In 2018, I was Associate Creative Director tasked with elevating D'Addario Percussion's presence in the competitive Drum Corps International (DCI) market—a $13+ million industry.

While our Evans Drumheads and Promark Drumsticks were being used in the marching arts, we were completely overshadowed by Vic Firth and Remo, who dominated through aggressive sponsorships of top-tier teams and near-total branding saturation at events and competitions. We were functionally invisible despite having quality products in the space. The stakeholders were skeptical about investing heavily in young performers when our traditional customer base was older musicians.

TASK

My responsibility was to develop a creative vision that would break through the competitive noise and establish D'Addario as a credible, visible force in this market.

I needed to understand a subculture
I knew nothing about:

What motivates them?
What do they value?
How do I authentically connect with them in a way that feels genuine, not opportunistic?

ACTION

I started by immersing myself in their world. My team and I traveled to practice spaces where we spent days interviewing teams and filming them in action.

I asked them why they loved this, what it demanded of them, what they were proud of. What I discovered help craft my story: these weren't just band kids, they were athletes.

They trained from 9am-10pm every day, traveled constantly for competitions, carried heavy equipment, and endured grueling physical conditioning for weeks at summer camps. They lived and breathed drum corps with the same intensity as any professional athlete.

Series of campaign print ads

Blue Devils practicing at the Colts’ Football team practice space.

The insight became clear: we needed to highlight both their athleticism and musicianship.

We treated these performers with the respect D'Addario gives rockstars (our core brand DNA) while connecting their athletic dedication directly to our product's durability and precision under pressure.

I developed a creative platform around the tagline "Built to Compete"—positioning our products with the same competitive spirit as the teams themselves.

All-girl bass drum squad posing in the locker room.

I art directed a visual system inspired by athletic design—using stats to emphasize their achievements, paired with raw gritty photography inspired by the on-the road style of touring rockstars.

The "Built to Compete" message ran through everything: our product is built for their level of dedication.

Over two years, we filmed documentary content with two sponsored bands. We were also able to create several product videos from all of the content we captured.

We showed up at DCI Finals both years connecting with our audience and leaving long lasting impressions. We built a branded practice area where fans could watch their teams, held technique clinics, and ran a pop-up shop staffed with our product experts.

I designed our social account with our library of photos we gathered from our travels. I created large splash images for our launch which I then embedded with carousels of team members, coaches, and products.

We also created a magazine-catalog hybrid that we distributed to coaches and high school music teachers to showcase our full product line in one place.

RESULT

We made D'Addario Percussion visible in a space where we'd been invisible. Coaches and music teachers—our primary buyers—engaged with the catalog, and we established a tangible presence at the industry's biggest event. The brand went from being a non-player to having a credible footprint in the DCI community. I transitioned off the project after the second year, so I didn't track long-term sales data, but the stakeholders green-lit year two based on the reception from year one, which signaled the investment was working.

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