My favorite days are filled with antique fairs, vintage shops, live tunes, and a chill burger or pizza joint run by Michelin-rated chefs.
Looking at Pretty Good Advice in Santa Cruz
& June’s in Oakland.
work examples
Sal Taj is a San Francisco Bay Area-based Strategist focused on brand innovation consulting and creative strategy. His areas of expertise include:
Research & Insights:
Research Planning, Brand Audits, Competitive Audits, Survey Development & Deployment, Focus Groups, Stakeholder Interviews, Social Listening, MRI / GWI Research, Data Analysis, Reporting.
Brand & Creative Strategy:
Brand House (mission, vision, values, etc.), Brand Positioning, Brand Personality, Persona Development, Audience Segmentation, Creative Platforms, Creative Briefs, Brand Messaging Architecture, Campaign Planning, Content Strategy, Comms Planning, GTM Planning, Brand Identity, Creative Concepting, Employer / Internal Branding, Naming Strategy, Brand Guidelines, Brand & Campaign Playbooks, Performance Creative.
Innovation Consulting:
AI Creative / Marketing Innovation, Workshops, Journey Maps, North Star Development, Product Innovation & Roadmaps.
Social / Earned Media:
Earned Media Strategy, Social Personas / TOV, Content Planning, Organic / Paid Social, Earned Media Platforms & Narratives, Media & Influencer Strategies, Activation / Launch Plans, Influencer Briefs, Stunt Concepting & Rollout Planning, Events / Experiences.
Team Leadership:
Account & Client Management, Team Planning, Workshops, Mentorship & Learning, Partnership Management, Budget Management & Planning, Business Development / Pitching, Framework Development, Proposal Development, Project Management.
Where I’ve Been
01.2023 - 07.2025
VP, Strategy Director @ Edelman / Edible
04.2022 - 01.2023
A. Director, Strategy @ Media.Monks
08.2021 - 03.2022
Senior Strategist @ Firewood Marketing
10.2018 - 08.2021
Account Executive @ AMF Media Group
08.2017 - 10.2018
Strategist @ Y + H Creative
08.2013 - 08.2017
Brands I’ve worked with
Red Robin
Business Goal(s): On premise traffic, Brand Relevance
When Red Robin, the American arbiter of burger creativity, needed a boost to get themselves out of the 90s and back on the cultural map, my team and I partnered with them to define a clear path to relevance.
I led Red Robin’s pan-agency group to create a succinct social-first go-to-market plan that would help reintroduce the brand and stay top of mind with key audiences.
Creative Strategy
Identifying the insight that customers get excited to visit Red Robin for their bigger, juicier burgers that stand out from flat, flimsy fast food joint patties.
Creative Development
Launching a new brand social persona, always on presence, and social collabs that amplified the bold
Next Gen direction Red Robin was headed in.
Partnership Strategy / Product Development
Collaborating with fellow ’90s nostalgia torchbearer and icon, Juicy Couture, to create an even “Juicier” tomato red tracksuit that was ready to flood social feeds.
Launching tracksuit collab with Gal’s on the Go Podcast influencers @salomeandreaa and @yesconnieishere
Collaborating with celebrity bartender and Love Island Legend, Ariana Madix, to develop and roll out the double-take worthy Burger-tini Vodka Martini.
Collaborating with Red Robin ELT on how to best show up and show out at ChainFEST LA with special LTO offerings that excited Foodies and Nostalgia Nuts alike.
Developing the 18-ounce Gold Medal Burger in collaboration with Red Robin Executive Chef, Brian Sullivan, in homage to the 18-ounce Gold Medal, just in time for the 2024 Olympics.
As a result of our efforts, Red Robin realized a 7%+ global increase in guest traffic
and garnered an incredible amount of earned media attention, including over 4 billion impressions across the Juicy Couture and Gold Medal burger initiatives. The campaigns were picked up by top media outlets, including NYLON, USA Today, People, and Forbes.
Google For Education
Business Goal(s): Awareness, Retention
When tech innovator Google was launching its best-of-suite education platform, they needed a partner to help attract, engage, and nurture a niche new community. My role throughout this long-term engagement included
I designed a comprehensive research plan to glean insights that would inform the product suite positioning
and go-to-market plan, including a 360 competitive analysis, audience definition and segmentation, and stakeholder interviews.
Positioning, Comms + GTM Planning
I collaborated with our Google for Education clients to develop a well-calibrated product suite positioning that helps the brand break through via an ownable white space, a robust comms plan that aligned key audience mindsets (identified within segments) with brand messages, and a go-to-market plan to identify key tactics across channels to ensure a successful launch.
CRM lifecycle marketing
As this was a long-term engagement, I continued to lead the strategic development and optimization of marketing strategies, helping Google engage and nurture its audiences at every stage of the customer lifecycle, including digital and email marketing tactics.
Today, Google Classroom (Google for Education product) is the leading global K-12 LMS.
80% of the top 100 US Higher Ed. Institutions utilize Google Workspace for Education.
Over 150 million students and teachers worldwide use Google Workspace for Education.
Robinhood | Super Bowl LV
Business Goal(s): Adoption, Brand Relevance
When Robinhood embarked on a mission to democratize investing and ended up in the middle of a PR nightmare – with a looming IPO, they needed a partner to help them translate their bold mission into a people-powered movement that re-ignites brand love. My team at Monks jumped into action when the company engaged us for their Super Bowl LV content, and the work included:
We collaborated with our brand partners to develop a comprehensive research plan, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, including surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one stakeholder interviews. This approach aimed to uncover key audience insights around investing and investment brands.
Creative Strategy
Identifying the insight that even though most Americans don’t know much at all about hedge funds and Wall Street investing, we all spend time and energy on the things that are important to us – our friends, health, pets, and Labubu collections. We Are All Investors.
Creative Development
Built off a series of sharp creative briefs, I collaborated with the Monks creative team to create a full-funnel campaign that ran during Superbowl LV, including a reimagined, more intuitive website experience (based on focus group findings), a suite of strategic digital ads to help drive folks down funnel, a guerilla experiential takeover of Wall Street, and the crowned jewel of our campaign the “We Are All Investors” TVC that ran during Primetime TV’s #1 spot.
Simultaneously, I helped Robinhood create a press release addressed to its investor community in relation to the GameStop short squeeze.
As a result of our marketing campaign and PR efforts, Robinhood re-engaged its user community and realized a sizeable lift in NPS. The brand successfully navigated its IPO and has since become the most downloaded and used retail investing app in the United States. This one was SUCH A RUSH.
RingCentral
Business Goal(s): Awareness, Consideration
WFH. Hybrid. RTO. Work’s changed. A LOT. What hasn’t changed is the need for teams to stay connected with each other and clients. My team at Monks and I helped RingCentral, a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), address an awareness problem by creating a human connection with IT decision makers through a humorous brand relaunch campaign featuring cowboys and theee Cesar.
I led and completed a robust research phase that included surveys, focus groups, and 1:1 stakeholder interviews to identify key insights that informed a sharp creative brief.
Creative Strategy
Identifying the insight that IT Decision makers don’t just want a best-in-class product that meets their needs, they want a partner who understands the mess of daily life. A partner who can help bring clarity and control to chaos.
Creative Development
Developing key brand messaging and launch copy.
Briefing and collaborating with creative directors to create Zak & Zach brand spokes-duo (both played by famous comedian Morgan Jay), and the initial brand relaunch TVCs that were comedic period pieces, a la Netflix.
GTM Planning
I designed a multi-platform launch strategy, creating a unified brand experience that built familiarity and recall with audiences at every stage of the funnel.
As a result of our work, RingCentral saw a hike in awareness, and still stands up against mainstream competitors such as Google, Zoom, and Microsoft with a continuing 10-year Gartner Magic Quadrant leadership position.
Shure | Collaboration & Conferencing
Business Goal(s): Awareness, Adoption
I served as Strategy Lead for the long-term creative
AOR relationship between Monks x Shure.
Shure basically invented the modern lollipop-style microphone. I’d typically say they need no introduction, except they had an awareness problem. The audio leader always lets its innovation and engineering speak for its impact on the music and recording world. When it came time to enter the B2B hardware market and challenge industry-leading competitors, they hired Monks as creative AOR to translate their technical expertise into a relevant brand that builds demand and salience with business and IT decision makers, just as much as it does with musicians and sound engineers.
My team and I led the strategic development of:
We created strong B2B brand and product positionings based on key insights from our audience and competitive research to ensure both relevance and differentiation.
Brand Identity
In collaboration with my team of strategists and creative directors, I helped create a strong brand visual identity for Shure’s B2B conferencing category that helped the brand grow its way from the mainstage into the boardroom.
Brand Campaign + GTM Planning
Beyond filming human-centered TVCs for the brand’s B2B vertical, we developed full-funnel product campaigns that included video and static assets to meet decision makers in the right place, and in a familiar, recognizable way across their adoption journey.
As a result of our efforts, Shure continues to gain traction and market share within the conferencing technology sector with a distinct brand identity that both feels modern and pays homage to its legacy audio brand.