1. ‘The Assembly’ summer project
at Zeus Jones.
I was selected to be on a team, ‘The Assembly’, with two industrial designers,
a lobbyist and an engineer under guidance from 4 senior leaders at Zeus Jones
to tackle a big innovation project with one of Zeus Jones’s clients, a Fortune 500
company. This was not an intern project – it was a real project for a real client with
pressure from client senior management to get it right. The Zeus Jones leadership
team was involved every step of the way to ensure Zeus Jones standards were being
met at every point in the process, while giving ‘the Assembly’ freedom to try new
processes and tools to get the job done

2. The project was designed to be completed in 12 intense weeks, working on all
aspects of building a brand from a bare bones product concept: target and need
state insights, refined product concepts, perceptual mapping of opportunity
spaces, brand concept development, 3 rounds of refining the brand concept to get
to the most powerful and differentiated space that would yield the greatest value
to an existing brand portfolio, name development, brand design, packaging
development including 3D structures, and launch activation plans.

3. The process we developed to tackle this project involved many rounds of
scrappy research, from internet searches, field trips, online studies,
and Simmons analysis (with one of the Zeus Jones engagement
strategists), to package testing with real consumers selected using custom
screening. We had 5 check-ins with the client along the way, including the
Brand Director, his three direct reports, and someone from consumer insights.
The Assembly team were responsible for presenting the thinking and the work,
with support from Zeus Jones leaders. Each client meeting led to detailed
feedback that helped guide the next stage of work.

4. My role on this team was to lead creative ideation and storytelling in the development
of creative platforms as well as engage in research and insight discovery.
This experience was invaluable because it uncovered and developed my natural
abilities as creative conceptual thinker and connected me with uniquely skilled
partners who held ideas that will no doubt influence my thinking on future projects.
*All other information about the project is still under NDA.