In 2025, I briefly worked with Emilio's Famous Pizza & Subs in Roanoke, initially consulting on merchant processing and helping the business transition to a new Clover system. What began as a business relationship quickly developed into a creative project, including a new menu design and future branding concepts intended to strengthen the restaurant's presence and expand its marketing opportunities.

Although our paths eventually went in different directions, this remains one of the projects that brought me the most creative enjoyment. It gave me the opportunity to take an established local business and look beyond the immediate marketing needs to find something that could become a larger part of its identity. 

That idea became Emmy.

Emmy is a smiling slice of pizza wearing a crown, a playful character built around the identity of Emilio's.

The name itself created the first opportunity. Emmy is a natural abbreviation of Emilio. But the more interesting connection came from the word “Famous.”

When we think about fame, we think about celebrities, Hollywood, awards, and entertainment. From there, the connection to the Emmy Awards creates a natural piece of brand psychology that could be transformed into a character.

Emmy wasn't simply designed to be a mascot. Emmy was designed to become a marketing platform.

The character could become the recognizable personality behind the restaurant and create an endless supply of content that was connected directly to the brand.

The concept included a variety of recurring ideas built around Emmy's personality:

• Daily Cheesy Jokes
  Short, humorous content delivered by Emmy through social media.

• Emmy Shout-Outs
  Recognizing customers, community members, or local happenings through the voice of the character.

• Emmy of the Week
  Featuring a pizza, sub, or other menu item as Emmy's weekly “celebrity.”

• Emmy the Celebrity
  Leaning further into the Hollywood connection and exaggerating Emmy's personality as an over-the-top local celebrity.

The intention was to make the restaurant feel less like a business simply advertising food and more like a brand with a personality people could interact with.

Because Emmy was a pizza, the character also had the potential to connect naturally with virtually every customer demographic, from children and families to adults who simply enjoy humor and local culture.

The concept eventually expanded beyond social media.

One of the ideas I explored was developing a short-form animated series following “The Life of Emmy”, structured almost like a reality TV show.

Five-minute stories could follow Emmy's exaggerated life as a fictional celebrity pizza living in Roanoke; creating recurring characters, situations, jokes, and opportunities for Emilio's products to naturally become part of the story.

The goal was to turn a simple mascot into an original piece of intellectual property that could live across social media, advertising, packaging, merchandise, and eventually video.

That was the part of the project I found most exciting.

What began with a pizza character quickly became a larger exercise in thinking about how a local restaurant could create something memorable, ownable, and uniquely its own.

Although the concept was never brought to full implementation, it remains one of my favorite examples of how quickly I can identify an opportunity within an existing business and develop it into a larger creative and marketing system.

The project ultimately wasn't about creating a smiling slice of pizza.

It was about finding the story that was already hidden inside the brand, and figuring out how far that story could go.