Creative Director & Brand Strategist
I trained as an architect. Then I moved to Shanghai, started a bike company, and swapped floor plans for brand plans. Seventeen years later I'm still building things. Just with fewer permits.
Along the way, I've led creative teams of up to 30 in Montreal, Shanghai and Kigali. I've made work in English, French and Mandarin for PepsiCo, Reckitt, P&G, adidas, Nike, Levi's, League of Legends and FIBA Africa. The work has been recognised at The Drum Awards and shortlisted at Cannes Lions.
Today I run creative and pitch strategy for new business at one of Adweek's fastest-growing agencies: more than 50 pitches in a year, including the biggest deal in the agency's history, plus the AI system I built to power its sales enablement.
Metal music taught me volume. Skateboarding taught me to get back up. Tattoos taught me to commit to things that last. None of them are calm. Which is exactly why I am. After years of mosh pits, skate parks and hours under the needle, a tight deadline and a nervous client feel pretty manageable.
Every condom brand tiptoes around the excuse that sex feels worse with one. We built the whole platform on it, then settled the size debate in 2025.
One of New York's most photographed buildings had been closed for three years and never had an identity of its own. Unlike most icons, Vessel invites you in, so we built the brand around one line: step inside.
We led creative and marketing direction across 14 PepsiCo Foods brands in Canada, from Lay's, Doritos and Cheetos to Quaker and Tostitos. Every brand moved into Tasty Rewards, one CRM home where each still looked like itself, kept busy with contests, social and 3D animation.
Lucki Rice already had the rice: grown by local farmers, sold across Rwanda. We took on the brand and rebuilt it, from strategy and packaging to shopfronts and nationwide campaigns. Once the campaign went always-on in mid-2025, sales climbed every month.
The first prescription video game for ADHD had to win over parents and doctors at the same time. We let real families tell the story, then built the campaign film, testimonials and site around them.
To celebrate the local stories behind 1,100 stores, we handed the keys to a red van and asked Canadians to audition.
Started as a fixed-gear workshop in Shanghai and grew into a manufacturer and the first China distributor for a string of international cycling brands. Named one of the world's top 10 bike shops, and home of the world's largest alleycat race.
We introduced Mucinex to Canadians with an interactive game on The Weather Network, then cast Mr. Mucus as the villain ruining game day for the brand's first liquid. Sports fans were the untapped audience, and we launched across ten channels at once, Netflix included.
The world shut down, so we built a carnival. Canadians took on Chester Cheetah online and won real prizes with on-pack codes.
When the pandemic cancelled the launch parties, we built them online: immersive experiences that taught beauty editors about new Olay lines through quizzes, expert videos and 3D product sequences. Editors finished them, asked for samples, and Olay asked for a second one.
Hair removal brands spent decades telling women what their bodies should look like. We started from the opposite insight: women want permission to define confidence themselves. Here I Am became the platform, with a manifesto telling everyone else to go pluck themselves.
Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, an international forum bringing coffee producers from the Andes and East Africa together needed an identity built for collaboration. We designed a mark that works as an ecosystem: four symbols, one per track, that stand alone or lock together, from stage screens to tote bags.
Two friends noticed men had nothing like women's lingerie, so they set out to make underwear worth showing off. I built the brand around them, from the logo to a wooden gift box that looks like a cigar case. It grew up on Instagram and was acquired by French underwear house Arthur in 2020.
The Devil's favourite fishing company: lures, apparel and a voice for anglers raised on heavy metal. Every product name and line of copy is in on the joke, and 5% of every order goes back into reviving fish populations.
Writing and talks. The thinking that happens between projects.
The ten emerging trends brands can't ignore
When I first came to Rwanda, I thought I was arriving in a new country. Turns out I was arriving at the future. Ten trends, from "We sell pride, not pity" to "Serve the last mile or finish last," researched, written and designed for The Brief.
Reimagining success in the creative economy through AI
A panel at the Global AI Summit on Africa in Kigali, on what AI changes for creative work across the continent, and what it doesn't.
Campaign, editorial and documentary work across three continents. Published in National Geographic Traveler China, shown in Shanghai galleries.
Logos, type, packaging and one-offs that don't need a case study. Click any image to see it larger.
Find what has to carry the weight and then make something people actually want to walk into.
I've done that in three languages, on three continents, for global brands and for companies that started in a workshop. The tools keep changing. The structure doesn't.
Kigali. Working worldwide.
Made with the brilliant teams at BAM Strategy, Level, The Brief, NUDE, Ogilvy and Wieden+Kennedy.
© 2026 Tyler Bowa