Doug Klein

Disney

Interactive Manual

At Imagineering, I documented the build and maintenance of audio-animatronic figures — hundreds of parts, dozens of assemblies, no way for maintenance staff to know what any figure should look like when functioning correctly. I built a solution using tools available to me: a spreadsheet connected to Word's mail merge, imported into FrameMaker, generating a preformatted parts list with hyperlinks. I added digitally captured video of each figure performing correctly, connected to live parts ordering through the internet — before browsers existed.

I was one of two Imagineers invited to present the result personally to Michael Eisner. It became the Imagineering standard for manual production.

Princess Cruises

Personal Cruises

For three years I ran email marketing for Princess Cruises — up to five emails per week to two million recipients. Good results. Not good enough. I partnered with Dynamics Direct to build the first personalized multimedia email program at scale: a voiceover actor recorded eight thousand first names, a Flash video was dynamically constructed for each recipient showing destinations matching their personal preferences, and the email spoke their name.

The personalized version produced four times the booking rate of the standard HTML email.

Cisco

First Newsroom

After successful work for Meru Networks, my contact moved to Cisco and invited me to help build their first newsroom. Nothing like it existed. We created look-alike personas serving content based on real-time behavioral data, coded the site for search, and gave Cisco's top executives personal thought leadership channels showing their vision for the future.

After launch, keynote speakers across the marketing industry held up the Cisco Newsroom as the benchmark every enterprise should aim for.

Rosetta

Customer Engagement

When Level Studios was acquired by Rosetta, I used our Forrester relationship to announce a new kind of agency — before that category existed. After researching what CEOs across enterprises identified as their biggest challenge, we surfaced that the industry was looking for "customer engagement" before anyone had named it. We coined the term, defined what it meant, and pitched Forrester for the top position in their Wave report.

We got it. Because we created the category. Sales boomed. Rosetta was acquired by Publicis.

City of San Luis Obispo

Social Tourism

San Luis Obispo had already been named the Happiest City in North America by National Geographic. When they asked me to attract more visitors, I had to build on something that Oprah Winfrey was already talking about publicly.

I created a video contest for the job of SLO's Social Ambassador. It generated 65 million impressions across social networks, led to a Street Team of social influencers, and produced year-over-year room sales growth of 12% every year I was involved in the city's strategy.

Lark Hotels

AEO Before the Crisis

In July 2024, organic search visits across the Lark Hotels portfolio began declining. Most hospitality marketing teams wouldn't have noticed for another year. We were already rebuilding.

Working with Bruce Clay, Inc., we audited and restructured content architecture across every property site. When AI search emerged, we were ready for it. The first rebuilt properties recaptured search rankings within four days. Within two months, we were appearing in top-five AI recommendations for queries where we had been completely invisible.