Robert Schwartz

EXPERIENCE  

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Lead Strategist Consultant, Los Angeles, CA-based, 2023–Present, with recent highlights including:

• Energy BBDO: Drove the brand creative communication strategy for Bayer’s OTC retail pharmaceutical division megabrand portfolio (Afrin, Alka-Seltzer, Claritin, and MiraLAX), leading client workshops and briefing brand and insights teams on personas, shopper journeys, creative and communications strategy frameworks.

• Said Differently: Conducted competitive content analysis of B2B brand reputation strategies for Goldman Sachs, analyzing how client case study success stories were leveraged to burnish the firm’s reputation.

• Kvell: Served as strategic lead for a top influencer creative agency supporting Scopely’s WWE mobile game launch, aimed at building an engaged player community by merging fan passion with competitive gaming. Delivered a global launch strategy with an integrated VIP talent and influencer GTM plan focused on community growth and organic content to drive retention-focused engagement.

• Stepwise Innovation: Led “3C’s” innovation market research (Category, Customer, Culture) for a leading DTC manufacturer and retailer specializing in high-quality custom home furnishings. Research deliverables included category analysis (size, growth, key players), customer journey mapping and persona insights around demand for personalized solutions, and a culture-focused deep dive into evolving home décor aesthetics and a competitive analysis from other ‘offline to online’ and customization businesses.

• Spawn Ideas: Led a B2B image awareness and lead generation go-to-market (GTM) campaign strategy for the Better Business Bureau (BBB) Great West + Pacific, serving Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Spearheaded an online survey of BBB Accredited Members, conducted 1-on-1 stakeholder interviews, and led creative briefings to inform a cross-channel marketing strategy for new member outreach.

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Material, Los Angeles, CA-based remote support, Senior Strategist, 2021 – 2022 

Delivered needle moving customer experience-focused brand strategy for Church’s Texas Chicken, Enterprise Holdings, TxEDC as well as for the below representative agency of record project work: 

• Lead strategist for ABM Industries, a $6B+ annual revenue leading global facility management provider. Managed the strategic roadmap vision for ABM’s nationwide and regionally-tailored 360 social and CRM campaigns that include Facilitating Healthy to promote its proprietary healthy air focus and Smart Parking, a call to action to invest in frictionless EV-focused solutions.

• Defined Keurig Coffee’s Loyalty & Membership marketing program opportunity to winningly bolster brand relevance, especially among Millennial coffee lovers. Led opportunity alignment by managing stakeholder interviews and competitive audit to inform a new member social CRM campaign framework approach including a distinctly ownable brand narrative, essence, pillars and reasons to believe while sharply defining segments needs and wants in order to deliver an effectively personalized customer journey at every step.

• Drove the strategic vision for the redesign of leading content management system provider Contentful’s destination website, creating a roadmap for their new category-led finding ecosystem framework for digital builders. The phased experience redesign approach maximized lead generation, signups, and retention engagement by optimizing new experiences for multiple stakeholder audiences with a focus on developers.

• Spearheaded SurveyMonkey's B2B marketing video competitive audit that looked at the touch point from multiple angles across direct competitors and analogous best-in-class marketers such as Slack, IBM and Google.

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Hero Digital, Los Angeles, CA-based remote support, Business Strategist, 2020 – 2021

Led strategy for Blackhawk Network, a $1B+ annual revenue Fintech gift card payments leader and operator of Giftcards.com. Tasked with identifying new opportunities to accelerate Giftcards.com's growth of its consumer business and to define a new digital experience vision, growth plan and enabling technology capability. ​

• Delivered Giftcards.com brand and creative strategy perspective by identifying opportunities via competitive, comparator and adjacency deep dive marketplace and cultural analysis leveraging primary research as well as Mintel, eMarketer, Forrester, Statista and First Data insights.

• Distilled learnings into Giftcards.com's “Future of Gifting” CX and tech strategy, offering a transformative customer experience roadmap that facilitates interactive, contextual gifting through a data-driven ecosystem. This approach taps into customer motivations to drive behavior change, making gift card exchanges more meaningful.

• Conducted a comprehensive analysis of the financial services industry, identifying key trends across the ‘4Cs' (category, consumer, culture, and competition), and presented findings to Hero Digital’s Steering Committee.

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Cashmere Agency, Los Angeles, CA, Brand Strategy and Audience Insights Lead, 2018 – 2020

Activated multichannel brand strategy, cultural and audience insights and creative development for Amazon, Fuse, Google, HBO, LEGO and Netflix as well as driving winning pitch and subsequent AOR projects for BMW, DoorDash, Foot Locker, SheaMoisture, Spotify and Ubisoft. 

• Guided LEGO’s Rebuild The World Experiential Global Strategy by developing audience segmentation and customer journey insights to help shift LEGO from a children’s toy into a New Creative Class brand speaking to builders across all ages, identifying new strategic cultural partnership opportunities including a singular experiential-meets-digital marketing activation at the 2019 LA Auto Show.

• Served as the lead strategist for BMW’S multicultural AOR demand generation growth acquisition of African American, Asian, Latinx and LGBTQ+ audience segments. Delivered creative briefings for diversity demand generation campaigns spanning BMW’s flagship Year End Holiday Campaign, Certified Pre-Owned and Lunar New Year, making extensive use of Experian Velocity, Salesforce Einstein and BMW CRM data to assess Tier 2 regional outreach efforts encompassing digital display, email and social marketing platforms.

• Drove DoorDash’s business goal of establishing its brand as a “the smartest, most culturally attuned food delivery platform” in order to aggressively elevate its brand’s presence across key revenue driving social platforms. Oversaw audience insights and category learnings to define DoorDash customer personas and customer journeys with the goal of keeping DoorDash top of mind by sharing stories about local and national-scale food partners.​

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INNOCEAN USA, Huntington Beach, CA, Senior Brand Strategist, 2016 – 2017

Led Hyundai’s client Brand Innovation Workshop spanning competitive audits, innovation case studies and ideation sessions.

• Crafted brand communication plans and creative briefings for Hyundai’s flagship Elantra, Sonata, Kona and Ioniq vehicle launches, working with analytic teams to align customer journey objectives.

• Shaped the marketing communication plan for Hyundai’s “Hope on Wheels”, Hyundai’s pediatric cancer charity, by defining the key challenges and opportunities to break through to prospective givers, capturing the authentic moment when cancer researchers unexpectedly meet families with children whose lives have been saved by their work, becoming the most socially loved and shared content in Hyundai’s brand history.

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Digital Kitchen, Culver City, CA, Strategist, 2015 – 2016 

Crafted Califia Farms remarkable “is good and does good” brand story for visionary founder Greg Steltenpohl, emphasizing the fastest growing socially responsible natural beverage brand’s California grower-owned history, eco-friendly production and innovative packaging design.

• Developed Califia Farms’s annual marketing plan and communication principles, event and experiential marketing framework to help activate its Millennial loyalist community base.

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