A fiercely distinct message. A smart, sticky tagline. Crisp content that tees up an urgent call to action.We call this "vivid." A few examples of how we deliver it: • COGNITIVE NETWORKS: Its Smart TV technology identifies programs in real time and infers who’s watching, so that advertisers can find targets concealed by broad demographics. Facing skeptics still loyal to dubious set-top box data, CN tapped us for a series of presentations designed to prove that "showtime” is more profitable when networks know who’s watching in real time.• PEPSICO: For her first trip to China as PepsiCo's CEO, Indra Nooyi tapped us to write her keynote ─ a promise to bring safe drinking water to China's driest regions. China's markets open slowly; sellers must prove their worth. In vowing to fight China's water shortage with unexpected resolve, Indra did exactly that. • DELOITTE: Give us a day, Deloitte tells clients, and we’ll move you closer to your next stage of growth. Its method: DeepDive™ ─ a day of high-velocity brainstorming, prototyping, and feedback loops. Asked to market it, we cast DeepDive™ not as another “strategic-planning solution” but as an urgent intervention to harness the collective IQ.• VENDAVO: "Can you get me a bylined article in The Economist"? asked our client. We can. Step one: Produce the article – a crisp argument against impulsive discounting. (Vendavo's software drives margin optimization.) Step two: Submit the article and let it speak for itself. It did. The piece was published under our client's byline.

When Michael Milken engaged this communications firm to represent him, I was recruited to craft talking points, speeches, opinion pieces, and other content for use by Milken and his surrogates in support of high-yield bond financing. Among the highlights: a front-row seat to Arthur Liman at work – the distinguished litigator who represented Michael.

Developed communications strategies, generated media coverage, and produced executive communications for the international soft-drink division of PepsiCo. Among the highlights: managed the overseas launch of New Coke, a preemptive strike by Pepsi to capitalize internationally on U.S. consumer backlash. (Said differently: We launched the product because they wouldn't.)

Co-produced Peat Marwick's (now KPMG) premier marketing piece at the time – a lush quarterly magazine that delivered thought leadership through interviews with top CEOs, world leaders, academicians, and assorted mavericks. Among the highlights: To test President Reagan's claim that "confidence is in the air,” I spent three days grilling three economists, all Nobel Laureates: Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, and Wassily Leontief. "Confidence is growing," asserted Friedman, a noted monetarist. "You call this confidence?" countered Samuelson, a rival Keynesian. But Leontief offered the best line: “Changing in the direction of the 19th Century is not the smartest thing to do.”