Multidisciplinary Marketing

Here's what nobody tells you about marketing that actually moves the needle: the best solutions live at intersections. Where psychology crashes into data science. Where brand strategy meets behavioral economics. Where cultural intelligence translates into business results that make executives stop mid-PowerPoint and say "wait, how did we not think of that?"

The marketing problems worth solving—the ones that keep CMOs up at night and make boards lean forward—can't be cracked with a single toolkit. They require someone who speaks multiple languages fluently: the language of spreadsheets and the language of the streets, the language of quarterly reports and the language of culture.

Josh doesn't just run campaigns. They architect solutions that require multiple fluencies because the problems worth solving exist at the collision points where most marketers fear to tread.

The Method Behind the Movement

When Research Psychology Rewrites the Entire Playbook

Picture this: You're the VP of Marketing at Trevor Project, the world's largest LGBTQ+ youth mental health organization. Your C-suite has a crystal-clear mandate: increase crisis contact volume. More calls equals more lives saved, right? The math seems bulletproof.

Except Josh's research revealed the plot twist that changed everything.

The data told a different story—one that required arguing up to executives that their cardinal metric was actually working against their cardinal mission. To genuinely reduce the 1.8MM at-risk LGBTQ+ youth to zero, they needed to flip the entire script.

The counterintuitive pitch that took serious strategic courage: Stop advertising the crisis line. Start building relationships before the crisis hits.

Think about it psychologically. If your brand only shows up in people's worst moments, you become associated with trauma, not triumph. If youth only know Trevor as the place you call when you're thinking about ending everything, you've created a brand that's inherently tied to despair.

Josh repositioned Trevor from emergency room to community center—from the "call us when you're ready to die" organization to the "cool, yet anchored sister" who celebrates your wins and holds space for your hard times. Someone you can kiki with who also happens to be there when life gets heavy.

The strategic challenge wasn't just external messaging—it was internal culture change. Convincing crisis intervention specialists that prevention was actually more impactful than intervention. That building joy was just as life-saving as preventing despair.

The result: 40% brand awareness boost by expanding the brand aperture beyond crisis messaging to affirmation, community, and celebration. The rebrand helped Trevor shift from reactive to proactive, from treating symptoms to addressing root causes.

But here's the deeper win: they didn't just increase awareness. They fundamentally changed how young LGBTQ+ people related to the organization—and how the organization understood its own mission.

When Cultural Intelligence Cracks the Luxury Authenticity Code

Fast-forward to VICE Media, where Josh was tasked with something that sounded impossible: make Chanel Fragrances resonate with female Millennials without sacrificing the luxury credibility that makes Chanel, well, Chanel.

Traditional luxury marketing to young women usually follows one of two playbooks: either patronize them with "aspirational" messaging that assumes they can't afford the real thing, or try so hard to be relatable that you lose all mystique. Both approaches fail because they fundamentally misunderstand what Millennials want from luxury brands.

Josh leveraged VICE's unique cultural research engine—not just demographic data, but behavioral intelligence about how young women actually related to luxury, status, and authenticity. The insight that cracked the code? Female Millennials didn't want luxury brands to talk down to them or try to be their bestie. They wanted brands that respected their intelligence and spoke to their values.

The plot twist: It wasn't about aspiration. It was about authenticity.

The $12MM strategy combined VICE's millennial behavioral insights with format innovation that honored Chanel's legacy while speaking fluent Gen Y cultural language. No dumbing down, no desperate relevance-chasing—just strategic cultural translation that bridged heritage luxury with contemporary values.

The result: 23% purchase intent increase among the exact demographic that luxury brands struggle to crack. Proof that cultural intelligence isn't about chasing trends or trying to go viral—it's about understanding the deeper value systems that drive decision-making and finding authentic intersection points.

When Narrative Strategy Creates Cognitive Breakthrough

The Ad Council case study shows how multidisciplinary thinking tackles the hardest challenge in marketing: changing minds that don't want to be changed.

The mission: create a national campaign to foster empathy for LGBTQ+ communities among audiences who were, let's be honest, predisposed to be unsympathetic. Traditional advocacy approaches—statistics about discrimination, emotional appeals about human rights—weren't landing. In fact, they were often creating more resistance.

Josh's insight came from understanding the psychology of persuasion at a systems level. Instead of trying to change people's minds about LGBTQ+ people directly, they found a way to help people discover the contradiction in their own value systems.

The strategic breakthrough: tap into their existing virtue framework around the American Dream—housing, safety, employment. Help them see themselves as the heroes of their own stories around these universal values, then gently reveal how excluding LGBTQ+ people contradicted the very principles they claimed to champion.

The genius was in the approach. Not "you're wrong about gay people," but "you're not living up to your own stated values." Not shame, but revelation. The kind of cognitive dissonance that leads to genuine growth instead of defensive reaction.

Cross-platform storytelling that used their own moral framework to foster empathy by finding genuine common ground rather than forcing agreement. The campaign worked because it respected the audience's intelligence while challenging their consistency.

The Intersection Advantage: Where Real Strategy Lives

Josh operates where disciplines collide because that's where the actual insights live:

Behavioral Psychology → Most marketing assumes people make rational decisions. Josh designs for how people actually think—through emotion, social proof, identity protection, and cognitive shortcuts. Understanding why people make decisions (spoiler: it's rarely rational) unlocks strategy that works with human nature instead of against it.

Data Analytics → Numbers tell stories, not just fill spreadsheets. Josh uses data to uncover the patterns that reveal opportunity—the disconnects between what people say they want and what they actually do, the gaps between brand perception and brand reality, the moments when consumer behavior shifts before the market notices.

Cultural Research → Reading the room at society scale. Culture moves faster than demographics, and Josh tracks the social currents that shape consumer behavior before they become mainstream. This isn't trend-chasing—it's understanding the deeper values shifts that create sustainable market opportunities.

Organizational Psychology → Strategy only works if the organization can execute it authentically. Josh aligns what companies can do with what audiences need, but also diagnoses the internal dynamics that make or break external campaigns. The best marketing strategy in the world fails if the company culture can't deliver on the brand promise.

Narrative Architecture → Stories that shift minds, not just hearts. Josh crafts narratives that create cognitive shifts—the kind of lightbulb moments that change how people see themselves, their choices, and the brands they choose to engage with.

Why Multidisciplinary Thinking Is Your Competitive Edge

Here's the thing most marketers miss: specialization is a liability disguised as an asset.

When you only know performance marketing, every problem looks like a conversion optimization challenge. When you only know brand strategy, every solution involves repositioning. When you only know social media, everything becomes a content problem.

But the marketing challenges that actually matter—the ones that determine whether companies thrive or struggle—exist at the intersections specialists can't see.

Josh is fluent enough across disciplines to spot the patterns specialists miss and build bridges where others see walls. This isn't about being a generalist—it's about being a strategic translator who can synthesize insights across systems.

While others execute tactics within their expertise, Josh diagnoses why the marketing problem exists in the first place, then designs solutions that address root causes instead of treating symptoms.

Take the Trevor Project rebrand. A branding specialist might have focused on visual identity. A digital marketer might have optimized the crisis line funnel. A content strategist might have created more engaging social posts.

Josh did something different: they diagnosed the systemic issue (brand association with crisis limiting relationship depth) and designed a solution that required changes to messaging strategy, organizational culture, content approach, and partnership development simultaneously.

The result? Strategies that don't just work—they compound. Because they're designed for the full ecosystem where brands, audiences, and culture actually intersect.

The Process: How Multidisciplinary Strategy Actually Works

It starts with diagnostic thinking. Most marketers jump straight to tactics. Josh begins with systems analysis:

• What's the real problem underneath the presenting problem?
• What disciplines need to converge to solve it sustainably?
• Where are the leverage points that create cascading positive effects?
• What does success look like across multiple measurement frameworks?

Then comes synthesis—taking insights from different fields and finding the intersection points where they amplify each other. Psychology informs data analysis. Cultural research shapes narrative strategy. Organizational dynamics determine tactical feasibility.

The magic happens in translation—turning multidisciplinary insights into actionable strategy that teams can execute and executives can champion.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

The marketing landscape isn't just changing—it's becoming more complex, more interconnected, and more demanding of sophisticated thinking.

Audiences are more psychologically sophisticated. Data is more abundant but also more overwhelming. Culture moves faster than ever. Organizations are more complex and more scrutinized.

The marketers who win in this environment are the ones who can think in systems, not silos. Who can connect dots across disciplines. Who can solve problems that require multiple types of expertise working in concert.

Josh doesn't just bring multidisciplinary thinking to marketing challenges. They bring the kind of strategic synthesis that turns complex problems into elegant solutions—and transforms those solutions into sustainable competitive advantages.

Ready to work with someone who thinks in systems, not silos? Let's talk about the challenges that keep you up at night and the solutions that live at the intersections.