Special K is specifically formulated to deliver nutrients humans need. So, when aliens come and take over the planet - come on, it's happening - we simply request they keep us around to be their obedient servants. And also feed us Special K. And please, gentle with the probing.
Almost immediately after taking over the creative director role on Bud Light, my partner and I began crafting an idea where the brand took over an entire town. Not a bar. Not a really big bar. An entire friggin' town. It was one of Bud Light's most successful campaigns ever. It was a truly 360 degree idea. And it snagged a pencil at D&AD, and a lion at Cannes.
National Lampoons Christmas Vacation was THE Pendleton family holiday movie. Watched it every year. Multiple times. So imagine how pumped I was to recreate it. And not just for fun, but because it made so much strategic sense.
Because Walgreens has a special role as that “break glass in case of emergency” type of store just around the corner, all season. So we tapped into THE classic holiday movie about things going wrong on that loooooong holiday road.
Yes. Shaq does a ton of commercials. But we heard that literally for decades he’s been begging to be in a Frosted Flakes commercial with Tony. He even turned down the Wheaties box. There are articles about it. You can google it. So we decided to grant the big guy’s wish, and show off his love for Frosted Flakes. It turned into a match made in heaven. John Oliver even called our spot “30 seconds of sheer perfection.” And then we went and made an AR dunk contest between Tony and Shaq. Which racked up the most engagement time for any piece of Kellogg’s content… ever.
For the 2015 Super Bowl, Bud Light asked us to take their platform of "Up For Whatever" to a whole new level. We said, “Yeah, ok. I mean, that’s what you pay us for.”
While we were still young pups, my partner and I took over creative directing duties for Orbit. We created a whole new campaign about food hanging around. And when the client threw us a curveball by telling us we had to use these annoyingly cute animated characters, we made lemonade from lemons with the help of Sarah Silverman.
Allstate wanted to explain what it feels like to be IN good hands. That meant explaining all of the different (often annoyingly complex) tools and products Allstate bestows on it's customers. That's what being IN good hands feels like. To explain, we used some well-chosen celebrities explaining through well-chosen metaphors.
When I was tapped to lead creative on Kellogg’s, let’s just say Frosted Flakes wasn’t doing their best work. Tony the Tiger - an icon of our childhoods - had been relegated to a cheesy walking tagline. We quickly realized it was our job - no, destiny - to change that. Which was fun. Because it gave us a reason to put Tony in all sorts of places he’d never been before.
We did a strategic deep-dive (which is just as harrowing as it sounds) and figured out that Mini-Wheats isn’t like other cereals. It fills you up. And that keeps away your stomach growl. Which is good. Because your growl is a pain. It takes over. Makes you do things you don’t want to. Your growl is your body betraying you.
Incidentally, I believe this was Kellogg’s first humor-based campaign in a few years (a decade if you’re a tough critic - burn.)
When I was a young whippersnapper working on Bud Light for the first time, they asked us for a new campaign. We gave them three. Ted Ferguson Bud Light Daredevil was the first, and arguably the most-helmeted.
The Illinois Lottery approached us with their new "Cash For Life" game, which pays out winners for the rest of their lives. We developed a multi-media campaign to convince the TV-watching and train-taking citizens of Illinois that if they played their cards right, their lives actually COULD be quite valuable.
Here's a smattering of some of my early work on Bud Light. There are even some award-winning Real Men Of Genuis spots in there.
The Sox are the scrappy team on the opposite side of the tracks from that "other Chicago team." Just like their fans, they pride themselves on their simple, no-nonsense, blue collar approach to the game. We made some down and dirty TV spots. But we also created posters made with real jersey material & hand-stitched lettering, and made them available to fans. They extolled the virtues of Sox baseball, which is probably why they sold out in a couple of hours.
