JDI turned 30 years old, and had been lost in translation to a generation who didn’t grow up with Michael Jordan and John McEnroe and Bo Jackson? Bo who? Exactly. We wanted to make Just Do it meaningful again, so we posed a question. Don’t ask if your dreams are crazy, ask if they are crazy enough? And who better to ask than someone who gave up his dream of playing sport in search of a bigger dream. Colin Kaepernick.
The campaign started with a Tweet, and was followed up with Out of Home and a film. During the first week it ran it wiped 3.5 billion dollars off Nike’s market price. Subsequently it has become the most talked about and arguably, financially successful campaign of 2018.
Levi's Europe was facing an uphill battle against combat trousers and a slump in denim sales. So we made this, and all was well again in the Levi's universe.
Our collaborator was director Jonathan Glazer.
On average, we spend 10 hours a day staring at screens. That’s 32 years of our lives lost to the internet, social feeds and staring at a brick sized screen inches from our face. This campaign addresses that addictive behavior which takes up much of that time - binge watching, scrolling through newsfeeds and living vicariously through the lives of other people.
A series of disruptive customised spots delivered messages in the context of where they appeared – The Walking Dead re-run marathon and season finale, celebrity news content, reality television, and social channels, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Each film giving athletes the most precious gift of all: time to run or train.
For the Super Bowl 2014 Coca-Cola did what it does best. It took a stand for equality and diversity amidst a climate of social unrest and divisiveness. The resulting campaign which included mini documentaries and an online social campaign which encouraged people to unite against inequality by posting their portrait to create "America's Selfie", was launched with a commercial which was both vilified and lauded. Apparently depending upon whether or not you thought diversity was a good thing. I was very proud to have been a part of this work as it stirred a huge cultural debate.
Here's what Time Magazine had to say about it.
And this is what Stephen Colbert discussed in the Colbert Report
To launch Levi's new line of work wear clothing, we wanted to put the work wear to work. We collaborated with mayor John Fetterman of Braddock Pennsylvania, one of the poorest counties in America. We documented real work being done by real people and created a campaign that was mutually beneficial to both Levi's and the town of Braddock. As part of the campaign, Levi's committed to investing $1 million to help rebuild Braddock's Communities Center. We also partnered with Sundance and the IFC to produce an 11 part documentary with director Aaron Rose about the people of Braddock, called Seeds of Change.
For the 2014 World Cup in Brazil we created the "Risk Everything" campaign for Nike. When the stakes are highest we celebrate the players who fear mediocrity more than they fear failure. Those who "Risk Everything". I was responsible for the brand tag line, manifesto, and was a contributing copywriter for the out of home, print, digital, social and experiential extensions. This tone of voice informed the entire campaign from the billboards and out of home, to print to social, to digital.
When Australia called a vote to decide whether same-sex marriage should be legalized, Nike wanted to create a disruptive campaign that would make a statement that showed unequivocally its support. So we took the brand's iconic logo and turned it into a symbol for EQUALITY, a vote for "yes" and a constant reminder to make your vote count. From huge projections to printed receipts, the logo became synonymous with the push for marriage equality.
Levi's launched the first global campaign in their 136 year history. The "Now is our Time" campaign launched in over 200 countries simultaneously. The launch film was banned in Europe and other countries as it coincided with a spate of civil unrest across the globe, hot on the heels of the Arab Spring. And for an added bonus it made Glen Beck denounce Levi's and refuse to wear them . The campaign included a social challenge based on the premise that "they aren't Levis until you do something in them", and we asked followers to show us what they did of note in their Levi's and we shared it with the world.
AHH is the way a Coke makes you feel. But the way a Coke makes you feel is too big for one URL. So we filled the entire internet with every available AHH.
thats 63 different Ahh's
AHH.com
AHHH.com
AHHHH.com
AHHHHH.com
ETC
We partnered with a heap of collaborators, artists, musicians, graphic designers, gamers, and filled each of the 63 different sites with unique experiences ranging from Mobile games, GIFs, films, User generated experiences, mobile to mobile games you can play with your mates, and of course a polar bear who pooped seagulls.
Someday
108 long years of waiting for a Chicago Cubs World Series win. The perennial loveable losers always had 'maybe next year' to hold onto. It was always someday. But not the class of 2016.
Posted around Wrigley Field stadium the reactive campaign began as a simple rallying cry for the Cubs to consign history to the history books. MAKE SOMEDAY TODAY. The campaign evolved as the seven game series with the Cleveland Indians unfolded. With no digital media and with half of Chicago in and around Wrigley Field we devised some plug and play outdoor messaging. Analogue Digital boards.
After each game the billboards reacted posting a new tactical message according to what had played out that night.
The campaign ended with a film about a young cubs fan playing out the victory in his head. GOODBYE SOMEDAY
This experiential campaign was an interactive running real life video game built to launch Nike’s new React running technology to downtown LA. Players created a customized avatar then we used motion-tracking software, treadmills, harnesses and realtime 3D rendering to move players through a 400m course littered with obstacles and bonuses, challenging them to collect points by jumping and moving side to side.
The games were broadcast in realtime to giant digital billboards, attracting over 4.4m TV impressions with help from Jimmy Kimmel and SportsCenter, 1.5m OOH impressions, and 25.6m digital impressions via an associated AR Snapchat game.
Participants received a personalised video at the end of their experience to share on their social networks.
Coke is one of the most optimistic and positive brands in the World. But the world it seems was becoming increasingly pessimistic, and cynical and hateful. Especially online. Cyberbullying and anonymous hate were becoming scarily common. So coke wanted to negate the hate with a happiness virus. We created a bot that would take hateful online posts and turn them into happy ASCII art, rearranging the letters of hate into happy pictures. We started a smile petition and partnered with Do Something.Org , Michael Sam and the most positive human on the internet, Kid President. the internet is neutral, it up to us whether we spread hate or love. Gawker then created their own bot to tweet out lines from Hitler's "Mein Kampf" which was turned in to kittens playing the drums and a singing pineapple by the Coke bot. Which made for some lively debate and sadly hate for Gawker on Reddit.
While at WK Amsterdam, we won the global assignment to launch a new global platform for Coca-Cola. We wanted to reignite the brand amongst millennials and restore the iconic contour bottle to front of mind. The resulting campaign was a true collaboration with artists, designers, musicians, and film makers and even other of Coke's partner agencies. We briefed production companies, directors, artists, illustrators and musicians and agencies in over 24 markets to express the brand values of optimism, positivity and vitality. The resulting campaign, we called "The Coke Side of Life" was created by many people among many cross disciplines.
We made a really big Super Bowl campaign for a really small can of Coke. To Launch the Coke mini, there was only one man for the job, the most minuscule super hero Ant Man. We teamed up with Marvel to create a commercial with Ant Man and the Hulk, that lives as a bonafide part of the Marvel Universe.
The commercial was used to house the social campaign. Marvel fans are renowned for checking every frame of the movies, so we hid clues in the commercial for those fans to find.
There were six easter eggs in the commercial––including phone numbers, a Snapcode, URLs, and the coordinates of the lab––which led to thousands of limited edition Coke Mini’s with exclusive Marvel Artwork as well as other prizes including a Mini car full of Coke Mini’s . Fans dissected the commercial frame by frame, set up communities online to share information and found all of them in one week.
Fans even made reaction videos of the commercial, just as they do with Marvel trailers. Which was weird. But who am I to judge ?
Nike's first fully integrated global campaign and the blueprint for Nike for future fully integrated global projects. The brief was to get 6 million kids to be inspired by the fluid, uninhibited style of play made famous by the Selecao, Brazil's national team. Together with a number of outside collaborators we developed work and content across TV, Print, outdoor and a rich digital platform to enable a movement to build and grow. For the first time, we took advantage of social media and multiple delivery platforms so that everyone, anywhere could hear Eric Cantona's JogaTV broadcasts and be inspired to play beautiful football. Which makes me responsible for the first Portuguese global tagline, "Joga Bonito". Or Play Beautiful for those of you, like me, who didn't speak a word of Portuguese. A host of very talented collaborators helped bring this platform to life.
