Michael Carian  / 

I make
your problems
my problems.

Broker of vibe-specific micro truths.

Creative Director.

I make your problems my problems. I help brands find where they already belong in culture and build from that intersection out. Not storytelling for its own sake. Cultural legitimacy first.

case study:

Reframing autonomous vehicles
through a more human lens.

Less sci-fi. More trust.

Waymo parking

Problems are a
Better compass
than a clean slate.

case study:

A brand that needed to live somewhere it's never been.

Jack in the Box fire meme

Before the strategy decks and the content calendars, there's a moment where you just have to let go and trust that you know the internet. Jack approving his own curly fries and ranch the way only Drake can. Jack unbothered in a burning room because the new Spicy Tiny Tacos are hotter. These weren't accidents. They were intentional. Giving culture enough rope to run with the brand while making sure the brand was always holding the other end.

Zero to TikTok. 30K followers, multiple 1M+ views, three months. Jack in the Box had never been on the platform. We didn't just launch the account. We proved they belonged there.

Jack's Late Night Discord. Built a branded community from zero. 7,664 members in 48 hours. 5x Discord's benchmark. 27,743 messages sent. 100% community activation. The 2nd largest branded Discord community by member joins.

Jack in the Box Life is Beautiful activation

Jack's first festival. Las Vegas. Life is Beautiful. A three-day carnival hosted by Instagrandma Baddie Winkle. Taco seesaws, ranch ball pits, flaming skeeball. The only fast food brand at Life is Beautiful. A festival first.

Adage coverage of Jack in the Box Life is Beautiful Life is Beautiful festival girls
Jack in the Box Super Bowl campaign

While everyone watched the commercials, we hacked the second screen. #SonicLovesTinyTacos trended nationally during the 2020 Super Bowl.

Sonic loves Tiny Tacos tweet Sonic ring animation

When COVID cancelled prom for the Class of 2020, Jack in the Box threw a better one. Diplo, Dillon Francis, and 29.5M impressions later. #PromInTheBox became the virtual event of the year. 500M+ earned media impressions. Watch the recap.

Before you fix the work,
fix the room it
gets made in.

case study:

Some accounts don't need a new idea.
They need someone who actually lives online.

Google Play Dune Google Play Temple
Google Play Scroll
increased scope by $1M

Stale creative is
a cultural problem,
not a creative one.

case study:

Some briefs ask you to sell a flavor.
This one asked us to move a movement.

Justice ReMix'd wasn't a campaign. It was a criminal justice reform vehicle with an ice cream attached.
29K social mentions. 116K signatures. The flavor was the call to action.

RXBar didn't need a bigger budget.
It needed a better antenna.

Three briefs. Three cultural entry points. A Coachella-ready bar dressed for the festival. A mama duck leading her minis across astroturf. Wrapper slides that belong on a hype page. All shot in-camera, all built from the culture in, not the brand out.

To market Wu-Tang, you have to
understand Wu-Tang.

Bobby didn't become RZA in a boardroom. Staten Island was always the Shaolin. These assets didn't interpret the show. They understood the mythology that made the group matter in the first place.

Broker of vibe-specific
micro truths. Available
for the right problem.