Bite-Sized Case Studies in Creative Problem Solving
I’ve always seen myself not just as a problem solver, but as a problem identifier. Across my career in product management, growth marketing, and digital media, I’ve consistently been the one to recognize issues early and address them with creative, efficient solutions. Whether facing challenges for clients or internal teams, I’ve built a reputation as the go-to person when things start to go off track. What follows is a collection of real problems I’ve tackled—how I approached them, the strategies I used, and the impact they had.
🎟️ Revving Up Global Ticket Sales for an MMA Event
Problem: Digital ticket sales for a high-profile UFC event in Singapore were underperforming, despite the event’s global appeal.
Solution: Developed tailored messaging and collaborated with an external creative team to reach affluent MMA fans in key U.S. DMAs (NYC, SF, LA), encouraging international travel and premium ticket purchases.
Result: The campaign drove over $250K in ticket sales on a $50K media budget—delivering a 5:1 return on ad spend (ROAS).
💊 Building Measurement Maturity for a Pharma Client
Problem: A pharmaceutical client lacked foundational knowledge about media performance, which limited their ability to evaluate campaign effectiveness or make data-driven decisions.
Solution: Collaborated with the internal strategy team to present a clear, digestible measurement framework—supported by sample data from brands in adjacent indications. Leveraged industry research to benchmark performance and revise the marketing mix accordingly.
Result: The client embraced the new framework, approved tactical adjustments, and with renewed focus, the campaign saw a 20% increase in high-value actions (HVAs) within one month.
🏟️ Making the Case for an MMA Event in Spain
Problem: The internal sales and facilities teams wanted to pitch Spain as a host country for a major UFC event—but lacked the market data and financial rationale to support their proposal.
Solution: Independently built a comprehensive report analyzing 20 years of UFC events in new international markets, including ticket pricing, venue capacity, local demographics, and market performance. Cross-referenced this with historical financial and viewership trends to identify optimal Spanish cities, event timing, and pricing strategy.
Result: The sales team was blown away by the depth and clarity of the report, and used it to confidently pitch the Spain proposal to the UFC.
🔭 Driving Off-Season Traffic for a Seattle Observatory
Problem: Sky View Observatory was struggling to attract visitors during the cruise off-season, leading to a sharp drop in ticket sales.
Solution: Partnered with TripAdvisor to source a list of cruise attendees from the past year. Collaborated with business engineering to define audience attributes, identify persistent consumer behaviors, and build lookalike segments for targeting. Developed a go-to-market strategy tailored to off-season travel patterns.
Result: Sky View Observatory reported a rapid increase in digital and foot traffic, with ticket sales rising 31% over the following 3 months.
❄️ Creating “Winter in July” for Cirque du Soleil’s Ice Show
Problem: Cirque du Soleil’s traveling ice show, CRYSTAL, had its tour dates in Australia cancelled and relocated to North America. No longer in a market that was in its winter season, sales struggled.
Solution: Worked with creative teams to create “Winter in July” messaging. Ignored conventional wisdom and leaned heavily into winter consumer behavior due to the quality and nature of the show. Reached out to specific venues to discuss how they were attracting consumers for other ice-based shows and events.
Result: Digital revenue for the show ended 17% above target for the initial tour location, with ticket sale volume scaling positively as well.
🚕 Conference Domination for a Pre-Launch Pharma Brand
Problem: A pharmaceutical company needed to boost awareness for a soon-to-be FDA-approved drug ahead of a key healthcare conference—but faced limited time and a saturated media environment.
Solution: Pitched and executed a multi-touchpoint campaign that included Uber-journey ads targeting physicians en route to the event, hyper-local LinkedIn ads focused on the conference location, and post-event retargeting to maintain top-of-mind awareness.
Result: The campaign tripled industry benchmark CTRs, with continued on-site actions from conference attendees rolling in for months after the event.
⚙️ Automating NPI List Management for Pharma Campaigns
Problem: Manually parsing, segmenting, and uploading NPI lists to our DSP had become a time-consuming, error-prone process—slowing down campaign execution for pharmaceutical clients.
Solution: Partnered with business intelligence and data engineering teams to build an automated pipeline in Snowflake, which ingested, processed, and pushed segmented NPI lists directly to the DSP via API.
Result: List management became fully automated, significantly increasing update frequency, improving accuracy, and eliminating human error from the process.
