Let's face it, it's unbelievably challenging to narrow down
what you get to see. There are hundreds of cool things
that could've been shown and so many more stories to tell–
so this is a "Mixed Bag O' Fun for $1000, Alex".
It starts with an Augmented Reality poster for the Wounded Warrior Project from original concept through completion–upon viewing through the AR app, the stationary US Flag image starts to wave as if in the wind, staying within the silhouetted figure shape and interactive icons appear
at the bottom that can take you to a website to learn more,
watch a series of videos and/or donate on the spot.
Image Personalized Calendars are a specialty item and hot seller.
There are companies that sell generic irrelevant image templates with your name in sea shells or a flock of birds. But since 2008, we've created every image from scratch, sometimes out of stock images, sometimes original photography and sometimes a composite of several images
and then weave the recipients name in as if it were real.
The Harley piece is one I shot and a client favorite.
Aspen Valley Health's Health Matters Magazine was the recipient of The Gold Aster Award in 2020. We partnered with their CMO who had a vision of having a world-class magazine to match their world class facilities and location in the beautiful mountains of Colorado. We created the magazine from research, consultation, ideation, design, photography, interviewing, copywriting, project management, printing and distribution.
The Survival Campaign (Xerox's first annual PIXI Award Winner) was a three-wave multimedia and 3D campaign that won awards and had over a 20% response rate. Norms in direct marketing are usually under 1%. It also had an accompanying 9 minute video. This campaign could be an hour long documentary that involved building a lifesize tropical jungle in studio, military aircrafts, boats and barges, islands without electricity at night in the middle of November. WE were lucky to "survive" this campaign!
Call it Guerilla Marketing, Surgically Precise Campaigns
or Creative Door Openers (CDOs) – Through the years I've created many, often allowing Creative to lead the way, winning new multi-million dollar clients. One of my firsts was used to lure jet-service
to our newly upgraded regional airport.
These are often unusal, frequently oversized, they've been custom songs performed in person, things that are edible, you name it, as long as they get the attention of the decision maker(s) and often make office mates jealous (or at least tell the story to all their friends, which of course gets our idea and name circulated quickly). One key ingredient is they need to be relevant to the client's need and current situation.
The Checkered Flag CDO pictured here was offering qualified leads to Automotive OEMs for hand-raisers currently shopping via the internet and were primed to make a purchase soon. It was personalized, had a race car theme with data-driven elements flying from the wheel, had a greeting card style intro from our rep and a letter. Til now that sounds pretty run of the mill, but it was attached to an authentic Indy500 checkered flag. Thats a pretty cool and unique gift if you're in automotive and are motivated to win. It was shipped in a tricked out, personalized vinyl wrapped 5 ft tube.
It would not be missed upon delivery.
The "medicine bottles" are fun prop/gifts we created for a big pharma client to kickoff a meeting during a visit to introduce them to their new Account Director. He asked me for something fun and related to their industry. I emulated the exact style of a local drug store label and wrote tongue-in-cheek copy related to the event, the team, and each bottle was personalized to every attendee. It was a big hit.
The Holes card is fairly self-explanatory. I'd never seen it done before. And while the line is a bit cheesy, it's a serious topic, personalized and clearly applicable. For the headline to work, the card HAD to have holes in it, which presents challenges on the other side both aesthetically and with USPS mail regulations, but we knew that going in. This card was used by sales representatives who cold-called for supplemental life insurance, and reported an astounding 82% recall-rate by the target audience when referred to, to get the conversation started.
Rooster is only part of a much bigger and fun story that's still in the works, so that's all I can say about that for now, but I came up with the concept and design for these cards and wrote the Rooster origin copy.
The Blackhawks drum wrap was more of a fun passion project. I was talking to a drummer in a band I really like, we both found out each other were big Hawks fans, and he said he always thought it would be cool to have a completely Blackhawks themed kit. I had an extra drum, and took pictures of several patches from jerseys I own and designed a label to be output on pressure sensitive vinyl. I disassembled the drum, cleaned it up and gave it a new life! One side is classic, the other is retro from the Wrigley Field Winter Classic. When I showed him, he was blown away!
