Director of Creative, Experiences
Dear Netflix Hiring Team,
Thank you for visiting.
In the spirit of show, don’t tell, I invite you to ride shotgun in my metaphorical DeLorean.
We are going back through my career, on a trip that I’m certain will show you why I am a great candidate for this role.
Plutonium chamber? Full. Flux capacitor? Fluxing. 88mph here we come…
What you need from me:
Demonstrated, 12+ years of creative design experience
in the LBE industry:
My experiential creative career kicked off in 2008.
I was one half of the creative team that came up with Gig in the Sky. A groundbreaking, Guinness-World-Record-busting event that had Jamiroquai performing live at 30,000ft.
As the final notes of Space Cowboy played, I knew I would be hooked on this medium for the rest of my career.
Over the last 17 years, I’ve had the privilege of creating a lot of location based entertainment experiences for brands like Target, AT&T, Lego, Taylor Swift, Bacardi and Sonic (amongst many others), at events like MLS All-Star, AT&T Cowboys Stadium, The Super Bowl, NBA All-Star, Daytona 500, Bonnaroo, Live Nation, and several that have toured nationally and internationally.
In every example presented. I led the project from ideation through to final execution, and managed the team of Strategists, Creatives, and Designers that delivered it.
What you need from me:
Strong experience in art direction, concept design, environmental design, graphic design and/or creative direction:
These traits are best demonstrated by walking through a few projects together.
To understand my methodology, let’s start with a project I led for Bacardi. The challenge was to figure out an experience that could tour all the Bacardi sponsored summer music festivals.
I always like to start with an idea. In this case, that idea was born from the question of how can we give festival goers a more relaxed, comfier and intimate space to escape to? Somewhere they could feel at home, and experience the brand simultaneously.
The House Party idea was born.
[Click Right Below] From there, we sketched out the overall floor plan, brainstorming the customer journey, areas for dwell time, and the various experiences we wanted to include.
Then the project moves into design.
[Click Right Below] We’ve had the idea, but what’s it going to look like? What kind of house are we building? We know that it needs to travel, so are we using the best materials for that? [Click Right Below] Have we considered how it looks during the day versus the mood we want to create at night?
[Click Right Below] Then we move into the details of each space. The aesthetic, the exact experience, how it can amplify across social and digital channels, and the ‘surprise and delight’ moments we are creating.
This is an example of my typical process, within which you can see how and when Creative Direction, as well as concept, graphic and environmental design, all play their part.
I have also done many successful experiences where I’ve had to adapt or integrate with an existing technology or installation.
The Pose with the Pros experience at the AT&T Cowboy’s Stadium is a good example of that. As title sponsor, AT&T get a lot of media assets in and around the stadium. One of these assets was a bank of screens at the east entrance to the stadium.
These screens had traditionally been used for nothing more than digital advertising. We were tasked with finding a way to use these screens that would ‘demonstrate the power of AT&T’s new 5G network’.
The idea:
No one comes to the Cowboys Stadium to hear about network speeds. So we improved on AT&T’s brief and suggested that maybe they could leverage their technology to give fans something of real value: a selfie with their favorite Cowboy’s players.
Pose with the Pros saw us completely disassemble and rebuild these screens so that a new AR concept design could be installed. See the case study video below for the full experience.
Graphic design and Creative Direction are skills I’ve been honing for the best part of two decades.
When called to show specific examples, I like to showcase the Stillhouse experience at the Daytona 500.
Stillhouse is whisky packaged in what looks like a metal oil can, and designed to be taken where glass cannot go. The brand is the embodiment of Americana. Rugged images of the outdoors complimented with illustrations of eagles, bears and wild horses.
But up until my team got to it, the brand had only existed graphically. We needed to translate that imagery into real world design, installations and props.
At Daytona we delivered: the pit crew style staff uniforms, the retro gas pump serving up whisky shots, the toolbox style cooler, the red cup shot glasses. Every detail was carefully considered so that customers would be able to see, touch, smell and feel the essence of the Stillhouse brand.
What you need from me:
A portfolio of diverse and different project types showcasing a desire to try out new things:
Creating an intimate fan experience for Swifties
Taylor Swift NOW was a new video experience created exclusively by DirectTV and Taylor. The Video On Demand content was organized in 13 themed chapters, and showcased videos, concert performances, behind-the-scenes footage and more from the Taylor Swift archives.
The challenge was making sure her fanbase knew about it.
So we created an invitation-only experience and extended it to 240 of Taylor’s biggest fans. We brought the platform to life by creating a variety of unforgettable moments and immersive experiences that super fans would have to share, including a one-on-one meet and greet with Taylor herself.
By the end of the NYC and LA experiences we had over 77.8 million social impressions, 20k social mentions and 1k in new DirectTV Now subscriptions.
An escape from the cold of a Super Bowl hosted in Minnesota
Target has a very clear brand expression in retail and marketing communications, but up until we created Bullseye Lodge, not much direction existed on how the brand translates into an experience.
With the Super Bowl being held in Target’s hometown, they needed a space to host the ultimate welcome. This presented a really fun creative challenge. How do we take the Target brand values and translate them into an experience? What does warm and inviting mean as an aesthetic?
The Bullseye Lodge was our answer. A cozy space that was a seamless blend of hangout, retail and content creation.
Every aspect of design, materials, finish and experiences was curated to deliver the ultimate expression of this iconic brand’s values and origins.
Lego VIDIYO BeatBit Studio Tour
BeatBits was a new Lego toy with a music-making component developed in partnership with the Universal Music Group. It was a complicated product that could only be truly understood when played with. So we were tasked with taking it on the road.
Our idea was simple: let’s scale up the BeatBits toy to life size so that kids and adults can get totally immersed in it. We recreated statues of the lead characters which doubled as photo opps. We made a studio space where the tiles that unlock all the different in-app effects could be sampled. And we created two oversized digital screens where customer’s final videos could be viewed, saved and shared.
The experience travelled through Salt Lake City, Denver, NYC, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Mexico City.
Trying something new at Pebble Beach
AT&T’s Loft at Pebble Beach is the jewel in the crown of AT&T’s Golf Sponsorship portfolio.
I worked on this experience every year for five years. While the design of the Loft space was permanent, the interior elements were refreshed year on year.
In 2023, we were tasked with coming up with a fun way of highlighting the connectivity speed of AT&T Fiber to guests and golf fans. Using three repurposed Golf carts, we created Speed Caddie; an arcade-style racing game that let’s drivers tear around a virtual golf course at high-speed.
The game objective was simple: get Jordan Spieth and Maverick McNealy’s golf bags to the first tee before time runs out. A Mario Kart style experience ensued with hazards like strong winds, rough terrain, and other obstacles designed to slow you down. Of all the different touchpoints created over the years at the AT&T Loft this is a great example of invigorating an experience by trying something totally different.
Announcing Target’s partnership with the MLS
We developed the MLS All-Star Game Rally to get fans and local Chicagoans psyched for game day. Located in the heart of Michigan Avenue, the event was an all-day fan festival featuring MLS player appearances, on-site customized apparel, local Chicago food trucks, Bullseye the Dog and much more.
As night fell on Chicago, the space transitioned into spectacle. Guests stepped up to a penalty kick challenge, taking aim at moving Bullseye targets on an LED wall. With each shot, the iconic Tribune Tower reacted in real-time with hit or miss animations that brought the crowd below to a frenzy, and told all attendees that Target was here to play.
What you need from me:
Strong knowledge of digital design tools. Demonstrated illustration skills, and/or ability to draw spatial layouts/elevations:
I have a strong ability to sketch out spatial layouts and design space.
However, throughout my career, I have always worked with environmental designers to create renders and elevations.
For example, I will do several pencil sketches of a space.
Those sketches would provide direction on floor plan, layout, customer journey and any other specifics needed. Invariably these sketches are accompanied with a moodboard of design references and materials.
The environmental designers in my team would then turn those assets into basic layouts of the space, as below.
In my experience, this is the most efficient approach to Experiential work, because creating these visuals is the most time-consuming part of a project. As a Creative Director, I am never doing less than three projects simultaneously, so spatial layouts and elevations are best handled by dedicated team members freeing me up to work on other client assignments.
I am also accustomed to being onsite to ensure that design theory is being translated into executional reality.
Thank you!
I appreciate you reading this far. I have also submitted a resumé that talks to my other qualifications that would suit this role.
I would welcome the opportunity to speak with you if, after reading this, you feel I would be a strong candidate for this position or others within Netflix.
Yours,
Marcos