Old Home — Matthew Davis

MY PROCESS

INSIGHT

Vision is everything. Every good idea, good decision, good business has to see what others cannot or have not. Sometimes this insight is found in culture, sometimes it is found in the product, and occasionally it is found in the competition. But your idea is only going to be as good as the insight that leads to it.

IDEA

Big ideas are transformative. They latch onto an insight and force everyone to reappraise what they thought they knew. Your business should be seen, understood, and operate differently after your idea is unleashed into the world. And if you get it really right, your idea will force the whole category to change too.

EXECUTION

It doesn't take a thousand cuts to kill an idea—just one. So getting the thousands of decisions along the way right is, at least for your idea, a life-or-death situation. The small and simple things can be the difference between a campaign that knocks your audience on their butt and one that gets you thrown out on yours.

In 2015, after 5 years at CP+B (Creativity Magazine’s “Agency of the Decade”), I left to work as an independent consultant/creative working for agencies or direct-for-client, for startups or C-suites, and for brands or social causes I believe in.

I attended Virginia Commonwealth University’s Brandcenter (“Top-Ranked Graduate Advertising Program” by the American Association of Advertising Agencies). I’m now a Sloan Fellow, studying at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (MSx) focused on entrepreneurship and social innovation.

My work has been recognized at Cannes’s International Festival for Creativity, D&AD, Communication Arts, the One Show, the Effies, Epica and others. But my best writing was a months-long letter campaign to a girl who wouldn’t go out with me. (I had dated her friend for three years. “Girl code,” she said.) She’s now my wife.

I’m also writing a book on my great uncle. He was a 1950s bank robber in Miami working for the Cuban mafia. But no matter how that book turns out, it won’t be as good as the letters that won over that girl.

I’m based in sunny Miami Beach and always looking to collaborate on cool projects. If you've got one, or just want to chat, use the form below to send a note.