BJ's Wholesale Club, Inc.
Brand Development and Omnichannel Marketing
Leading the creation of BJ's Wholesale Spring 2023 Campaign
The creative director tasked me with leading a team of three designers and two writers to develop the look and feel of our 2023 spring marketing across all channels.
Based on expressed interest during the initial meeting I delegated the tasks needed to build our department a great toolkit for the Spring season. Everything must still be BJ's Wholesale and work with the Absurdly Simple Savings campaign.
One idea I contributed was implementing a secondary ADA compliant color set for use on copy over pastel backgrounds. Prior to this, we only used black on pastels, but I felt the contrast was too harsh for spring. Every 360 since has added this sub set as part of the toolkit. It was well received, from the CD to the designers using it.
Presenting the campaign to the marketing team
Once the CD gave final approval of the Spring 360 campaign, I presented it to the creative teams in our weekly stand up, walking them through the thought process and taking questions. It was a hybrid presentation in person with video participants.
Social Media Animated Ads
To improve engagement, I animated social media ads. In the above examples, I utilized the motion graphs in After Effects to apply a playful rhythm to the text that is remniscent of a car accelerating and stopping, and implement traditional animation principles to add appeal to the motion of the orange.
Social Media Animation Process
Social media animations are built as a single AE file containing compositions for all social media sizes. Precomps can be moved to fit each aspect ratio and the entire set can be exported at once. Edits made within the main composition and to elements automatically update in all final social media asset compositions, improving accuracy and minimizing workload.
For the best collaboration with writers and asset reusability, all copy is editable. There are faster ways to achieve these animations by converting text to outlines, but I find it is more beneficial to design the most usable, practical assets possible. Not only does it personally save me time when copy edits come through, but it makes picking up the file seamless for team members.
Like when writing code, I always build my animation projects with intention to make life easy for both my future self and my team. Every asset is clearly labeled and sorted, and important project notes are put right into the timeline for instant reference. Precompositions are nested logically so grabbing an asset to drag into another file will bring all necessary assets with it. Nobody should have to waste time trying to figure out how a project was built.
Email Marketing
My primary responsibility for two years at BJ's Wholesale was designing responsive Emails. My team sent 333 million total promotional emails to 5.6 million members over Holiday 2021 alone, driving nearly 5 million in sales with above-retail-average open rates at 27%. This same season we were challenged by an unexpectedly slow black friday and cyberweek market. The executives called for a hard and fast digital strategy pivot, and we delivered.
One of my emails was explicitly called out by the Chief Merchandising Officer: "...super impressive work on behalf of your team, [EVP Membership]. The ask was to call out both the great value and the [Buy Now, Pay Later] - and they pulled it off superbly." This email became the new standard by which we designed going forward.
Holiday Email Pivot
Transition to Adobe Campaign and Personalized Content
I was part of the team leading a massive transition to Adobe Campaign Manager, Moveable Ink, and personalization as a keystone to our new email marketing strategy. Building on the momentum of our now permanent changes from the holiday pivot, 2022 and 2023 saw major overhauls.
Reviewing Vendor Creative and Providing Direction
One of my day-to-day responsibilities is reviewing paid ads from our vendors to ensure they meet our brand guidelines, as well as provide art direction. This includes email ads and print ads. Once up to snuff, I approve the creative and upload to our server.
BJ's Coupon Collection and Smart Saver books
Through a large collabortion with multiple teams, merchants and project managers, these highly profitable mailers and in-club pick up coupon books drive big sales. My role is designing the coupons, the creative headline banners with a writer, the cover, and even the more technical (and critical) creation of the barcodes and laying out the dielines for perforations.
Above is a short animation I made touring one of my Coupon Collections. They tend to be less than 20 pages. The Smart Saver is over 50 pages, and include building a digital version which we email members.
Coding Responsive Campaign Landing Pages
Designing within a frame in our website, I code the HTML and CSS (utilizing Bootstrap) for promotional landing pages after the designs are completed by other teams.
Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns
An example of a cross-platform digital and print campaign. This particular omnichannel campaign was advertising our 2X Perks points earned promotion.
Bringing Vendor Collateral up to our Brand Standards
Vendor artwork was provided to us for approval and we determined it would be more effective for us to redesign the 3-fold brochure ourselves than provide guidance to the vendor. I collaborated with a senior writer, who merged redundant copy and refined value props.
When selecting stock imagery for the piece, I researched the target demographic and determined that embarrassment over having to ask people to repeat themselves and not being able to hear phone conversations was a top reason to seek assistance with hearing. So I chose an image that reflected how the intended audience may like to envision themselves; classy and enjoying a phone conversation with ease.
Data Visualization: to help the viewer understand in a glance just how much of the human hearing range they were losing at each step without aids, I created a simple bar graph. This visualization has an instant impact vs listing the data points in copy.
This single piece is a great example of the difference an experienced designer can make in conversion.
Grand Opening Postcards
Vehicle Wraps
HTML5 Animated Banner Ads (full sets of standard web sizes)
Spotify Banner Ads
Grand Opening Omnichannel Marketing
Before BJ's built a dedicated team to work on Grand Opening campaigns, I worked with the Director of Creative Services to tailor our marketing for the new Long Island City, Newburgh, and Seabrook clubs. This covered an array of touchpoints including postcards, bus wraps, bus shelter signage, billboards, gas toppers, HTML5 banner ads, Spotify ad spots, and more.
Standard-sized promotional print signs
Not all promotional graphics were produced by vendors. Sometimes time was of the essence, or a promotion was very short, and it simply made more sense to have supporting signage printed in-club. These were often seasonally themed and needed to match existing omnichannel marketing campaigns to keep the complete customer experience at all touchpoints consistent visually.
Promotional In-club Signage
From large hanging banners and stanchion signs, to optical brand placards and promotional price tags, I designed a lot of in-club signage.
From Blueprints to Branded References
Three Month Club Map Project Completed Over a Month Early
This was the project I was initially contracted to complete for BJ's Wholesale Club, through Beacon Hill Staffing. I created templates and some export automations to dramatically decrease the process of creating over 230 club map PNGs. It would have been finished even earlier, but I enjoyed jumping in on other projects as I saw opportunities arise. This allowed me to meet people all over the organization and gain a better understanding of how the individual teams fit together within the company.
This project is still under my wing, and I have some big ideas for the future I will work with digital on, but for now it is functional, consistent, and usable.
Thank you.
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