Ren·ais·sance man (noun);
a person with many talents or areas of knowledge.
From My Portfolio
Digital Design for Client
Paratus Institute, a First Aid training center, wanted to redesign and update many aspects of their company, including a new logo, website, and course materials.
Brand Extension Demonstration
Clif Bar is an incredibly successful company in its category. Now they want to expand their product line while staying true to their core corporate and brand values.
Ad Campaign for Miami Ad School
Nikon’s Point-and-Click camera sales are falling rapidly as the optics in smartphones get better and better, making pocket sized cameras redundant.
Recent Self Education
Killer Quote
“There is nothing more frustrating than coming up with the right answer to the wrong question.”
Killer Quote
“You know what’s interesting about that? 90% of shoppers say they want free range eggs. Multiple research studies; 90% free range. Yet half of all eggs purchased [in Australia] are caged. So there is a big difference, and we know this from the research we do in the industry, there is a huge difference between what people say and do. So publicly, and in research, they’ll say all these things. Quietly, they will choose using different criteria.”
Recent Blog Posts
Strategies for Surviving the Retailpocalypse
Online and traditional retail have been locked in a battle to the death since Amazon began stealing market share from Borders and Barnes and Nobles in the late ‘90s. In that war it appears traditional retail is losing. Online has so much to offer. It is easy and convenient. Web stores can carry more variety because they don’t have to worry about shelf space. Online often has less overhead, so prices are frequently lower than traditional retail. What can traditional retail offer that will get people off their browsers and into a brick and mortar store?
League of Legends Esports: Financial Failure or the Future?
In my last post, I discussed whether or not esports is facing an economic bubble. In it I called out a few bad actors in the industry, but also argued that it wasn’t fair to lump every competitive title together and that, as a result, there was more resiliency in the system than many seem to believe. I only briefly touched on the elephant in the room with esports, League of Legends, because there was so much to say on the subject it deserved its own post.
Evaluating the “Esports Bubble”
About a month ago, Kotaku published an article entitled “Shady Numbers And Bad Business: Inside The Esports Bubble.” The article makes a lot of bold claims about the esports industry, which I don’t intend to discuss line by line, however it did get me thinking about the title’s premise. Is esports a bubble? Are we only a few years away from a collapse that will take many popular leagues and teams down with it? Or was Mavericks owner Mark Cuban right when he said recently, on the Freakonomics podcast, that if he had to invest his money in sports entertainment today he would bet long on competitive video gaming?
The answer is a complicated one. The facts around team, league, and publisher expenditures are fuzzy, at best. There are persistent rumors of participants in the market acting irresponsibly, some of which are probably true. However, it is also possible that the supposed industry-wide bubble is confined to a relatively small number of teams and tournaments. Esports is not a monolith and each publisher handles their competitive title differently, each broadcast and/or event team takes a different approach to monetizing their product, and each sports’ top players have different expectations about compensation. Dota 2 is not the same as Overwatch is not the same as Super Smash Bros Melee (SSBM). There are some people in the space who are going like gangbusters and spending themselves into oblivion. There are some that have been much more conservative with their growth and are able to live within their means.