NHKA Racing Series

This website, in conjunction with email and Facebook page, keep racers engaged the 357 days we’re not at the track.

Ad announcing the addition of a new engine and range of classes.

The NHKA Racing Series is a New Hampshire go-karting club for which I do all the marketing. And when I say all, I do mean all: writing, design and maintenance of the website; PR and social media; photography and videography; sponsor promotions; design and production of brochures, fliers, postcards, ads, forms, banners, trophies, and apparel; development and writing of rules; conceptualization of the brand and consistent expression of its elements: logo, typography, palette, voice and photo-illustrations.

When I started, the NHKA was on the brink of collapse with events that drew only a few dozen drivers. Today it is one of the largest and fastest growing local clubs in the country. Its events now regularly draw hundreds of people—more than many national-level events.

At times I participate in strategic business planning, like the transformation of our relationship with our nearest competitor from combative to collaborative. By syncing-up rules and offsetting schedules so racers could participate in both series, we increased our attendance by 25%, turning an arch rival into a source of new customers.

While I’m very satisfied with what we’ve achieved as a business, what makes me most proud is the fantastic community we built. Men, women, boys and girls of all ages and nationalities from all walks of life with a shared passion. My faith in humanity is restored at nearly every event by some act of sportsmanship, connection or caring…

A girl, who just finished on the podium for the first time, soaking in a lifetime of confidence from her normally reserved Dad who is hugging her and positively beaming with joy and pride.

A mom struggling to change her son’s tires. She’s sweating and frustrated, but determined.

A guy in his 40s who wants to find out if there’s been a race driver inside him his whole life. Win or lose, he’s having the time of his life and making new friends for the first time in years.

A father and son wrenching on their karts and exchanging ideas. He’s 13 years old and has better collaboration skills than many adults.

Racers deciding to hold a raffle for a competitor diagnosed with cancer. At the banquet, club members give more than $6,000 in just a few hours, and $15,000 over two years.

A community with this level of cohesion doesn't happen often, and certainly doesn’t happen on its own. Here’s the kicker: The club only hosts eight live events per year. The other 357 days, it’s all about communication and keeping the members connected to each other and the racing life they love.

Day at the Track Pamphlet

There’s a lot to learn to start racing. I’ve written a pile of content to help make it easier for new racers to join the fun.

Facebook Page

With only eight races a year, social media is a critical tool for keeping members informed and engaged.

Press Release

When the club gets attention from the national karting press, the pride of our members goes up and so do our entries.

Driving Suit

We designed a driving suit as a cross promotion with our title sponsor.

Event Promotion

With so few races, we’re always building unique reasons to attend into each event to maximize turnout.

T-Shirt Design

NHKA racers’ pride in their club has made it necessary to run multiple printings of these t-shirts.

Ad for Online and Display

Neighbor relations is critical in motorsports promotion. This online ad for the town website (also printed for display) invites people who live near the track to come see a race and give it a try.

Psst! Rollover images for a project description, click to read the copy.

Patheon

The science and manufacturing processes employed by Patheon are mind-boggling, especially to a guy with a degree in drawing naked people. So I developed a network of experts throughout the company to help me understand the material and context well enough to extract genuine business differentiations and write crisp, persuasive copy for highly sophisticated audiences.

This brochure was part of a campaign that successfully launched the company’s internal collaboration platform.

Patheon offers the global pharma and biopharma industry comprehensive contract development and manufacturing services. Their capabilities span the entire lifecycle of a drug from early development through clinical trials and commercial manufacturing. They bring together a huge range of capabilities under one roof to transform discoveries into viable drugs with game-changing speed.

The more formulations a pharma company can try, the more likely they’ll find one that’ll turn their discovery into a successful drug.

In my five years as a full-time contractor, Patheon exploded from $4.3B to $8.1B in annual revenue. As the company and its breadth of capabilities grew, so did my network. I became the marketing department’s defacto ambassador and the requests for assistance flowed both ways.

Some of those projects were client facing—sharpening presentations, fine tuning proposal packages, editing white papers, ghost writing articles. Other projects improved internal processes and communications. I helped the Voice of the Client team increase engagement. I helped the sales managers deepen Salesforce adoption… a project that informed my department’s marketing automation implementation.

Even though I worked 100% off-site, and these colleagues were scattered throughout the organization and across the world, we had a lot of fun together and worked as a cohesive team.

Patheon.com

I wrote all the core content on this substantial website. Four years and one buyout after I moved on, you’d have found my words still getting the job done.

Print Ad

It takes a stunning amount of resources and know-how to bring a sterile injectable to market. Patheon gives companies access to all of it from a single partner.

Print Ad

Yes, Patheon has all the latest softgel technologies, but more importantly, they have the expertise to formulate difficult discoveries into viable drugs.

Sell Sheet

If a discovery can’t be formulated in a way that the body can absorb, it’s a non-starter. This sell sheet details Patheon's unique service for determining this earlier and faster than ever before.

Booklet

This workbook guided the sales team through a new sales process that more fully engaged Salesforce.

Brochure

This tabulated brochure was a reference guide to help new clients understand the complex processes and key milestones of their projects.

Brochure

Patheon's showpiece corporate overview brochure.

Psst! Rollover images for a project description, click to read the copy.

Highlights

Here are a few key accomplishments and cool experiences
I've been fortunate enough to enjoy.

I helped the Broad Institute, the lab that unlocked the human genome, to build a comprehensive online library of bio-assay research on behalf of the NIH. It has accelerated drug discovery programs around the world.

Pat Townsend was a pioneer in the design and implementation of company-wide quality processes. In addition to writing ads and brochures, I was an editor on his book Five-Star Leadership.

SnakeCharmer – That's the business name I came up with for a guy who removed the venom glands from cobras, rattlers and other dangerous snakes so their adoring owners could hold them without... you know... dying.

My work has been recognized with numerous awards for creative excellence and spotlighted by Print Magazine and Rockport Publishing.

I wrote the marketing materials for a series of events where technology entrepreneurs performed dramatic six-minute demos live on stage for top VCs. These events are where Palm, E-Trade and Jawbone found funding, and how I got to try a handmade smartphone prototype four years before the iPhone launched.

In less than four months, I did all the writing for a complete rebrand of Patheon. This encompassed three websites, every brochure and sell sheet, presentations, email campaigns, and more. We estimated that I wrote about 30,000 words – most of which we’re used for years after their merger with Thermo Fisher Scientific.