Media: Film, Social, Web

There’s a reason Burger King was named client of the year in 2008. They’re a creative’s dream client – willing to take chances and support ideas that break the mold. This is why campaigns like Whopper Freakout, Simpsonize Me and Subservient Chicken were shared with the world. CP+B also deserves the credit here for gaining the trust of the client while encouraging them to take chances. Ultimately, this is why I was fortunate enough to work on what was truly a social experiment that resulted in people freaking out; work with Homer Simpson pending the approval of Matt Groening; and attempt to get Diddy the car of his choice.

Below is an excerpt from AdAge about our “Whopper Freakout” campaign…

“The premise of the "Whopper Freakout" campaign is as enchanting as it is perverse: Burger King employees claim corporate overlords have stricken the belly buster from the menu one day so Academy Award-nominated director Henry-Alex Rubin (Murderball) can document fast food junkies twitching and spewing when they find they can't have it their way. Day two of the experiment saw competitors' sandwiches replace the Whopper and again, hungry fans got riled up and professed their love, before the King himself appeared to make things right. The results of the big BK joke contributed to an eight-minute webfilm full of brand evangelism, focus group-y responses ("Level of 1-10, how pissed would you say you were...?"), bewilderment and good old fashioned hunger-induced American crankiness. Customers storm back to the counter demanding their beloved Whoppers when they realize they've been served Big Macs or Wendy's burgers, only to have the counter attendants remind them that BK doesn't serve "fried" burgers. Other more wistful BK-goers give folksy Whopper-tinged anecdotes about family bonding and passage into manhood.

The candid camera approach Crispin, Porter + Bogusky honed with its lauded Truth work appears to have succeeded. IAG Research found recall of the campaign to be the highest it's seen in its six-year history. Crispin reports over one million visits to the microsite with an average logged time of 8:33 and over four million finished video views, meaning most visitors watched several times. Multiple spoofs emerged, including "Ghetto Freakout," an R-rated take on the campaign which clocked over 3 million views on YouTube. More importantly, America continued to reach for the Whopper—Burger King's same-store sales numbers were up, improving 4.5 percent on 2006 numbers.”

Media: Film, Digital, Web

Developed by both CP+B and Arnold Worldwide, the “Sunny side of Truth",’ takes a fresh and “sunnier” approach to marketing both the harmful effects of tobacco use as well as the efforts of Big Tobacco to push their products on the younger generation.

For years, ALF put out shocking commercials that delivered a hard-hitting anti-tobacco message while illuminating facts about tobacco. This year we decided to take a different approach, armed with a fist-full of satire. Five commercials showcase an array of song and dance performances married with whimsical animation in an attempt to highlight the “hidden positives” associated with tobacco. In the end the viewer realizes there are no positives to tobacco use and despite the musical diversion, the ads all deliver a strong anti-tobacco message or illuminate facts about tobacco.

Even with an extremely talented production team (Directed by Tom Kuntz, Animation by ex-Disney animators Saul and Elliot, and music by Tony nominated composer and song writer, David Yazbek), this project that took several months to complete. It was a pleasure to work on and contribute to the Truth brand.

Funny side note: The now famous Lea Michele, made it to callbacks, but was just too good and polished of a performer to make our cast.

Media: Film, Web

Salesforce is the world’s #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Our cloud-based applications for sales, service, marketing, and more don’t require IT experts to set up or manage — simply log in and start connecting to customers in a whole new way.

The first spot is the most recent work I’ve done for Salesforce. It’s an awareness video focused on app development, which for most people is a daunting task. But with the help of Salesforce and its Lightning Platform, anyone can develop apps, because business executives and IT professionals can now work together to get things done more quickly and efficiently. However, the current system that most companies use to build their apps often results in business users waiting forever for the overloaded IT department to get around to their request. It’s sort of like waiting around for your number to get called at the DMV.

This insight led to the featured parody, where instead of the DMV it’s the DEV, a place where the customers waiting to be helped are business execs and the people helping them at the windows are developers (devs). The business users anxiously wait for their numbers to be called so they can get some help developing their ideas for apps. And the developers, who really do want to help, realize that the they’re not the best option for building an app, that is until the DEV adopts the Lightning Platform. So for now, it’s the shitty world they’re all stuck in.

This next campaign is focused on another one of Salesforce’s flagship products, Service. With the help of Salesforce, businesses can enhance customer support — from call-center software to self-service portals — with more responsive, intuitive, and flexible service solutions that help your business anticipate your customers’ needs.

The videos were part of a larger awareness campaign that simply wanted our customers to know that we understand the challenges of customer service (and have all experienced the excruciatingly bad customer service that is the norm), but that Salesforce is here to help businesses achieve great customer service for all.

Media: Film, Mobile App

When Domino’s ranked last for their flagship product, pizza, they turned to CP+B for help. Knowing that their product would take time to reinvent, we decided to focus on something Domino’s had always done well – time. This launched the new tagline, “You got 30 minutes” and would end up being the focus for the initial push of work.

Once this theme was established through commercials and a number of innovative apps, Domino’s started to focus on other offerings and new products, like ice cream.

Domino’s went on to totally reinvent itself, becoming the second largest pizza chain in the world with a remarkable increase in their stock price from $8/share to $160/share. One of their key moves was to acknowledge that they weren’t just in the pizza-making business, but in the pizza delivery business, which meant it had to be in the technology business too.

Media: Film, Print, Outdoor, Experiential, Dealership

When CP+B took on the Volkswagen account, the agency resigned from its account with MINI USA to take on the $400 million contract. This eclipsed Burger King as the largest project in the agency's history. Let’s just say the amount of work we did reflected the size of the account fairly.

I was fortunate to touch several pieces of the business showcasing many of their vehicles. From the Passat to VW Motorsports, I was involved in creating a wide range of marketing materials from TV spots to in-dealer experiences. It was a challenge, but always a fun one.

The work you will see includes a TV campaign that featured the tagline, “When you get into a Volkswagen, it gets into you,” that speaks to the feeling that only a VW driver gets when behind the wheel of such a unique and fun to drive vehicle.

Fun fact: This campaign only featured songs from the Wilco album Sky Blue Sky. This is what Wilco had to say about it…"As many of you are aware, Volkswagen has recently begun running a series of TV commercials featuring Wilco music," the statement says. "With the commercial radio airplay route getting more difficult for many bands (including Wilco), we see this as another way to get the music out there." The statement does also point out, however, the lucrative benefits of their music being used in a high-profile TV campaign. "The band gets paid for this. And we feel okay about VWs. Several of us even drive them."

In the body of work you will also see a campaign that helped launch the new Passat. The idea focused on educating people on the features of the Passat, that most people weren’t aware of. This was a print campaign as well in-dealer experience in which we placed stickers throughout the vehicle so buyers would discover them as they shopped.

You’ll also find work that helps explain VW’s push to be carbon neutral; work that helps highlight various safety features found in a VW; as well as a few others.

If hope you enjoy some of the ads, even if you don’t drive a VW.

Media: Film (contextual)

When Ask.com became the official search engine for Nascar, CEO Jim Safka came to Hanft Raboy & Partners (where I was freelancing as their Creative Director) to create a campaign promoting the news and sponsorship. In addition to becoming the home of Nascar racing in terms of in-depth information it can provide, Ask would power Nascar.com and sponsor a car driven by Bobby Labonte in the Sprint Cup Series.

To answer the ask (no pun intended), we came up with an idea that would span the full length of the race season and attempt to connect with the fans in new way. Beginning with the kick off of the season at Daytona, Ask.com launched 36 new ads featuring a “colorful Nascar family.” Meant to play out like a sit-com, the ads featured slices of life as the Ray family enjoyed a race season together. A new ad broke each week for 36 weeks.

Spots aired approximately five times during each race. In one, Karen Ray (mom) ogled driver Bobby Labonte through a pair of binoculars. Her husband, Billy Ray, said, “Why don’t you keep that north of the Mason-Dixon line, alright?” Karen Ray asked: “Do they wear anything under those suits honey?” The Ask.com search box then appeared with the question: “What do Nascar drivers wear under their suits?”

Other ads asked: “What kind of car does Bobby Labonte drive when he’s not on the track?” and “What is the fastest time a pit crew has ever changed a tire?”

As the managing partner of the agency said, “A lot of companies do their obligatory spot to say we’re involved with Nascar. We know they watch it every week. We wanted to give them something new to watch and learn about [Ask.com] every week.”

Fun fact: The association produced one unexpected offshoot in form of interest in a TV series based on the Rays. “It could turn into something much bigger,” Safka said of the ad campaign. 

Media: Film, Social, Web, Digital, Internal Comms

Healthcare can be a tough nut to crack, when it comes to advertising. You don’t want to be too sell-y and you don’t want to fall into the chasm of ubiquity.

In the TV campaign we wanted the brand to be seen as being more human and wanted to deliver our message in a lighthearted way. By acknowledging the human truth that we all have healthy and less-healthy versions of ourselves, we were able to resonate with our audiences in a way that invited us to share ways they might be able to improve their health, while living their best lives.

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We also developed a graphical representation that speaks to both health and happiness. This smile graphic was applied to communications across the media landscape.

Media: Film

During my many years of freelance, I’ve been fortunate to work with the great folks at The Martin Agency, for over a year, on a number of their accounts. One of those was the behemoth, Walmart. For the most part, Walmart was used to producing ads pushing their product and announcing seasonal promotions. The idea of producing a larger brand ad (or two) was not something they’d really entertained.

Until these spots…

Working with the creative leadership of John Norman and Joe Alexander, we landed on the two spots you see here. We really wanted to shine a light on the role Walmart plays or can play in your families adventures, good times and special moments. The work also drives home the fact that when you shop at Walmart, you save money. This is supported with the end line, “When you save on the little things it can add up to something big.”

Media: Experiential, Stunt

When a former colleague called from Nest Labs (before the Google acquisition), I jumped at the opportunity to help a true start-up in the tech industry. I didn’t know a lot about them, but thought the beginnings of their brand was already something cool and obviously had some serious star power at the helm with Tony Fadell (the Podfather) and Matt Rogers.

During my time at Nest, we pitched a number of ideas to management on how to help launch their second product, the Nest Protect. The Nest Protect was a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm that elevated the aesthetic of the standard issue detector, and balanced that appeal with a set of connected features that let you control the Protect remotely via your mobile device or your account on the Nest Web page.

What you see here is what we came away with. The Nest blue fire engine was the perfect vehicle to introduce the new product to the world. Heads-Up, voice alarms, Nest Wave, messages to your phone, Nightly Promise—they're all about keeping your family safe in an emergency, and helping you feel safe when there’s nothing to worry about. So when people saw the customized fire truck roll up, they immediately attributed safety with the product.

The journey began with searching for and buying a used fire truck on Craigslist. Once it was purchased we needed to properly Nest-ify it. So without a second thought, I crossed my fingers and turned to some guys I’d talked with before, West Coast Customs. These guys were amazing and a joy to work with. Over a couple months time, they transformed the used red Craigslist fire truck into a sleek, highly functional, bad-ass brand vehicle.

Nest went on to partner with Uber to give pedestrians a ride, as well as visit retailers like Home Depot for live demos where store employees and customers could learn about the product and share their experience. On one side of the truck, you were able to release smoke to test the Heads-Up feature of Nest Protect, which you can then wave to hush. You can try out an emergency alarm in another chamber, or go around to the other side of the truck to print your #nestfiretruck Instagram photo and visit the kids area.

After completing what they called the Nest Fire Truck Tour, the truck was sent overseas to educate those across Europe. You can see here some of the tourist stops it took along the way.

Media: Print, Outdoor

Mercedes-Benz was one of the first clients I worked on in my career. I was just a young buck at Merkley & Partners in NYC working on one of the most high profile car accounts across the globe. It was a great learning experience and cool brand to work on right out of the gates. And since this was back in the day, most of what I was working on as a junior was print. We did a shit ton of standard car ads that featured a beauty shot of the car and a clever headline – more than I could possibly showcase here. So I just wanted to share a few samples that I think were more conceptual and driven by the art direction.

Fun fact: For the Silver Arrow ad, there were only two cars in the world that had come off the production line at the time. One was booked at the LA car show and one was in Germany. Bingo. So we arranged for the car to be shipped by barge to Amsterdam, where our chosen photographer, Simon Warmer, resided. Once it arrived it was guarded overnight until it was delivered to Simon’s one-of-a-kind eggshell studio (literally a round white room that is big enough to house more than one vehicle). I managed to squeeze out a full week in Amsterdam for the production and post work we did to the image. What a trip! And boy, do I miss the old days of advertising and production.

Media: Web

In Canada, McDonald’s feeds nearly 3 million people a day. They also employee 80,000 Canadians from coast to coast. However, in today’s world of technology where people can get information and misinformation from a wide array of sources, trust in brands is at an all-time low. This was an issue for McDonald’s CA and one that they wanted to face head on.

To help with this challenge, I was happy to jump on board as a freelance Creative Director, with a young and hungry Canadian marketing start-up who was hired to help McDonald’s CA help solve this problem.

We came up with a campaign handle called “Behind the Arches” that was meant to convey McDonald’s dedication to transparency. It also built off of the success of a campaign that was already running called “Our Food, Your Questions.”

We produced a robust website that started with a pledge to, and social contract with, the general public to strengthen their trust and become a restaurant they can count on. The pledge made it clear that it was McDonald’s time to work even harder to improve their food and supply chain and to become truly transparent by empowering the people with information.

We also put together some outdoor and in-restaurant marketing.

Media: Print

The first time I saw a Mountain Buggy (in Colorado of course), I thought what a smart idea and design. The thought of having to stop your hikes or leave your young children behind with a caretaker when you wanted to go on a hike, sorta sucks. Thankfully, that day is not here.

With it’s rugged design and superior construction, Mountain Buggy allows you to take your children with you on virtually any terrain. And while your children will likely love the adventure, there’s always a chance they might leave a thing or two behind, marking their territory.

With the combined brain-power of my AD girlfriend at the time, this was one of those simple visual solutions that just popped into our heads . So we set out on some our favorite Boulder hikes with some toys and camera in tow and shot these scenarios. It was a fun project and thankfully no children were upset in the making of these ads.

These posters were done pro-bono and offered to the local outfitters store that carried the Mountain Buggy.

Media: Print

Fila was one of the first accounts I worked on in my ad career. While at Merkley, I was part of the team that helped pitch and win the sports and apparel account. As most pitches go, the work we did to win it was much edgier than where we ended up, but nevertheless it was a cool experience for me (as a collegiate athlete) to work on the account.

During my time working on the Fila account, a lot of the ads we produced were focused on promoting news shoes for a range of sports. With that came the opportunity to work with a handful of Fila’s top athletes. We were fortunate to meet and work with Grant Hill, Claudio Reyna, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Jennifer Capriati to name a few.

The Fila baseball ad you see here celebrates Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa’s homerun hitting record season. It was also was the first work I won an award for. But even better than that, was showing it to my family in the Sports Illustrated special edition.

Fun fact: While shooting a video with the athletes mentioned above, I was able to hit a couple of balls with Jennifer Capriati and kick the soccer ball around with Claudio Reyna and his wife (another soccer star). I grew up playing soccer and at one point had Claudio’s poster on my wall, which as you can imagine, made that moment even more special.

Media: Print, Outdoor

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was an American company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language.

This campaign was to promote the use of Java by showcasing some of the businesses and industries that were successfully using the Java programming language.

These images, made up of actual Java code, were large wallscapes in and around the city of San Francisco. From blocks away it appeared to be just a cool graphic image, but the closer you got the more evident the code became.

Media: Print

This postcard campaign is the only work I’ve dragged with me throughout my career, that was done in portfolio school. I’m still proud of the idea and execution, especially since we were just learning the ins and outs of concepting and art direction.

My goal was to produce these in as real of a way as possible, while on a student budget. That said, there was no photoshop involved in “getting the red out.”

I started with asking the amazing Rob Lawton, a type and design teacher at The Creative Circus, if he’d come with me to get measured for a custom Santa suit. Without hesitation he said yes, and voila, he became the Visine Santa. Not only did Rob look the part, he also embodied the Santa spirit, so we couldn’t have asked for a better model.

In addition to the Santa costume, we ordered a real stop sign and bought a fresh lobster, both destined to be hit with a shit-ton of white spray paint. Unfortunately, a lobster was harmed in the making of this ad.

This was a super fun campaign and always takes me back to the days of being in ad school.