At the adidas store on Melrose, the burgers wore chrome. So did the basketballs. Even the ice carried the branding. For the March 2025 launch of James Harden’s Vol. 9 shoe, Times10 took an aesthetic and followed it all the way to lunch. Marathon Burgers supplied the food; the agency made the wrappers part of the scene. A sneaker release had become a place to spend an evening, with plenty for a phone camera to notice.
That attention to the apparently minor is a useful introduction to Times10. The Burbank creative agency works across advertising, production and live experiences, moving between things people watch and things they can enter. Its adidas assignment included the RSVP page, guest movement, talent coordination and content capture. The glamorous photograph depended on a less glamorous question: where, exactly, should everybody stand?
Look through the portfolio and a particular kind of agency emerges. Times10 is comfortable with athletes, consumer products and the machinery around public attention. The interesting part is how much of that machinery it is willing to handle.
A familiar agency menu, an unusually physical appetite
Founded in 2011 by Ben Ricciardi, Times10 sells creative and marketing services to businesses. Its public portfolio includes C4 Energy, adidas and Derrick Rose; the wider client roster names entertainment, retail and consumer brands including MGM Resorts, Best Buy and Universal. These are businesses selling something people might drink, wear, visit or talk about.
The commercial problem is easy to recognize. A product launch needs a clear idea, but that idea also needs photographs, footage, invitations, a place in the store and something useful for social channels. Each additional supplier introduces another handoff. Times10’s proposition is to bring many of those jobs together.
This places it among integrated creative agencies, with a visible emphasis on production and experiential work. A brand could also hire a film company, an event producer and a social agency separately, or coordinate them through an internal team. The choice turns on how much coordination the client wants to own.
Kevin Hart had two hours. The cameras had homework.
One revealing example arrived in 2022. Kevin Hart’s schedule allowed just two hours on set for a C4 Smart Energy commercial, according to Marketing Dive’s account. Times10 organized two crews: one prepared and lit the next scene while the other filmed. It also rigged cameras to capture horizontal and vertical footage simultaneously.
The result had to work as a conventional spot and in the upright frames of TikTok and Instagram Reels. Ricciardi directed Hart through different situations and mindsets. The production’s speed served a campaign built around the performer’s busy life.
For another marketer, the useful lesson is in the preparation. Decide which formats matter before the person everyone needs arrives. Protect the scarce resource, whether that is celebrity time, a location booking or a short window with a product prototype. Adding cameras only helps when the team knows what each one must bring home.
Plan both frames
before the shoot.
Chicago supplied the story. Times10 built the setting.
In January 2025, Derrick Rose’s return to Chicago offered a different brief. The former Bulls star opened a one-day flower shop at Tortoise Supper Club. ABC7 reported that the line began the night before and that hundreds of people were waiting by morning. There was already a relationship between the city and the player. The event gave it somewhere to gather.
Times10’s Forever Yours project paired Roses Flower Shop with Homegrown at Simeon. The agency describes responsibility for creative, production and logistics, working with Rose’s team. Its tasks included the shop’s interior and exterior treatment and a same-day bouquet delivery experience.
At Simeon, the details became more local: Italian Fiesta Pizzeria, a hallway timeline and a candy stand. The work also included additions that could remain at the school, such as banners and a scorer’s table upgrade. That distinction matters. An event can produce a photograph and still leave something useful behind.
The same portfolio later takes Rose’s shoe history into a quieter setting. For the Fear of God Athletics II Basketball D Rose launch, Times10 describes a museum-style environment with archival footwear, mirrors and controlled guest movement. The design had to accommodate both Rose’s history and Fear of God’s restrained visual approach. A basketball story could occupy a flower shop, a school or an exhibition-like room without needing the same decoration every time.
The seven-foot answer to a meet-and-greet
Some assignments call for something louder. At WrestleMania 38 in 2022, C4 Energy used a seven-foot interactive hologram booth produced by Times10. BizBash reported that the installation brought representations of Roman Reigns, Bianca Belair and Montez Ford into the fan experience at Superstore Axxess.
That is a concrete example of the agency’s experiential work: choose a recognizable attraction, build a setting for interaction, and connect it to the sponsoring brand. It also shows why the audience must come before the equipment. Wrestling fans had a reason to care about those particular figures. The height of the booth was secondary.
The transferable question is straightforward: what encounter would this audience welcome? An elaborate display earns its place when it gives people something they actually want to do. A technology demonstration with no such reason can quickly become an expensive object in the corner.
Big numbers need small print
C4’s broader Ignite Your Fire campaign combined content, talent, sampling and retail execution. Times10’s case study reports more than 500,000 cans distributed, more than 50 events and 45 billboards. Those figures describe the physical scale of the undertaking as well as its media presence.
A separate Shorty Awards entry submitted by CURICH|WEISS and C4 Energy reports more than 12 million digital impressions and a 34 percent lift in brand awareness. It credits Times10 with the campaign’s creation. These are reported campaign results, and the entry reflects a shared effort involving the brand and its partners.
Scale reported in Times10’s C4 case study. Activity measures, not a calculation of return on investment.
For a prospective client, the distinction is practical. Impressions describe exposure. A brand-awareness measure addresses recognition. Sales answer another question again. Evaluating an agency means deciding which outcome the assignment is supposed to change, then asking for evidence at that level. A large number should begin the discussion, rather than settle it.
The invoice starts with the brief
Times10’s contact form asks which services a prospective client needs and requests an estimated monthly budget. That is consistent with a business built around scoped assignments and ongoing support. The buyer is commissioning work from a team: an idea, the production required to execute it and, depending on the assignment, the distribution and reporting around it.
The current service offering runs from brand positioning and creative direction to paid media, community management and influencer coordination. Gifting includes recipient selection and fulfillment as well as packaging. Those less visible tasks matter when the goal is to get a product into the right hands at the right time.
The buying lesson is to define the complete job. A film budget and a campaign budget answer different questions. Talent, fabrication, event staffing, paid distribution and usage rights can each affect the scope. A brand comparing proposals should specify the outputs, who handles approvals, and what happens after the launch. That makes the comparison more useful than a contest between attractive reels.
That breadth is most useful when several parts of a launch genuinely depend on one another. A store opening with talent, press and a social campaign creates that kind of coordination problem. A brand needing one product photograph may have a much narrower assignment. The client also has work to do: agree on the audience, make decisions on time and identify the person who can approve changes. Otherwise, putting several services under one roof simply gives the same unresolved brief more places to stall. The agency selection should follow the work the business is prepared to commission.
The founder learned to share the controls
Ricciardi has described a management adjustment that fits this spread of responsibilities. In a 2019 Forbes article about delegation, he spoke about recognizing his own limits and the skills other people possessed. The change began with a realistic assessment of what he could accomplish himself.
“I got realistic about what I could accomplish in a 24-hour day”
Ben Ricciardi · Forbes, 2019
It is an instructive admission from the founder of a business whose assignments cross so many disciplines. Direction, design, finance and operations require different kinds of attention. The agency’s stated approach emphasizes speed and collaboration; sharing responsibility is one plausible way to make those ambitions compatible. Clients can test that idea in a practical way by asking who actually owns each part of an assignment.
The audience still has to believe it
Ricciardi’s 2023 NutraCast appearance offered a more sobering view of marketing consumer drinks. He described a crowded category in which brands needed meaningful marketing investment and a distinct point of view. He also warned against celebrity partnerships that looked like nothing more than a paid endorsement. Consumers, he argued, could recognize the mismatch.
That places a limit on the approach illustrated by the portfolio. A recognizable face and polished production cannot supply a credible relationship by themselves. The brand, the endorser and the audience need some believable connection. A smaller company copying the format should examine that connection before copying the spectacle.
Times10’s recent public feed extends into beauty and household products, including SACHEU campaign work and scent-led content for Laundry Sauce. The products change; the recurring task is to give the brand a visual treatment that can travel across formats. For any buyer, the useful place to begin is modest: identify the audience, decide what it should do next, and plan what must be made. Eventually, somebody will have to approve the burger wrappers.