Ryan
Henry

The challenge

Apple TV+ was already available in Norway but had no presence on Telenor's T-We platform, one of the country's largest MVPD ecosystems. T-We uses a choice-bundle model where customers select at least three services each month, so Apple TV+ had to be compelling enough to be picked over competing options.

Apple and Telenor agreed to a multi-year subscriber acquisition commitment that scales year over year. The launch had to drive enough sign-ups to hit those contractual milestones from day one.

The strategy

The promotion was built around the choice-bundle dynamic. Subscribers re-select services every month, so the marketing had to give them a reason to pick Apple TV+ and keep picking it, not just announce availability.

The five-title slate led with proven franchises that already had Nordic awareness (Severance, The Morning Show, Slow Horses). Newer originals (Chief of War, Fountain of Youth) broadened genre appeal beyond drama. Placements were mapped to the highest-visibility positions on T-We's site and interface, timed to the moments subscribers make their monthly selections.

My role

• Global lead for partner communications: set promotional strategy for 10–15 partner campaigns a quarter across MVPD, finance, retail and carrier segments, aligned with the Apple TV+ Brand Team and the Geo Partner Communications Managers in every major region before campaigns went live.
• Helped select the five-title promotional slate with TV+ Strategy, balancing genre breadth against appeal to Telenor's Nordic subscriber base.
• Co-built the content calendar and asset delivery plan: which titles ran when, and in which T-We placements.
• Ran intake, versioning and delivery of localized creative toolkits for 15+ markets in Airtable, a standardized framework that gave regional partner teams clear visibility into approved assets, versions and readiness.
• Coordinated asset specs and creative delivery so banners, promotional imagery and co-branded materials met both Apple's brand standards and Telenor's technical requirements.
• Managed the review process across four internal teams with different priorities and approval gates, against a firm launch date.

Execution

Localized creative toolkits shipped on schedule across owned, on-platform and co-branded assets tailored to T-We's placement specs. The content calendar sustained visibility past the initial launch window, with title features timed to premiere dates and seasonal viewing patterns.

The challenge

Final Fantasy XVI was the most accessible entry in franchise history, but the franchise carried a perception problem: most non-players assumed they needed years of Final Fantasy experience to enjoy it. PlayStation and Square Enix needed to reach beyond the core JRPG audience and drive awareness among the 86M action-RPG gamers in key launch markets, most of whom had never touched a Final Fantasy title.

The strategy

Instead of marketing to existing fans, the campaign used professional athletes as unexpected voices for one message: you don't need to know Final Fantasy to love this game.

Eight athletes across the NFL, NCAA women's basketball, WWE, Olympic gymnastics, F1, the Premier League, the Bundesliga and the Women's Super League were paired to showcase unexpected connections. The range of sport, gender, race and geography was itself the message: FF16 is for everyone. Athletes got real time with the game before filming, and their authentic reactions became the foundation of the content.

My role

• PlayStation-side campaign lead and central point of coordination between PlayStation, Square Enix and creative agency Rebel Ventures.
• Briefed Rebel Ventures on objectives and supplied brand assets for creative development.
• Helped define the athlete-as-influencer strategy, built on the insight that 3 in 5 action-RPG gamers are also sports fans.
• Curated the final roster of 8 athletes across 6 markets from Rebel's recommended list, balancing reach (31.2M combined following), geographic coverage and brand alignment.
• Attended production shoots to protect creative quality and brand consistency.
• Ran the multi-stakeholder creative review across PlayStation, Square Enix and Rebel Ventures on tight timelines.

Execution

Thirty-nine custom content pieces were produced and distributed across Instagram (12 posts, 8 stories), TikTok (9 posts), YouTube (7 posts), Facebook (2 posts) and Twitter (1 post), spanning athlete, PlayStation and Final Fantasy channels. The media team managed paid amplification through dark posts to extend organic reach.

The challenge

FF16 was PlayStation's highest-priority third-party title of 2023. I was tasked with building an owned-channel strategy sophisticated enough to reach FF16's audience across the full purchase and play lifecycle, and with aligning Square Enix on a CRM methodology they had not navigated at this scale within the PlayStation ecosystem. Every send needed cross-functional coordination and external publisher approval.

The strategy

The program ran across four CRM formats: dedicated newsletters built around FF16 key beats; brand newsletters where FF16 earned inclusion alongside the wider PlayStation portfolio; lifecycle trigger emails tied to individual player behavior; and Asia Quarterly newsletters coordinated with regional publishing partners.

Each format had a job. Dedicated sends created tentpole moments at launch, pre-order and post-launch. Brand newsletters extended reach. Lifecycle triggers kept players engaged after purchase. Asia Quarterly reinforced momentum with regional messaging.

Five triggers mapped to FF16's game structure: Welcome (Day 1 owners), Upsell (Day 7, PS5 bundle), Lapsed (Day 90 without story completion), End of Game (main storyline complete) and Platinum Trophy (achievement unlock).

My role

• Strategic lead for FF16's CRM and lifecycle program, working across Analytics, Lifecycle Marketing, Creative, Regional teams and Square Enix.
• Developed the overarching CRM strategy: cadence, channel mix and audience targeting for the full campaign window.
• Selected lifecycle trigger criteria from PlayStation's existing CRM framework, mapped each to a moment in the player journey, and presented the methodology to Square Enix for alignment.
• Oversaw asset development and copy for every send so each met PlayStation brand standards and Square Enix approval requirements.
• Ran the review process across five internal teams and an external publisher, keeping 18 executions on schedule through pre-launch, launch and post-launch.

Execution

FF16 received 18 CRM inclusions across the campaign window, the most of any first-party or third-party title in the PS5 era: 3 dedicated newsletters, 7 brand newsletters, 5 lifecycle triggers and 3 Asia Quarterly newsletters. Every execution needed coordinated asset delivery, copy review and approval across PlayStation and Square Enix.

The challenge

The Walt Disney Studios releases the highest-profile theatrical slate in the industry, with per-title digital budgets of $12M–$15M. Every release competes in a crowded holiday corridor against shifting platform behavior. The challenge: build digital strategies that cut through clutter and reach the right audiences at the right moment across 16 titles, three mega-franchises and two stints on the account (2015–2017 and 2019–2022).

The strategy

The Rise of Skywalker digital plan ($12.46M, 37% of pre-open budget) shows the rigor applied across the slate. Programmatic targeting ran in three priority tiers from high-intent fans to broad demo, plus a ticketing tier built on Fandango/Atom conversion data. Mobile/tablet allocation hit 59%, the highest in franchise history, to match holiday behavior. Social reached 35% of spend with first-to-market Facebook Messenger integration and marquee Twitter placements. Tentpole surrounds layered across the World Series, Monday Night Football, Thanksgiving NFL, the AMAs and The Game Awards.

My role

• Promoted three times: Planner, Senior Planner, Supervisor, Associate Director. Left in 2018 to build a Direct Buys practice at Operam and was rehired in 2019 at a higher level.
• Built and ran digital media plans across the Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar and Walt Disney Animation slates.
• Managed and mentored a rotating team of 12 planners, improving team performance metrics by 25%.
• Negotiated FY22 digital Upfronts across 25+ partners and publishers, realigning inventory to film objectives and cutting upfront cost allocations 15% year over year.
• Directed audience and optimization strategy in daily and weekly cycles with social and activation teams, aligning targeting, creative rotation and budget shifts to live performance.
• Served as the primary client-facing liaison for strategic leadership, turning title updates into direction and guiding the team through troubleshooting across campaign cycles.
• Managed $190M+ in digital media across 16 titles ($12M–$15M each) spanning social, video, programmatic, search, FEP and high-impact placements.
• Benchmarked every allocation against franchise comp titles to justify budget shifts and platform mix changes.
• Operated under Disney's brand safety standards: human-vetted whitelists, weekly DCM scrubs and YouTube exclusion filters on every IO.

Execution

16 titles across Star Wars (Force Awakens, Rogue One, Rise of Skywalker), Marvel (Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Avengers: Endgame), Pixar (Coco, Toy Story 4, Onward, Luca, Turning Red), Disney Animation (Zootopia, Raya, Encanto) and Disney Live Action (The BFG, Pete's Dragon).

The challenge

Kadokawa's Winter 2025 slate had six titles at very different lifecycle stages: Re:ZERO Season 3, a returning flagship with 525.8K global social mentions; Trillion Game, a growing seinen title with high expectations but 19% negative sentiment around adaptation concerns; and four newer or niche IPs with small social footprints, some under 5K mentions globally.

The challenge went past awareness. It was a cohesive seasonal strategy that gave each title its own identity while using the Kadokawa brand as a collective draw across the Crunchyroll flywheel.

The strategy

The framework worked on three levels. Brand: “New Year, New Worlds” positioned Crunchyroll as the definitive winter anime destination. Audience: titles were tiered as Returning Hits (win-back and retention), High-Potential New Shows (awareness and discovery) and New Audience Targets (first-time subscriber acquisition and genre cultivation), each with its own KPIs. Culture: the creative leaned into anime's move into mainstream entertainment through music, gaming and fashion, grounding the campaign in a cultural moment rather than pure product marketing.

My role

• Strategic bridge between Kadokawa and Crunchyroll's internal teams.
• Owned global title marketing for the Kadokawa slate from Summer 2024 through Winter 2025. Authored seasonal campaign briefs covering positioning, audience segmentation, creative direction and KPI goals for each title, built from CDI research, historical SVOD performance and social listening.
• Led the “New Year, New Worlds” positioning, a modular creative framework giving each title its own hook (“The New Year is for Resilience,” “The New Year is for New Goals”) under one seasonal identity.
• Presented the strategy to Kadokawa stakeholders for approval and alignment.
• Coordinated Social, News/Editorial, Lifecycle Marketing, Curation, PR and Paid Media so every tactic ladders up to title-specific objectives.
• Directed mid-flight optimization from Tableau insights on audience behavior and live campaign performance to sustain 60% weekly retention in tune-in windows.
• Led 3 seasonal post-mortems across two Kadokawa slates, coordinating reporting across all six channel teams and presenting results to Kadokawa stakeholders.

Execution

The O&O media strategy covered Crunchyroll's whole owned ecosystem: social (custom video, 24+ in-season posts per priority title, Discord), editorial, lifecycle (IP spotlight emails, push, in-app messaging, WhatsApp, content cards), curation (hero carousels, a Kadokawa content hub, catch-up and finale collections), PR (slate announcements, launch and finale tune-in) and paid media. Every touchpoint was tailored to the title's themes and audience tier.