julie curtis

Over the last two decades, working with the world’s 5th largest cosmetics company has been a constantly transforming experience. I've been involved with every stage, from product development and naming to re-branding a 150-year old company, to digital and traditional advertising, marketing, PR, editorial, in-store materials, education and training materials, event concepts, scripts, package copy. I find it all endlessly fascinating.

I’ve also worked with rms beauty, Rodan+ Fields, Beautycounter, Milani, Obagi, Cle de Peau, IPSA, Maquillage, and more. I even teach a course on Beauty Branding and Copywriting. I still can't seem to do a perfect cat eye, though. 

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This family-owned and run chain of six grocery stores in the Seattle area has kept its focus on local food producers, local customers, and local love since 1957.

Creative Director Greg DeVeer and I recently created their first-ever media campaign, with the tagline Love Every Bite. Check the radio tab above for my fun little series of spots with Joe the Produce Guy. In the meantime, I’ll go name this week’s new products, come up with lines for the new in-store posters, and write the new website content.

Rather than focusing on the destinations, this campaign focuses on the little moments that make the journey memorable. I work with the brilliant team at Grace Creative on this brand, which offers all kinds of fun creative exploration, in our imaginations, and around the world.

A smattering of the many brands and products I've named, and helped position in the marketplace. 

Over the years, I’m pretty sure I’ve written a literal ton of brochures. This one for a Ritz Carlton property in Baja California rises to the top of the heap, in my opinion. It won some nice awards for my talented friends at Brand Tango in Miami (and myself), so I guess other people liked it, too.

Japan extends beyond the Tokyo city limits, and the government wanted to emphasize that. Back when people were still traveling. To Asia. (Maybe we’ll get to do that again someday, she thinks wistfully.)

 Miami is thinking ahead to what transportation is going to be like in 2040. (Spoiler: it's going to make the Jetsons look like the Flintstones.) I got to immerse myself in their plans and turn them into a story. They call it a brochure. I call it science non-fiction.

In Japanese, the word otaku means a person who is an expert in something that absolutely enthralls them—so intensively that you could call it an obsession. Shiseido loves to hire this kind of person. I worked with a team of video otaku, translating that sense of drive to this series of videos for Shiseido’s Research Center.

Pores. You can’t live with them, and your skin can’t live without them. Biore began as those weird strips that you press on and yank to get the crud out of your pores. Now, in a campaign focused on the beauty of being good to yourself to the core, Creative Director Amy Osburn and I position Biore as a kinder, gentler pore care expert.

To speak to the complex emotions of a parent who wants to help their child with an eating disorder, creative director Laura Archer and I found people in the recovery process who opened up generously, and took us on a deep dive into dark places in their minds. This campaign is the result.

Like practically every creative in LA, I’ve worked on a lot of car accounts, including Nissan, Infiniti, Lexus, Mitsubishi. As ACD at RPA, I made more TV, radio and print ads for Honda dealers nationwide than I can count. Most of them had big prices and financing deals superimposed on them. Many of them just had a voiceover rattling off lists of features. Here are a few of my favorite black sheep.

This new fitness studio is focused on every individual member’s unique needs, and meeting them with the latest amalgamation of exercise science, body diagnostics, nutrition science and entertainment technology. The workout is tough, but compelling and fun. It’s a community, but it’s all about you. It’s the antidote to the old school gym. So we named it Antidote Fitness Lab. Here’s a taste of the website and some of the marketing materials I created with Stilt Media in Miami.

The product is T-shirts, specifically for the screenprinting industry. There's not a lot to say about a T-shirt, so sometimes you have to make stuff up. As a quasi-vegetarian, I love poking a little fun at the meat industry in order to reinforce this product’s name. But then I can get on board with poking a little fun at just about anyone.

Remember Fruittare? Yeah, that was the problem. I worked with the brilliant people at Bright Design to help this frozen treat reinvent itself, with a new fruit-obsessed, artisanal  brand voice and tagline: "For the love of fruit." My very favorite part of this rebrand (apart from the gorgeous photography which I can't take credit for) was inventing the term "crushed fruit bars". And if that's a word-nerdy thing to be proud of, so be it. 

Writing about princess fashion merch for the Disney Store. An absolute cotton candy rainbow cloud of a project and a joy for my inner little girl to work on. (I just hope I didn't violate any inner child labor laws.)

I’ve written a lot of email blasts. Here are a few of the ones I’ve written for Fleming’s restaurant. I also wrote a quarterly magazine for them. Once a year, the magazine included descriptions of every wine on their Fleming’s 100 wine menu. Yes, that’s 100 wine descriptions. Which means the writer can’t drink while writing them, or she’ll miss the deadline.

A company based on the idea that kids' socks get lost. So not only do their socks come intentionally and artfully mismatched, they also come in sets of three. 

Articles I write and musings that spill out in stolen moments.

Some of my favorite clients are the ones who want me to write about making the world a better place. Schools like Peninsula Heritage and Santa Monica College. Newport Beach Library. Kenya's Northern Rangelands Trust (part of the Nature Conservancy.) The Aurelia Foundation, serving mentally disabled young adults. A Better Balance,  a nonprofit group of NYC lawyers who want to help people benefit from a new state law that guarantees 8 weeks of paid family leave for all employees.

These organizations may not have enormous budgets. But it's pretty rewarding to work with people who have big hearts.