Over the span of 5 years, I transformed the BuzzFeed West Coast Creative Department from a lonely solo operation into a thriving, diverse, 18-person team that spanned two cities.
While I remain proudest of the things we did as a team at BuzzFeed, what follows are some individual pieces that I wrote, both branded and editorial, that don’t necessarily fit into larger campaigns.
BuzzFeed
The Silliest Branded Post I Ever Sold
When I first became a creative director and was given my own team, I initiated a policy for brainstorms called “The Bad Idea Jar” to encourage people to pitch weirder, riskier ideas. If you pitched something truly ridiculous that had no chance of being sold you would have to put a dollar in the jar, but then if anyone managed to actually sell that post to a client they would get all the money that had accumulated. I believe this post, for USA Network’s Suits, won me $44.
My Favorite Parenting Post
Somehow I was the only one on the 18-person team with kids, so I ended up running point on pretty much all of our parenting content. This post was my favorite because I got to involve my whole family, down to the 1-year-old, in testing and evaluating internet “parenting hacks.” We uncovered a few great ones we use to this day, and hopefully banished a few of the dumber ones once and for all.
My Weirdest Idea (which is also one of my favorites)
Early in my tenure at BuzzFeed, Ruffles came to us with a very specific ask: They had created a spokes-character called Ruff McThickridge, but they didn’t want
”regular BuzzFeed stuff”—they wanted something that felt like a 1980s Burt Reynolds action adventure. I used to love Marvel comics as an ‘80s kid (still do, in fact), and I thought back to how in the back of Marvel comics there was always some bizarre, branded one-page adventure where, like, Spider Man would win a battle by using Hostess Snack Cakes. We pitched a series of animated comics starring Ruff in a variety of adventures (as a cop, a hockey coach, an old-west gunslinger, etc.) and, to everyone’s surprise, they went for it. I got to write two of the six. Here’s one.
It Wasn’t Always Easy To Figure Out What Was Funny About Trump…
While I occasionally covered anti-administration protests from a news perspective, and produced branded content for Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, the top editors were always cagy about putting out overtly political editorial content. Nevertheless, I was able to get a few things through by successfully arguing that this was “television and film” content more than it was political agitprop.
My Favorite (Semi-Branded) Quiz
I wrote this quiz to promote Why Mommy Drinks, a new no-advice-ever comedy parenting podcast hosted by Betsy Stover and Amanda Allan. Just like the podcast, this quiz celebrates how hilariously hard parenting can be, encouraging the reader to laugh at their inevitable failures and embrace their inner garbage-person, because no matter how much you think you suck at this, you’re doing a great job.
And Sometimes I’d Just Write Ridiculous Posts Like This One
Turns out if you play enough board games with your kids, you start noticing certain things.