The ones that got away
All creatives have them–campaigns we would’ve loved to produce but never saw the light of day. Our team still went on to make some pretty great work with these clients, but I hope you enjoy a scroll through these early concepts that might’ve been.
Plated
Out of the Box
The strategy team found an opening in the meal kit market for adventurous upscale foodies. The proposal? Own the space completely with a part ad campaign, part small business, all PR attention grabbing Plated pop-up experience.
Classes by day
On the off hours, for a small fee, groups could sign up to take cooking classes from Elana Karp (Plated’s Head Chef) and the Plated culinary staff. Recipes would be pulled from existing meal kit offerings, and some classes would be filmed for ads and b-roll.
Bistro by night
At sundown, the bistro would open itself to customers as a bona fide restaurant. Ideally we would also partner with hot new area chef’s to ‘host’ a few evenings; further generating local buzz for their own restaurants as well as the brand. Some evenings would be filmed for ads and b-roll.
Teaser campaign
Social and broadcast seeded content
Instagram & UGC
Owned & earned media
Vending machine
Dishing single serve meal kits
Casper
Giant bounce pillow
To promote the release of Casper's new pillow, we pitched a series of bounce pillow events where invitation/coupons would be distributed. The invitation? To join a synchronized, multi-city, world record setting pillow fight.
Pillow fight world record
Conceived as a synchronized multi-city event, participants would bring their old pillows and coupon to specified locations for a pillow fight. We'd recycle their old pillow and give a discount for a new Casper one. The intention was to break the world record pillow fight set in 2014 by MyPillow.
Mutual of Omaha
Common Values Campaign
Mutual of Omaha wanted to reintroduce themselves to a new generation while staying true to their roots. Through our conversations about the brand and service there was a lot of talk about midwestern values–which it turns out are really universal values. I saw an opportunity for them to stand for that in a bigger way and in the process stand out.
"Change" :30s
The campaign's navy duotone treatment would help Mutual of Omaha stand out in market. It's also meant to subconsciously reinforce that 'doing the right thing' is often closer to black and white than we remember.
"Family" :30s
Imagery and scenes were built on real, relatable, heart-felt moments. The voiceover and imagery continually reinforce that strong communities are built on neighbors helping neighbors, keeping your word, and never losing sight of what's really important.
Extension to social channels
Man on the street interviews, testimonials, current events and memes were all translatable to the campaign through the lens of common shared values.
DraftKings
Breaking new ground in long-format
I didn’t want to pitch a run-of-the-mill DR infomercial so I asked, how do you infuse the excitement of live sports into a 30 minute acquisition vehicle? My solution was to integrate segments of ‘LIVE’ sports commentary anchored by former ESPN hosts Craig Kilborn & Kenny Mayne. In addition to livestream picks and predictions for the upcoming week, each DR episode would contain pre-shot ‘evergreen’ DR content interwoven with a strong call to action for sign up.
Traditional ad support
To drum up buzz for the livestream and infomercial, we also proposed pre-producing traditional 30s spots as a bridge between shows. The premise being that Craig and Kenny were road tripping together from game to game, comedically ribbing each other along the way. Scripts like ‘Bobblehead Tom Brady’ and ‘Gas station snack attack’ were just a few of my favorites.
Live components
Livestreams from Monday Night Football stadiums in the DraftKings Van would provide segments for that week’s DRTV show. To keep show pacing, we also planned ‘tosses’ to strategy breakdowns from top players, athlete interviews and ‘fan-on-the-street’ clips with host Katie Nolan. Every week of the season would yield fresh PR (Monday Night Football tailgate and livestream); fresh DRTV segments; social clips, sound bites and more.
Ok, so not COMPLETELY scrapped
Turning a long-format show into a makeshift ‘live broadcast’ seemed nearly impossible… until I figured it out with our VP of Production. And that’s the only part that survived from the original idea, with Tiki & Ronde Barber as hosts of the live content.
