Motion

Daring to Dream.

There wasn’t a brief, just a client telling us about a cool project they were working on. I was so inspired by Sam Schmidt’s story, that I went home, wrote a script and started editing together a film from footage I pulled from the Internet that night.

Weeks later, a more-polished (and legally air-able) version of that edit was running on the Super Bowl.

Spreading the Spirit.

Our very first project for Meijer. The ask was for a holiday promo about saving money on lighting and decorations. We stayed on brief, but made it about so much more.

Fighting for What’s Fair.

Long before she began her quest for equal pay, millions of girls already looked up to Carli Lloyd. We wanted to show that she was fighting for their futures as well.

We sold in our original script with a woman as the announcer. After some thought,
I wondered if our message might be more impactful if it came from one of those girls who looks up to Carli.

I asked my 10-year-old daughter to do a scratch track. Our client loved it even more, and her voice ended up on the final spot.

A (Very) Quick Product Demo.

The Cadillac V-Series consisted of three cars which could go from 0-60 in under five seconds. My idea was simple: to own five seconds.

Cadillac’s NFL media buy entitled them to multiple 5-second bumpers during commercial breaks. Back then, bumpers we strictly logos with a quick announcer read, but we convinced FOX to let us convert them into free-standing 5-second commercials.

…and the 5-second ad unit was officially born. (Apologies.)

We also created a 5-Second Film Festival, which you can learn more about in the Case Studies section.

Changing Perspective.

Donations to AIDS charities had dropped precipitously in recent years. The United Nations Foundation and the Ad Council were concerned that without proper funding from governments and corporations, the progress they’d made fighting the spread of HIV could be reversed.

Twenty years of advertising had focused on the plight of people in far away places. The prevailing public opinion was that AIDS was a death sentence. The problem was unsettling but clear: people weren’t interested in joining a fight that felt distant and hopeless.

Deep in the research provided by the UN, we found a new group worth fighting for, and thought of a way to bring the face of the problem much closer to home.

Some projects are truly life-changing. Very few efforts result in getting mentioned in the State of the Union. It still makes me teary to think back on the President announcing nearly a billion dollars in new funding to help the group that we identified and named: AIDS Orphans.

An Olympic Effort.

Believe it or not, there’s always been a McDonald’s serving free food to athletes in the Olympic Village. The brief for this project suggested that we show those Olympians enjoying Big Macs, fries and the like—and to do so with a simple-enough concept that it could be translated into a dozen languages.

Beyond the athletes-eating-fast-food issue, we were also concerned about getting lost in a sea of commercials with Olympians pushing products.

So, we birthed an idea that we knew would stand out, live up to the Olympic ideals, and that the world could unite behind.

All in a Day’s Work.

The brief was all about speedy delivery, but to us, what separated Rooms To Go from its competitors was the time and effort that they put into handcrafting each piece of furniture right here, in America.

Being Mature. (Or Not.)

Cheez-It Crackers are made with real cheese, which takes at least six months to mature. I thought it would be funny to point out the importance of not using immature cheese.

Workshopping our scripts with Christopher Guest was one of the most amazing and terrifying experiences of my career. (If he doesn’t think something is funny, it simply isn’t.)

A decade later, I’m proud to say that Cheez-It is still running our “Immature Cheese” campaign.

Nobody Likes to Wait.

It may be difficult to recall a time when you couldn’t do things like check-in online, but people have always been willing to go to great lengths to skip lines.

This idea began with me crossing out the word “lines” in Delta Airlines, and we went from there. This campaign extended into print, out of home, transit, and banners — some of which you can see in the Static section.

Home Sweet Home.

Long before social distancing and back-to-back Zoom calls, Lotus Notes developed software that made it possible to collaborate and present over the Internet, so people wouldn’t need to get on a plane for every meeting.

Even back then, I knew that not everyone would be happy about it.

Adweek recognized our “Blue-Letterbox” work for IBM as the best campaign of the year. Incredibly, the campaign continues today, over 25 years later.

Saving the Day.

I wanted to show that with the Web, even a kid could save Christmas.

This little bit of “magic” for IBM may be the better part of a quarter century old, but I think it’s aged pretty well (even if the audio has not).

Believing.

Kids look at the world around them a little differently, especially at Christmas. Having four kids around definitely helps one hold onto the ability to see the world through their eyes.

Uncommon Sense.

Sometimes clients just make it easy, like when they’re 80 years ahead of a trend.

See What Develops.

These days we capture and share moments on smartphones all the time, but it wasn’t too long ago that that ability was the sole domain of Polaroid cameras.

I was fascinated by the power that came with being able relive and reexamine a moment, instantly.

Fitting In.

When it comes to women’s fashion, you might not expect a Midwestern superstore to be trendsetting. But when it comes to inclusion, Meijer could not be more cutting edge: they offer every style, in every size, at the same price, all on the same rack. This empowering premise is set forth in the spot below and the long-form film that follows.

Keeping Local Weird.

Meijer is committed to supporting local makers and stocking local products on their shelves. To promote that fact, they asked for co-op advertising, with equal billing going to both entities.

We brought them an approach that gave the airtime nearly entirely to small local businesses, and made this campaign about much more that coffee, tortillas, and kombucha.

It was a pretty nontraditional approach, but not compared to the method Jeff and Joel use to make Sacred Springs Kombucha.

A Healthy Fear.

Most sunscreens use dangerous chemical compounds like Oxybenzone, Octinoxate, Avobenzone, and Parabens. They’re bad for you and worse for the environment. They’re also really difficult to fit into 15-second spots and digital display.

So, I focused on something that kids already think is pretty scary, and used it to grab attention for TropicSport’s Eco-Friendly products.

On Wisconsin.

Meijer’s Head of Community Partnerships interrupted a presentation saying, “We just signed a contract with Coach McCathy of the Green Bay Packers. I’ve got four tickets for this weekend’s Packers-Bears game, if you can come up with a campaign by the end of the day.”

I took my wife and her parents (they’re all from Milwaukee) to the game. Better yet, we got to make spots for every game, with Coach McCarthy pitted up against something in the store that reminded him of that week’s opponent.

Ham It Up.

The brief for this Easter campaign for Meijer mentioned that “winning the ham meant winning the basket.” I knew we could have some good fun focusing, perhaps a bit obsessively, on ham. The Hambassador was born.

The brief also mentioned that the ham budget was pretty lean, so we cast a Meijer Team Member who reveled in being a Ham, as our lead.

As an added cost-saving measure, I also directed the spots.