Shane is the co-founder of ECOY. Previously, he’s been a Senior Marketing Executive at agencies UTA, The Story Lab, Edelman Digital, and Alldayeveryday.
With an extensive background in entertainment, publishing + cultural development, he specializes in helping brands turn business strategy into messaging strategy, building programs / partnerships at the intersection of creative media, entertainment + physical interaction.
Shane has devised award winning strategies + creative activations for brands such as Cadillac, Samsung, and Alexander Wang.
‘Mavericks with Ari Melber’ on MSNBC
2018 - Present (multiple seasons)
2019 AVA Digital Platinum Award - Cultural Long Form Video Production
‘Mavericks with Ari Melber’ is a first of its kind content IP intersecting true network journalism and brand co-created entertainment. It’s genesis came off the launch of the XT4, Cadillac’s first-ever compact luxury SUV, during which the brand faced unprecedented challenges with millennial consumers. We sought to scale awareness of the XT4 by depicting it amidst a rising cultural context.
I developed and drove a cross-channel partnership with MSNBC and their singular network talent, Ari Melber. With an unprecedented new multi-generational drive to the consumption of primetime journalism, the eyeballs there have never been higher and Ari Melber was at the forefront of shifting the news paradigm, bringing in a fresh, younger audience to MSNBC with a culturally savvy brand of journalism. We built the “Mavericks” platform as an organic, impactful extension of Ari’s world, which Cadillac would be the purveyor of. Performance at a glance - the first season’s episodes ran 3x longer than average videos distributed on MSNBC apps but a month after launch sat as the #1, 2, and 4 ranked videos on the network’s OTT platforms.
‘Hustle’ on Viceland
2019 - Present (S1: airing. S2: in development)
Pushing beyond limits, perseverance and the irrepressible pursuit of greatness defines the way Cadillac identifies with entrepreneurship. ‘Hustle’, a show about empowerment for fearless entrepreneurs and their drive to make it, embodied both the brands ideal and the bold mindset younger millennial audiences inherently gravitate towards, creating a white space for meaningful interaction. In 2019, we co-developed the original series concept with Vice in order to help Cadillac re-assert itself to the network’s primed audience. Our key insight was the existing love Vice viewers had for the Cadillac brand which exceeded levels of its competitive set. In developing ‘Hustle’, we sought to create a new entertainment IP that would invest in this audience and provide a measurable content vehicle to leverage elsewhere in driving brand interest through the show’s promotion.
‘XT4TheDrop’ at ComplexCon
November 2018
Cadillac’s launch of the all-important XT4 crossover demanded an undeniably impactful moment to inject younger audiences with new passion for the brand. The result was a content and experiential engagement activation living at the world’s epicenter of youth culture, ComplexCon. Our program strategy centered on leveraging the event phenomena around singularly unique product “drops”. Cadillac’s presence culminated by partnering with hip hop icon Nas on the mother-of-all-drops, a custom Cadillac chain. We also created a capsule collection with Othelo Gervacio, and built a physical installation on the floor of the convention center with a custom airbrushed XT4 with an iridescent design by Othelo. The experience had lines wrapped around the area to get the merchandise and have a chance to win the chain. We called it XT4THEDROP…and it drove a 3600% increase to XT4’s product page over the event weekend; 91% of the traffic from mobile.
‘Horizon’ at Marfa Film Festival
July 2017 - Marfa Film Festival. Marfa, TX
March 2018 - Cadillac House. New York City
October 2018 - Art Prize. Grand Rapids, MI
Cadillac’s Rear Camera Mirror is an industry first technology that gives drivers a full 180 degree HD feed of the road and vehicles behind them. The brand lagged competitors in its level of association with advanced technology. In 2017, I led a series of partners to develop an art installation, which took the mirrors out of the cars and into the hands of consumers, leveraging the technology in a new way. As the project director, I worked with a group of MIT Robotics Lab Alumni turned artists and the engineers at Gentex Corporation to create HORIZON. Comprised of 200 Rear Camera Mirrors, the immersive installation brought the functionality of Cadillac’s exclusive technology to life at the 2017 Marfa Film Festival in Marfa, TX. The installation acted as a portal into a 3D recreation of Marfa, highlighting the mirror’s ability to provide consumers with a 300% larger field of vision. Working with Interview Magazine to develop unique content for digital, print and social, we elevated the conversation about HORIZON to a wider audience. The activation helped cement Cadillac as not only a leader in innovation, but a true collaborator in the art and design space.
‘Keep Spinning’ at 2017 VMA’s
August 2017
2018 Clio Award Silver - Video Promo Technique
Cadillac has been a fixture in culture for over half a century. Whether in music, film or art the brand has always represented more than just a method of transportation. Cadillac is a mood, a feeling, and soul and in the music world specifically, it’s a defining reference. However, until recently it is a stature the brand had yet to activate against. In 2017, Cadillac looked to re-energize brand health with gen x and y by sponsoring the VMA’s. I leveraged that moment to develop a co-branded custom content execution that would reassert Cadillac’s unmatched role in music culture. “Keep Spinning” was a strategic creative concept highlighting the story of the brand’s icon status as the most lyrically referenced ride in all genres of music, throughout history. With it we pushed the brand back into uncomfortable territory in order to make waves, reconnect with hip hop, and drive relevance and re-appraisal in the process. The execution was the first time the brand engaged in a multi-tiered above the line messaging strategy with traditional brand-led creative positioned next to culturally contextual co-created films. The effort demonstrated the power / ability to tackle several communication goals simultaneously when done with synergistic strategy and creative.
“A Series of Short Journeys”
December 2016 - January 2017
In 2017, Cadillac was in the midst of a massive brand and product turnaround in response to an ongoing struggle to redefine the brand and it’s relevance. With younger audiences in particular, there was a difficulty to create resonance in familiarity both with vehicles best attributes and even their name. However, Cadillac had yet to ever create product content that spoke specifically to younger generations and this gap in perception. Accordingly, I endeavored to create a brand new layer of product narrative, one that Cadillac could lean into and evolve as an ongoing platform of communication and one that would yield an insightfully creative way to tell culturally connecting product stories. ‘Short Journeys’ was launched as a four film series, written and directed by emerging filmmaker Sam DeJong. The series also featured an original 4-track score/ EP. We designed each film to take an individual product feature of Cadillac’s halo vehicles and give it a character role within the story arcs. The result was a series of films that spanned genres and launched a new recurring content IP for Cadillac to lean into during vehicle launches.
The “Connected Series”
Spring 2015
2016 Inaugural Tribeca X Award - Best Branded Content
2015 saw Samsung US in the midst of its quest to build the largest brand followings across all major social channels. Expectedly, the heart of their social strategy was to be part of cultural conversation by empowering emerging social content creators. Looking to take this identity to a deeper more resonant and own-able place, I executive produced a partnership with Vimeo to create the first ongoing platform for storytelling about the evolving relationship of humans and technology. Rather than the brand dictating where technology and society intersected, we allowed the best independent filmmakers to ascribe what that brief conveyed to them. The ‘Connected Series’ was born and defined an ownable space for Samsung to power a conversation that sees thousands of independent books and articles about the topic but no dedicated filmic platform. As the arbiter of social technology hardware, this was Samsung’s lane to own. The 10 film series was a success with films depicting narratives across many different genres and ideals. Expectedly, many were staff picks. And the custom Tumblr video hub amassed a strong following and social conversation of it’s own. It was a true topical survey showed the brand that creating a space about a dialogue that mattered could yield strong love for the brand behind it.
An ‘Undisclosed Event’
January 2017
2014 Inaugural Clio Image Award - Engagement / Experiential
Alexander Wang is a brand steeped in culture and accordingly, had developed a fanatical cult following who tracked every move of its eponymous founder. Prior, the company had made several creative content forays partnering with zeitgeist definers such as Angela Johnson, Azealia Banks, and Die Antwoord. In that same year, I worked with AW to strategize and develop it’s first surprise stunt content activation. Inspired by the film ‘Jawbreaker’, Alex endeavored to recreate the climatic final scene with a one-a-kind moment. And so, coinciding with the release of the Spring 2014 T Brand Collection, we executed the first ever “Undisclosed Event”. Darren Stein, the director of the original film was brought about to direct the moment. Across fashion / culture media sites and social platforms, conversation swirled about the unknown event Alexander Wang had announced. Crowds formed with lines over a mile long. When the first 200 guests were whisked inside where they were personally addressed by Alex and learned that in the next room lied a fully merchandised sample sale where everything was completely free. The event ended in 60 seconds but the conversation lasted for months. It represented the most ambitiously successful experiential stunt to date for a luxury high-fashion brand. We produced an accompanying film that told the tale of the day receiving coverage all over the globe.