CRE8 - Intel
Creative Direction & Production
When Intel launched its Optane processor — a state-of-the-art chip built for speed, scale, and creative performance — they needed a campaign that could communicate its power in a way that felt tangible, human, and inspiring to a younger, creator-driven audience. I was a Creative Director at Uproxx, which at its peak had 30MM unique visitors a month to its websites.
Context
Insight
Specs don’t sell — experience does. Instead of explaining how Optane works, we asked: what if we could push it to its limits? Our audience didn’t want a tech demo — they wanted to see what the right tools could unlock in the hands of the most inventive creators on the internet. Video games, music, digital art — all of this met our core audience’s deepest passions.
Solution
We created CRE8 — a 360° campaign that brought together experimental musicians, illustrators, game designers, animators, and technologists to push their craft and the processor to the edge. Each creator made something new — live and in real time — with Intel Optane at the center of their workflow.
The campaign included:
A branded docuseries profiling each creator
A high-energy live event, where artists performed high-stakes creative stunts powered by Optane (from AR games to projection mapping and live illustration)
Editorial deep-dives, behind-the-scenes content, and video explainers
Custom social cutdowns, interactive content, and native distribution to the UPROXX audience
As Creative Director, I led the vision and execution across all touchpoints — from concept to campaign rollout.
22.7M video views across all platforms
59% lift in awareness for Intel Optane among viewers
Named one of AdAge’s Top 10 Branded Content Campaigns of 2018
Turned niche performance specs into culturally resonant storytelling — with work that pushed both creators and tech to the limit
Earned renewed media-buys from Intel
Impact
Aftershocks by Rebecca Mock, featured artist
The CRE8 Docuseries
At the heart of the campaign was a multi-part branded documentary series that profiled boundary-pushing creators as they made original work using Intel’s Optane processor. Each episode highlighted a different creative discipline — from music production to animation to game design — and showed how powerful tools can unlock powerful storytelling.
Featured Creators & Projects:
An experimental musician who maxed out Ableton to build a song from micro-samples and chaos
A GIF artist using 200+ Photoshop layers to create surreal, mind-bending visuals
An animator stitching together 18,000 still images for a fan theory series called In Theory
A game designer prototyping a full interactive world from their bedroom — live
Each film served as a proof of performance, a character study, and a celebration of creative process — all in one.
CRE8 Con — The Live Event
As the centerpiece of the campaign, we produced CRE8 Con — a high-stakes, high-energy live event where creators pushed Intel’s Optane processor to the limit in real time in front of a live audience.
From a Rick and Morty illustrator live-rendering hundreds of animated layers, to an artist projection-mapping physical objects, to a designer building an AR game from scratch on stage — each performance was a feat of creativity, computation, and spectacle.
The event wasn’t just a demo — it was a celebration of process, proving that with the right tech, imagination moves faster.
