Applied Avionics
I joined Applied Avionics as its first Marketing Director and built the entire function from scratch — brand, creative, demand generation, and a corporate rebrand — as a member of the executive team across an eight-year tenure that saw revenues double and helped position the company for a $385M acquisition in 2024.
2013 – 2021
Director of Marketing
- Company's first Marketing Director — built brand, creative, demand generation, and marketing operations from scratch, hiring the team and managing every outside agency, printer, and trade-show vendor
- Executive leadership team member, reporting directly to the President/CEO — provided regular strategic recommendations based on market, campaign, and sales data
- Led the corporate rebrand — new identity, logo, website, signage, and collateral — plus creating NEXSYS, a new brand for lines that didn't fit VIVISUN's positioning
- Directed B2B advertising and media buying across the U.S., Canada, and international markets, spanning print, digital, trade-show, and email campaigns each year
- Recommended and deployed the company's first CRM (SugarCRM), serving as day-to-day administrator and integrating custom data solutions for operational efficiency
- Designed, built, and managed the company website end-to-end — UI/UX, development, and server security — grew traffic 20% through SEO and analytics-driven iteration
Corporate Rebrand & NEXSYS Launch
I led Applied Avionics' full brand transformation — renaming Aerospace Optics, refreshing the flagship VIVISUN identity, and creating and launching NEXSYS, an entirely new product brand — then managed the company-wide rollout across every touchpoint: signage, collateral, and internal materials.
Website Redesign
I designed and built the company website end-to-end — architecture, UI/UX, and the day-to-day server administration and security — and grew organic traffic 20% through SEO and analytics-driven iteration.
Homepage — the NEXSYS Component Technology hero and the VIVISUN/NEXSYS brand split I designed
Explainer Video
Produced a five-minute explainer film to build awareness around a key technology — co-wrote the script, created every 3D animated sequence and visual, and carried the project through final publishing.
Brochure System
Applied Avionics had a growing surplus of outdated print collateral — over a dozen separate pieces that fell out of date the moment a spec sheet changed. I designed two custom brochures with internal pockets that consolidated the entire line into one flexible system: swap an insert to update a product line without reprinting the whole piece, cutting SKU count, inventory, and cost. The same content shipped as downloadable PDFs and on branded thumb drives I managed for the sales team — cutting how much literature reps had to carry to every show.
Ad Campaigns
Developed campaign messaging, themes, and illustration for the company's advertising, and directed the annual marketing strategy, budget, and media placement across traditional and online channels.
50th-Anniversary Challenge Coin
Designed the logo, die-struck coins, presentation card, and bespoke embossed packaging for the company's 50th anniversary — 850 units produced for select customers, the board, and key stakeholders, with creative direction across every phase of production.
Toolkit
In the first few months, I could see their brand was a major risk to their growth goals — the company and its best-known product weren't even recognized as the same thing. I chose to start there.
The Context
Applied Avionics was still Aerospace Optics when I joined in 2013 as its first Marketing Director. Customers asked for "the VIVISUN team," its product brand — the phone got answered "Aerospace Optics," and every invoice went out under that name too, a name that had nothing to do with most of the product line by then. I made the case for a full corporate rebrand before building anything else.
The Approach
As a member of the executive leadership team, I built the department from the ground up — brand architecture, creative direction, demand generation, the marketing technology stack, and the annual budget — while personally producing most of the creative myself: illustration, 3D visualization, motion graphics, print, and the website.
What I Built
I coined both new names — Applied Avionics as the corporate identity that actually fit the product line, and NEXSYS as a second product brand for what didn't fit under VIVISUN. The new identity carried across a website I designed and built, signage, and every piece of collateral, with the creative work that follows built out from there.
The Outcome
Revenue doubled across my tenure, positioning the company for its $385M acquisition in 2024. This was a company visibly building toward something bigger than where it started, which is exactly why I made the case to fix the brand early, before there was any pressure to — the identity and creative system I built is the one the company still runs on today.