I'm an ad guy that loves to shoot stuff. It's the best part of my job. I've created and produced thousands of commercials and videos in my career. Now it's time to make stuff just for me and use my talent for good instead of evil.
My official bio...
Troy Hayes is a creative and prolific designer, art director, director and visual content producer. He is recognized as an advertising communicator and strategist responsible for numerous successful campaigns. In his twenties he transformed beer advertising with his infamous Spuds MacKenzie campaign for Bud Light. He turned around the listless Wheaties brand with his iconic Better Eat Your Wheaties campaign starring basketball legend Michael Jordan.
His career thrived during the tumultuous era of mergers and public offerings of Needham Harper & Steers/Doyle Dane & Bernbach/Omnicom. After three straight years of producing Super Bowl commercials, one of which was voted into the Top 50 of all time, he decided to open his own production company to direct commercials and music videos.
In his mid-thirties, Hayes was recruited to rejoin the agency business and was offered the chief creative officer role and a partnership in the largest independent ad agency in Florida. His campaign for Sunglass Hut increased store sales by 17%. He also helped Sunglass Hut successfully launch Watch Station before both were acquired by Luxxotica.
The attacks on 9/11 crippled the travel industry. Hayes and his creative team got to work rebuilding the Carnival Cruise business with innovative promotions and daring marketing tactics. Within a year, Carnival was back to near full capacity and their stock price outpaced the Dow by 100%.
His music-based campaign featuring fun songs by The Beach Boys, Cyndi Lauper and Sly and The Family Stone, solidified Carnival Cruise Lines’ positioning as “The Fun Ships”, while saving America from any more Kathy Lee Gifford commercials.
Hayes is a dynamic creative leader who also understands the bottom line. Under his leadership, agencies prosper financially and creatively. He achieved double digit profits by expressing a vision of the future that employees wanted to be a part of. His plan to fully integrate creative and digital departments incentivized employees to work together to achieve common goals that were beneficial to the company and to themselves. Increased productivity and profits were a direct result of the teamwork used to achieve the vision.
His teams continuously generated great work and had a good time doing it. He deflected problems and allowed his talented team to do their jobs without fear and or interference.
Cooper & Hayes was named the fastest growing agency in the Southeast by Adweek and eventually sold to DDB for $25million.
After the buyout, Hayes left to start Engine 29, a convergent content idea studio that was an advertising and marketing think tank. They not only helped their clients market their brands but also helped them create the brand itself.
After the economic crash of 2007, Hayes was recruited to lead The Food Group, the nation’s oldest and largest ad agency dedicated to food marketing. As the leader of a creative department that spanned five offices and three time zones, he helped the agency remain profitable during the Great Recession and generated award-winning campaigns for clients like Kraft, Tabasco, Dannon, and Nabisco.
In 2018, Hayes joined Bryan Del Monte to launch The Aviation Agency. In just three short years, The Aviation Agency has quadrupled in size and become the leading aviation marketing company in the U.S.
Hayes has led a desperate attempt to save the advertising world from its never-ending march to self-destruction. By changing the paradigm and convincing clients and ad agencies that the way they currently do business and create content is a recipe for extinction.
Hayes has received numerous accolades for his zealous contribution to advertising industry.