CarMax
Integrated Marketing
Multi-channel campaigns · Digital · Social · Streaming TV · Out-of-home · Brand consistency
Context: Integrated marketing requires more than adapting a single idea across different formats. The creative direction has to remain recognizable while responding to the specific behavior and role of each channel. I worked within that challenge to develop cohesive CarMax marketing creative across touchpoints, including scrolling through social media, watching streaming shows, passing by billboards, or browsing online.
Challenge: A brand-awareness idea has to survive translation across wildly different channels — the same concept living as a fifteen-second streaming TV spot, a scroll-stopping social post, a static out-of-home board, and a suite of digital ad sizes. Each format pulls the work in a different direction, and without a disciplined approach, the brand can end up looking like several different companies. The goal was a campaign system that stayed recognizably one voice from the biggest screen to the smallest ad unit.
My role: I developed and refined creative concepts, produced campaign creative across channels, and served as the point person to keep the brand voice consistent as the work adapted to each format.
Approach: I started with the central brand idea, then considered how composition, motion, messaging, and visual hierarchy could change depending on the audience and channel. This allowed the campaign to feel connected without becoming mechanically repetitive.
Channel Ecosystem & Working with Marketing Partners
The channel ecosystem spanned the full awareness funnel: passive out-of-home and streaming TV for broad reach, paid social and digital display for targeted frequency, and audio/CTV placements — like the Roku and GumGum units built for the tax-season campaign — for context-specific moments.
Holding one campaign together across that range meant working closely with CarMax’s marketing and media-planning teams on audience targeting and flight timing — for example, defining and creatively representing the “Purposeful Explorer” buyer persona for the NYC launch — and directing outside agency and ad-tech partners on execution, so the creative translated correctly into each partner’s specific ad units and technical specs.
Outcome: A flexible brand system reused across three very different moments below, without rebuilding from scratch each time.
NYSE Brand
Concept development · Digital · Motion graphics · Agency direction
On October 10, 2023, CarMax celebrated its 30th anniversary by ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, an event that was broadcast live to a national audience on CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN Business, and FOX Business. This significant visibility entrusted the creative team with a crucial task: to convey three decades of CarMax’s story in a powerful brand statement.
I took the lead on the branding for this milestone, designing it around abstract shapes layered to create depth, all set against CarMax's signature light blue for striking contrast. The concept focused on the company's heritage, values, and innovation — the ongoing thread that connects thirty years of achievement — and was anchored by a tagline that encapsulated the anniversary spirit, perfectly tailored for this public-relations moment.
NYC Market Launch
Integrated campaign · OOH · Digital · Paid social
CarMax has 220+ stores nationwide but had never opened near New York City — which meant most New Yorkers had no idea who the brand was. As CarMax launched its first stores in the tri-state area, the challenge was introducing a brand nobody knew to millions of skeptical, media-savvy New Yorkers, and doing it in a way that felt genuinely local rather than like an out-of-towner arriving uninvited.
The strategy embraced this unfamiliarity as a source of intrigue, promoting CarMax as the "greatest car-buying experience you've never had — until now." Instead of a generic rollout, the campaign presented CarMax as a fresh alternative for the city — a modern way to buy and sell cars, contrasting sharply with the traditional methods New Yorkers already knew. I developed the creative elements across two distinct tracks: a neighborhood-focused "NYC GO" initiative designed to create a powerful presence through out-of-home advertising, digital platforms, paid social media, and audio channels — all underscoring the message “Now Open” and bringing to life the reasons to believe in CarMax's vision of "Car Buying Reimagined."
Throughout, the work was built to earn the trust of the Purposeful Explorer — buyers who research, ask around, and want to be supported rather than sold to — and to represent the real, multicultural diversity of the city through its casting and creative choices. The goal wasn't just awareness; it was to make CarMax memorable enough to stay top of mind for the moment someone was finally ready to buy.
