I met Mitch Holder in 2013 when I started working at VaynerMedia in San Francisco. Mitch is without a doubt one of the most talented marketers I have ever had the privilege of working with. Now he’s the VP of Marketing for The Los Angeles Lakers and they’re lucky to have him!

Back in October 2012 I connected with Gary Vaynerchuk for the first time via email. I had some questions about his latest book, ‘The Thank You Economy’. A few days after I emailed Gary, he replied to my questions with this: “Come work for me”. By February 2013 I found myself in NYC sitting in Gary’s office having a meeting on my first day at VaynerMedia. During my time at VM I learned a great deal, and met some incredible, lifelong friends, and for that I am forever grateful. Initially, the thought of leaving the skateboarding industry, moving to a new city, and starting a new job in a new industry was intimidating. Sometimes the best decisions you’ll make are the ones that make you feel fucking scared! I have often found that in order to grow and gain wisdom, you occasionally have to travel the unfamiliar, and intimidating roads that appear at different stages in our lives. 

Back in August 1st 2017, I helped launch one of the biggest marketing initiatives Tillys had ever undertaken: The Tillys x Shonduras Augmented Reality (AR) Scavenger Hunt. We partnered with Shaun McBride aka "Shonduras," who is a legendary social media influencer with almost 2.3 million YouTube subscribers and co-founder of Spacestation Gaming. At the time, not many retailers were experimenting with AR in their stores. After the success of a virtual reality (VR) activation during the 2016 Black Friday, we decided to jump on the opportunity to bring something new and exciting to our stores and help increase in-store traffic and downloads of the Tillys app.

From 8/1/17 – 8/14/17, consumers were able to visit any of Tillys’ 221 stores and participate in an Augmented Reality Scavenger Hunt hosted by Shonduras. On 8/12/17, there was an 'End of Summer Bash' at all Tillys locations where the first 50 people in line received a goodie bag consisting of some great prizes, including a contest scratcher, which gave them a chance to win various prizes. After the dust had settled, Tillys saw a 20% increase in nationwide store traffic, a 30% increase in ecommerce sales, and a 70% increase in Tillys app downloads (with a 97% notification opt-in rate!). This activation still remains one of my favorite and most challenging projects of my digital marketing career. Big 'THANK YOU!' to the entire Tillys marketing team, and the Shonduras crew for all their hard work on this activation.


Check Out the MobileMarketer.com article about the Shonduras activation.
AR Scavenger Hunt ‘How To’ Video: http://bit.ly/arscavengerhunt