Waymaker Media • CareCredit • Synchrony • UNDO • Lagunitas • Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation • Harlem Shake • Biden Presidential Campaign • Bacardi • Roc Nation • Goodyear
I advise organizations at moments of growth, reinvention, and market transition, working across brand positioning, audience intelligence, cultural strategy, partnerships, integrated campaigns, digital transformation, product and conversion strategy, and the teams and systems required to bring the work to market. The practice allows me to move between the bird’s-eye view and the mechanics underneath it, connecting what leadership wants the brand to become with what audiences are actually responding to, what creative teams need to execute, and what the business must build behind the scenes to sustain the growth.
2023–Present
Executive Strategy, Partnerships & Transformation
Waymaker Media • CareCredit / Synchrony • Duncan Channon / UNDO • Counciously
Moved deeper into enterprise strategy, operations, partnerships, executive communications, and organizational transformation. At Waymaker, built a $250K digital reallocation plan and four-person editorial and marketing infrastructure, generated $525K+ in partnership revenue, and helped drive 183% registration growth while transforming the business from print-first into a digital, experiential, partnership-led platform.
Across more recent advisory work, expanded beyond campaign and content strategy into deeper business diagnosis, helping brands clarify positioning, audience architecture, product strategy, conversion pathways, media systems, and the organizational infrastructure required to turn attention into sustainable growth.
2020–2022
Brand & IP Strategy, Prod. & Integrated Marketing
D’USSÉ Cognac • Disney / ABC • Global Brand Consulting
Expanded from audience growth into positioning, creative direction, creator strategy, integrated marketing, and recognizable IP. Led digital and influencer strategy across an eight-title ABC portfolio with campaign budgets from $500K to $1.5M, helped Barbie drive 42% social audience growth, and supported D’USSÉ strategy tied to retail sales lifts of +279%, +183%, and +139% across priority markets.
2016 – 2019
Audience Growth & Digital Brand Building
FreshPlanet • Ideal Living • EBONY Media
Built the foundation across influencer marketing, ecommerce, audience development, editorial strategy, and digital brand building. At EBONY, helped scale Instagram from 250K to 900K, X from 180K to 610K, and Facebook from 500K to 1.3M while leading platform strategy, cultural tentpoles, brand relationships, and cross-functional editorial execution.
