Jonathan Henning

Brought a tweet back from the dead and gave All Day Breakfast to America. Built a dark net marketplace and made a legit company millions. Birthed a giant animatronic squid for Old Spice dudes.

Relaunched the most successful loyalty program in history. Revived the biggest motorcycle club on earth — and made millions. Made online customer support not suck for the biggest wireless network in America. Now making a hidden corner of Asia impossible to ignore.

...all while building the teams that made it possible.

...all while building the teams

that made it possible.

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Jonathan Henning is a brand strategist and customer experience leader with fifteen years of experience building systems, teams, and ideas that move markets.

He has held senior strategy roles at Twitter, Wieden+Kennedy, R/GA, Harley-Davidson, and Publicis Sapient, working across some of the world's most demanding brands including Nike, Starbucks, McDonald's, Verizon, Old Spice, and Soylent. His work spans conversational AI, loyalty program design, membership experience, and cultural brand activation — consistently at the intersection of creative ambition and measurable outcome.

Jonathan Henning is a brand strategist and customer experience leader with fifteen years of experience building systems, teams, and ideas that move markets.

He has held senior strategy roles at Twitter, Wieden+Kennedy, R/GA, Harley-Davidson, and Publicis Sapient, working across some of the world's most demanding brands including Nike, Starbucks, McDonald's, Verizon, Old Spice, and Soylent. His work spans conversational AI, loyalty program design, membership experience, and cultural brand activation — consistently at the intersection of creative ambition and measurable outcome.

The work is the proof.

Fifteen years building brand,

CX, and AI systems that move markets.

The work is the proof.

Fifteen years building brand,

CX, and AI systems that move markets.

The work is the proof.

Fifteen years building brand,

CX, and AI systems that move markets.

Starbucks Rewards was already one of the most recognized loyalty programs in the world. The question wasn't whether it worked — it was whether it was working for the right reasons, and whether those reasons would hold as the competitive landscape evolved.

Soylent Soy Route

Soylent

Soy Route

McDonald's All Day Breakfast

McDonald's

All Day Breakfast

For years, one of the most consistent requests in McDonald's social mentions was simple: serve breakfast all day. When McDonald's finally decided to make it happen, they needed a launch moment worthy of the cultural conversation they'd been ignoring for a decade.

Turn a menu change into a cultural event — on a platform where attention is measured in seconds and brand moments are forgotten by the next news cycle.

Rather than create the story, we found it — buried in Twitter's own archive. Digging back through Twitter's archive, we surfaced the original tweet asking McDonald's for all-day breakfast — and responded to it directly. The internet did the rest.

To amplify the moment, we simultaneously deployed two brand-new Twitter ad products: the platform's first-ever custom branded emoji and a custom Twitter Moment curating the cultural response in real time. No brand had launched two new Twitter ad products simultaneously before.

Rather than create the story, we found it — buried in Twitter's own archive. Digging back through Twitter's archive, we surfaced the original tweet asking McDonald's for all-day breakfast — and responded to it directly. The internet did the rest.

To amplify the moment, we simultaneously deployed two brand-new Twitter ad products: the platform's first-ever custom branded emoji and a custom Twitter Moment curating the cultural response in real time. No brand had launched two new Twitter ad products simultaneously before.

Rather than create the story, we found it — buried in Twitter's own archive. Digging back through Twitter's archive, we surfaced the original tweet asking McDonald's for all-day breakfast — and responded to it directly. The internet did the rest.

To amplify the moment, we simultaneously deployed two brand-new Twitter ad products: the platform's first-ever custom branded emoji and a custom Twitter Moment curating the cultural response in real time. No brand had launched two new Twitter ad products simultaneously before.

The McDonald's All Day Breakfast launch became the highest-performing QSR social activation of 2016, generating over $5MM in earned media on a $1MM spend — a 5x return driven almost entirely by cultural resonance rather than paid distribution.

Soylent was the darling of Silicon Valley's optimization culture — beloved by tech early adopters and deeply suspicious to everyone else. As the brand began its push toward mainstream retail, the goal was to win new customers without losing the ones who made Soylent cool in the first place.

Maintain Soylent's street credibility with a culturally discerning core audience — at the most critical moment in the brand's history.

We built a marketplace on the dark web. Soy Route — a knowing nod to the infamous Silk Road — was a fully operational promotional storefront accessible only via the Tor browser, selling limited-edition Soylent flavors and branded collectibles purchasable exclusively in Bitcoin. No press release. No paid media. No mainstream promotion. The only way in was knowing it existed, and the only way to know was to be the kind of person Soylent was built for.

Word spread exactly where it was supposed to — through Reddit, through the tech community, through the networks of precisely the audience the brand needed to keep. Every decision in the campaign, including the payment mechanic, was the product of complete cultural immersion — a team so fluent in the world of their audience that Bitcoin wasn't a gimmick, it was the only logical choice.

We built a marketplace on the dark web. Soy Route — a knowing nod to the infamous Silk Road — was a fully operational promotional storefront accessible only via the Tor browser, selling limited-edition Soylent flavors and branded collectibles purchasable exclusively in Bitcoin. No press release. No paid media. No mainstream promotion. The only way in was knowing it existed, and the only way to know was to be the kind of person Soylent was built for.

Word spread exactly where it was supposed to — through Reddit, through the tech community, through the networks of precisely the audience the brand needed to keep. Every decision in the campaign, including the payment mechanic, was the product of complete cultural immersion — a team so fluent in the world of their audience that Bitcoin wasn't a gimmick, it was the only logical choice.

We built a marketplace on the dark web. Soy Route — a knowing nod to the infamous Silk Road — was a fully operational promotional storefront accessible only via the Tor browser, selling limited-edition Soylent flavors and branded collectibles purchasable exclusively in Bitcoin. No press release. No paid media. No mainstream promotion. The only way in was knowing it existed, and the only way to know was to be the kind of person Soylent was built for.

Word spread exactly where it was supposed to — through Reddit, through the tech community, through the networks of precisely the audience the brand needed to keep. Every decision in the campaign, including the payment mechanic, was the product of complete cultural immersion — a team so fluent in the world of their audience that Bitcoin wasn't a gimmick, it was the only logical choice.

Soy Route was named Best Marketing Campaign of 2017 by BevNET and won Website of the Day alongside a host of other accolades. More importantly, it generated $20,000 in direct merchandise revenue — collected entirely in Bitcoin at $280 per coin. One month later, Bitcoin crossed $20,000. Those coins were now worth $1.4MM. The result was the highest ROAS in brand activation history, and a masterclass in what happens when strategy and culture achieve genuine alignment.

Old Spice S.Q.U.I.D.

Old Spice

S.Q.U.I.D.

Old Spice needed to launch Krakengärd, a new deodorant scent, in a way that felt native to the brand's tradition of absurdist, participatory creativity — and relevant to the gaming culture its audience lived in.

Break through in a media environment where young men increasingly live on Twitch, not television. Create something that couldn't be ignored, skipped, or scrolled past.

We built a robot squid. Specifically, S.Q.U.I.D. — Shared Quests Uniting Individual Dudes — a fully operational animatronic sea creature designed to be controlled live on Twitch by eight strangers simultaneously, each operating a single tentacle from their phone or desktop.

Over three days, thousands of players queued up to guide S.Q.U.I.D. through a series of coming-of-age challenges — getting a summer job, making the hockey team, navigating the dating scene — while the broader Twitch community shaped the story in real time through chat, voting, and a custom emote that, when triggered enough times, unleashed a torrent of squid ink across the stage.

We built a robot squid. Specifically, S.Q.U.I.D. — Shared Quests Uniting Individual Dudes — a fully operational animatronic sea creature designed to be controlled live on Twitch by eight strangers simultaneously, each operating a single tentacle from their phone or desktop.

Over three days, thousands of players queued up to guide S.Q.U.I.D. through a series of coming-of-age challenges — getting a summer job, making the hockey team, navigating the dating scene — while the broader Twitch community shaped the story in real time through chat, voting, and a custom emote that, when triggered enough times, unleashed a torrent of squid ink across the stage.

We built a robot squid. Specifically, S.Q.U.I.D. — Shared Quests Uniting Individual Dudes — a fully operational animatronic sea creature designed to be controlled live on Twitch by eight strangers simultaneously, each operating a single tentacle from their phone or desktop.

Over three days, thousands of players queued up to guide S.Q.U.I.D. through a series of coming-of-age challenges — getting a summer job, making the hockey team, navigating the dating scene — while the broader Twitch community shaped the story in real time through chat, voting, and a custom emote that, when triggered enough times, unleashed a torrent of squid ink across the stage.

S.Q.U.I.D. generated over two million views across three days, becoming the top-trending stream and the most-watched branded activation in Twitch history.

Identify what Starbucks Rewards members actually valued — not what the program assumed they valued — and translate those insights into a strategic foundation capable of guiding a full program relaunch.

As Director of Strategy for R/GA's Portland office, I led a comprehensive mixed-methods research initiative — quantitative and qualitative — to uncover the true drivers of loyalty among Starbucks Rewards customers. The findings cut through assumptions and delivered a clear, evidence-based hierarchy of reward benefits that became the strategic baseline for the relaunch.

The strategic framework delivered became the foundation for the Starbucks Rewards relaunch — now widely recognized as the most profitable loyalty program in the world, with over 30 million active members in the US alone.

The redesigned HOG program reduced rider churn by 40% and drove $120MM in new attributed revenue. Engagement harmonized across platforms saw a 30% lift. The long-tail lifetime value of the membership base remains difficult to fully compute — the program's impact on new motorcycle sales continues to compound.

Verizon AI & Profiles Architecture

Verizon

AI & Profiles Architecture

Verizon needed a conversational AI platform capable of providing seamless customer support across its consumer, business, and enterprise groups — spanning more than 100 products and millions of account holders.

Build a conversational AI experience that could serve the full complexity of modern American family and business phone plans — anticipating needs, recognizing relationships, and delivering support that felt personal at scale.

What began as a conversational AI engagement quickly surfaced a more fundamental problem: Verizon's existing profile architecture wasn't built to support chat in any meaningful way. Rather than build on a broken foundation, we reframed the scope entirely.

Leading a cross-functional team of designers, strategists, and technologists, we conducted a forward-looking investigation into the future of American family and business units — mapping the full landscape of relationships, roles, and needs that a modern phone plan actually serves. The result was a next-generation profile architecture capable of supporting seamless, contextually intelligent interactions across every product and customer segment Verizon operates.

Equally critical was the internal work: roughly half of the engagement was spent socializing and selling the vision across Verizon's design and corporate teams — building the organizational alignment necessary for work this foundational to actually ship.

What began as a conversational AI engagement quickly surfaced a more fundamental problem: Verizon's existing profile architecture wasn't built to support chat in any meaningful way. Rather than build on a broken foundation, we reframed the scope entirely.

Leading a cross-functional team of designers, strategists, and technologists, we conducted a forward-looking investigation into the future of American family and business units — mapping the full landscape of relationships, roles, and needs that a modern phone plan actually serves. The result was a next-generation profile architecture capable of supporting seamless, contextually intelligent interactions across every product and customer segment Verizon operates.

Equally critical was the internal work: roughly half of the engagement was spent socializing and selling the vision across Verizon's design and corporate teams — building the organizational alignment necessary for work this foundational to actually ship.

What began as a conversational AI engagement quickly surfaced a more fundamental problem: Verizon's existing profile architecture wasn't built to support chat in any meaningful way. Rather than build on a broken foundation, we reframed the scope entirely.

Leading a cross-functional team of designers, strategists, and technologists, we conducted a forward-looking investigation into the future of American family and business units — mapping the full landscape of relationships, roles, and needs that a modern phone plan actually serves. The result was a next-generation profile architecture capable of supporting seamless, contextually intelligent interactions across every product and customer segment Verizon operates.

Equally critical was the internal work: roughly half of the engagement was spent socializing and selling the vision across Verizon's design and corporate teams — building the organizational alignment necessary for work this foundational to actually ship.

The platform contributed to a 40% increase in customer engagement and a 15% lift in NPS — metrics that reflect not just a better product, but a better-understood customer.

One of Asia's most strategically significant coastal regions sits at a geopolitical crossroads — a place where architecture, experience design, and urban identity carry unusual weight on the world stage.

Thirty-five infrastructure development projects were underway simultaneously across the region. Each had merit in isolation. None had been designed to function as a coherent ecosystem — one capable of attracting foreign investment, international tourism, and projecting the kind of soft power that great cities deliver through lived experience rather than rhetoric.

Contracted directly by the regional government, I served as the primary Western voice across all 35 projects — the strategic lens through which every development decision was evaluated for its appeal to non-local citizens, tourists, and investors.

The work was equal parts audit and architecture. Each project was assessed individually and then stress-tested against the whole: did it contribute to a singular, legible identity? Did it serve residents as fluently as visitors? Did it communicate something specific and true about this place to someone encountering it for the first time?

The deliverable was a strategic programming framework that transformed 35 discrete projects into a single, navigable experience ecosystem.

Contracted directly by the regional government, I served as the primary Western voice across all 35 projects — the strategic lens through which every development decision was evaluated for its appeal to non-local citizens, tourists, and investors.

The work was equal parts audit and architecture. Each project was assessed individually and then stress-tested against the whole: did it contribute to a singular, legible identity? Did it serve residents as fluently as visitors? Did it communicate something specific and true about this place to someone encountering it for the first time?

The deliverable was a strategic programming framework that transformed 35 discrete projects into a single, navigable experience ecosystem.

Contracted directly by the regional government, I served as the primary Western voice across all 35 projects — the strategic lens through which every development decision was evaluated for its appeal to non-local citizens, tourists, and investors.

The work was equal parts audit and architecture. Each project was assessed individually and then stress-tested against the whole: did it contribute to a singular, legible identity? Did it serve residents as fluently as visitors? Did it communicate something specific and true about this place to someone encountering it for the first time?

The deliverable was a strategic programming framework that transformed 35 discrete projects into a single, navigable experience ecosystem.

The framework is currently in active implementation across the full project portfolio.

This is ongoing work.

The framework is currently in active implementation across the full project portfolio.

This is ongoing work.

The framework is currently in active implementation across the full project portfolio.

This is ongoing work.

The Harley Owners Group had 3 million members and was generating $1MM annually — a striking imbalance for one of the most iconic brand communities in the world. Meanwhile, nearly-new Harleys were flooding used lots within months of purchase, quietly undercutting new motorcycle sales and eroding the brand's most valuable segment.

Reduce rider churn, protect new motorcycle sales, and unlock the latent value of a 3-million-person community that had never been asked to do very much.

Rather than treat this as a marketing problem, we treated it as a research problem. Months of qualitative and quantitative investigation surfaced an insight nobody had expected: the primary reason riders — particularly buyers of Harley's premium CVO lineup — were selling their bikes wasn't dissatisfaction. It was that they didn't know how to ride them.

The strategic response was a fundamental reconception of HOG — from an owners group to a riding club. Rider education and training moved to the center of the membership experience, transforming HOG from a badge into a genuinely useful community with a reason to exist.

Rather than treat this as a marketing problem, we treated it as a research problem. Months of qualitative and quantitative investigation surfaced an insight nobody had expected: the primary reason riders — particularly buyers of Harley's premium CVO lineup — were selling their bikes wasn't dissatisfaction. It was that they didn't know how to ride them.

The strategic response was a fundamental reconception of HOG — from an owners group to a riding club. Rider education and training moved to the center of the membership experience, transforming HOG from a badge into a genuinely useful community with a reason to exist.

Rather than treat this as a marketing problem, we treated it as a research problem. Months of qualitative and quantitative investigation surfaced an insight nobody had expected: the primary reason riders — particularly buyers of Harley's premium CVO lineup — were selling their bikes wasn't dissatisfaction. It was that they didn't know how to ride them.

The strategic response was a fundamental reconception of HOG — from an owners group to a riding club. Rider education and training moved to the center of the membership experience, transforming HOG from a badge into a genuinely useful community with a reason to exist.