The Lexus GX is an impressive vehicle. And the fantastical story we used to launch it speaks to all of us. We have all felt stuck at one moment or another like we're going nowhere. But when we see a sign, urging us to move forward and live life with the reassurance that we're fully supported, it's one of the most powerful experiences we can have.
What do Wimbledon, the Premier League, and a credit card company have in common? They all fuel fandom. Barclays sponsors both, but while the games are unforgettable, sponsors often aren’t. So we played a different game: instead of focusing on athletes, we turned the spotlight on the fans. We turned Barclays into Champions of Fans, uniting their sponsorships and retail partners because, hey, brands have fans too.
Junior Achievement of Southern California is on a mission to teach kids about money and close the growing wealth gap. To give this cause the attention it deserves, we created two pro-bono TV spots and a series of social films. "The Party" and "The Talk" launched during National Financial Literacy Month, aiming to get kids thinking smarter about money and maybe even make some adults rethink their finances too.
Holiday Inn Express wanted a whole new audience to try its amazing one-button pancake machine. So we decked out a food truck with their pancake machines and planned a multi-city, 9,000-mile tour. But we knew that wouldn’t be enough. Before we hit the streets, we pushed their breakfast technology even further by combining pancakes, lasers, and selfies. So everyone could post their selfie…and then eat it. The experience resulted in 175 million PR impressions, 1.5 million social media impressions, and 283,000 activation exposures, including an appearance on the Late Night with Seth Meyers Show.
The Pancake Selfie Express was so successful, Holiday Inn Express did a second tour the next year, and we picked up an Ex Award.
For Father's Day, we launched a parody video across social for the all-new Lexus GX. The spot features some innovative technology that helps kids connect better with their dads. While the Lexus GX has been engineered to ensure every passenger has the most enjoyable experience possible, this piece of faux tech was a way to thank all the dads out there for keeping the jokes coming.
Philips believes there’s always a way. That’s why they’re committed to solving seemingly impossible challenges that hold healthcare back, and improve the lives of billions of people. But they can’t do it alone. To stand out in the healthcare category, Philips needed to change the perception of being only a product supplier to being a partner that solves big problems, empowers caregivers and puts the patient at the center of everything. To convey this, we stayed away from the typical product shots and created an emotional campaign that featured current patients, real healthcare professionals, and actual Philips factory employees.
Linkedin played a strategic role in heavily supporting the campaign which by Q3 had already more than doubled the Impression and Engagement goals that were set for the year. Proving that you don’t need a technician pointing out a medical device for effective Healthcare advertising.
The UPS Store asked us to create an internal film that thanked their franchisees during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We wanted franchisees and employees alike to feel recognized and proud of their role in helping local communities during such a difficult time. Since the UPS Store had been declared an essential business by the US Government, we used that as our theme. Our clients were so pleased they ended up running the film as a commercial on prime time. It was also recognized by AdAge, and Oprah Winfrey hand-picked the spot to air during her own special.
Anyone can get you ready, but Holiday Inn Express is the hotel that gets you the readiest. So what does it look like to Be The Readiest? It means we needed to go bigger. We brought back actor and comedian Rob Riggle, who was integral to our previous campaign, to star in a series of unexpected social posts and over the top films. We also used Kim Nguyen, who directed episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Fresh Off the Boat to bring the comedic ideas to life. And we even paired up the hero of our Salsa spot with a professional instructor from Dancing with the Stars so he could nail the dance moves. The campaign successfully ushered in Holiday Inn Express’s new tagline, Be the Readiest, from their old one, Stay Smart.
Like food, water, and air, sleep is essential for survival. Yet, 1 in 3 adults doesn’t get enough sleep. Philips SmartSleep offers clinically proven solutions that help you take charge of your sleep. To prove it, we brought the suite of sleep technology products to the city that never sleeps. We talked to over a hundred New Yorkers who needed help and documented the journey of four of them. This film served as the centerpiece on Philips SmartSleep home page, while individual stories were used on social media to drive traffic.
Holiday Inn Express wanted to talk about their amazing variety of breakfast items. We thought typical food photography would just get ignored. But emoji happens to be the fastest-growing form of communication in history. So we created the most delicious emoji ever and the first all-breakfast emoji keyboard–The Breakfamoji–as a way to speak to our audience. We worked with an illustrator in Australia to ensure each emoji had a unique personality that fit the hotel’s brand of humor, easily identifiable in such a small digital medium and be appetizing. Every pixel counted, even when figuring out how to scale down the logo. The Breakfamoji were used in daily social posts that showcased breakfast combos and made available to the public as a download through Google Play and the Apple App Store. So anyone could properly speak the language of breakfast love.
In this continuation of the Be The Readiest campaign, we stepped away from comedian and spokesperson Rob Riggle. Still, we wanted to keep the humor that Holiday Inn Express is known for. So we focused on the hotel guests instead and thought of what could be the craziest things you travel for and need to be the readiest. The actor we used in the gaming spot was a professional gamer, and he really did those hand exercises to warm up before competing. And the actor we used for the wedding bouquet spot could actually jump that high in those 6-inch heels. She wanted to do a taller box, but it appeared fake. They really were the readiest.
The Boy Scouts were perceived as outdated and uncool, which led to a decline in recruitment. To shed the hokey image, we decided to talk directly to the kids with something bold and unforgettable. We ended up capturing international attention. And being recognized by Communication Arts and the Effie Awards.
How do you top the "No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express!" tv commercials? It's a legendary campaign, but the budget hotel category that Holiday Inn Express created is now an overcrowded sea of sameness. We want our audience to know what exactly it means to "Stay Smart," so we hired comedic actor Rob Riggle to act as creative director and deliver the message for us. Whether it was breakfast, coffee, promotions, sponsorships, or other key offerings - like The Power Shower - that helped drive bookings, Riggle allowed us to keep a consistent tone of humor while showcasing the actual hotel and setting ourselves apart from the competition. The campaign was such a hit, that we used Rob Riggle as our “Creative Director” for over 3 years to star in dozens of films, social pieces like Facebook Canvas and even a 360 video that premiered on Facebook that got Adweek’s attention. This campaign brought Holiday Inn Express brand’s online awareness an increase of 8 percentage points and its consideration intent was up 5 percentage points which lead to the goal of more bookings among millennial business travelers.
Where are the most captive Braves fans watching the game? The bar is a pretty good guess. These beer coasters were placed in sports bars around Atlanta to get fans excited about the postseason, remind them how easy it is to "do your part", and most importantly, buy tickets. Tickets sales went up and we won an ADDY and were awarded by The One Show.
Zoosk makes dating however you want easy. We highlighted nightmarish situations people can find themselves in when they rely on the standard and traditional means of finding a companion. The unexpected humor resonated with our audience and Zoosk was able to position itself as the dating site that understood that there are lots of different ways to date. These ads garnered millions of views on youtube and thousands of likes and comments that all helped Zoosk see a 250% increase in revenue. Perceptions of online dating forever changed.
I never thought I'd move to New Orleans to start my career in advertising. While the city was far from being a hotbed of marketing, I quickly fell in love with all its offerings and enjoyed exploring the colorful neighborhoods with my camera. This book is a compilation of photos that centers around the many offbeat and fantastic bicycles that I captured pre-Katrina. To me, these bikes were a perfect visual representation of the unique culture of the Crescent City that just wouldn't have fit so well anywhere else. I sifted through thousands of photos and found a publisher who printed their largest run ever–over 10,000 copies. Andrei Codrescu, author, poet, and NPR commentator wrote the opening. The first run sold out. But you can still find it.
