CW: Bob Barrie

Way back when I was an intern at Fallon Minneapolis I pitched in on a headline writing exercise for Citibank. At the time they were running the highly renowned Live Richly campaign. I got a couple of headlines through to client and actually sold one of them. It was one of the proudest days of my young career when I caught a glimpse of the proof and noted that the copywriter credit was listed as legendary art director Bob Barrie. True Bob’s not officially a copywriter, but when someone confuses you with a legend you take it.

To this day I don’t shy away from writing. It’s not my official discipline, but I like the challenge of crafting a script just so, or writing a solid headline and trying to top it over and over again.

New Work

My partner and I wrote this script originally intended as an Easter message from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It got a little bogged down in approvals, but was eventually released in June. I’m really happy with the way it turned out and hope it will resonate with a few people.

Giving Machine Celebrity Endorsements

The Giving Machines are still going strong expanding to 20 cities world wide in 2022, and that’s not including the Mobile Giving Machines that traveled to several locations in the Southern US. They’ve really taken on a life of their own at this point. It was really fun to see a few celebrities endorsing the machines this year.

Kinda cool when Ant Man is talking about your work.

Cam from Modern Family is getting in on it too.

Plus Travis Kelce.

And even though I’m a Sox guy, much respect to the Sand Man.

Instagram Fun

I may eventually add this to the Work section of this site, but I thought it was a fun social concept that I worked on. The idea is that you take a screenshot on your phone and you’ll capture an idea for something kind you can do for someone else during COVID-19.

Ideas include, write a letter to a friend, leave a roll of toilet paper on a neighbor’s porch, offer to pick up groceries for an elderly or disabled neighbor, make a video for your parents/grandparents, and video chat with a friend you haven’t seen in a while.

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Near Miss

I don’t know why I forgot to post this until now—maybe because it didn’t actually get in. But Giving Machines ended up getting shortlisted for CA. It’s an honor just to be nominated, right?

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Giving Machines

Here’s a roundup of some higher quality pieces of media coverage we got for the Giving Machines this year. The New York location really seemed to open up a lot of doors.

Patrons donated goods and services to those in need through vending machines in New York, Salt Lake City, London, Arizona and Manila. In some cases, people waited in line up to two hours just to give money away.

Patrons donated goods and services to those in need through vending machines in New York, Salt Lake City, London, Arizona and Manila. In some cases, people waited in line up to two hours just to give money away.

All This in One Place

Here's another mock-up that never went anywhere, but I like the idea. And half the point of having this blog component on my website is to show stuff I like that I couldn't otherwise add to my book.

The Polynesian Cultural Center is a tourist attraction on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii. One of the great things about it is that you can experience the cultures of seven Polynesian nations in one day, all in the same place. This sticker sheet tip-in idea makes that point pretty well, I think. Unfortunately, it didn't go very far beyond my own computer screen, but such is the life of an ad creative. *sigh*

Hawaii, New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, Tahiti, Samoa, and Marquesas all in one place.

Stickers. You know, for cars.

My First Trading Card

I got included in a promotion for the Utah AAF Summer Kickball Tournament. I have to say, it's the first time I've ever been immortalized on a trading card. It's nice to have my picture on the same page with this group of advertising movers and shakers. Fun stuff. Thanks for thinking of me, Fluid.

52-Week Vacation

As part of a recent pitch for the Utah Office of Tourism business, we came up with a promotion to send a couple on a year-long vacation to Utah. The point being, there's something awesome to do in Utah 365 days a year, thus marrying the winter and summer brands. The plan was to upload a video of a new activity every week to the 52-Week Vacation website and to promote it heavily through social media and TV. Unfortunately, we didn't win the business. But I stand by the idea.

This is the contest logo.

This is the contest logo.

Mock-up of a fully responsive website.

Mock-up of a fully responsive website.

Website in action.

Website in action.

Low Tech Solutions

As part of a campaign to promote a temporary exhibit featuring animals built out of Legos at Utah's Hogle Zoo, we shot a few TV spots on a super shoe-string budget. A special logo was designed to look like it had been constructed out of Lego bricks and we thought the end of the spots were begging to show a stop-motion build. Unfortunately, to do it right would've probably doubled our costs. The gif above shows the solution. I spent hours deconstructing the final artwork of the logo and Photoshopping it to look as if it had been shot in stages.

When your budgets are really small, you've got to get creative.

When your budgets are really small, you've got to get creative.

The Joy of Photoshop

Have I mentioned I work at a small agency? We don't have a Studio department. I can't sketch stuff and have it happen overnight the way I used to. So I wind up doing a lot of my own heavy Photoshop work. As part of the promotion of the annual ZooLights holiday light display at Utah's Hogle Zoo, I spent some time turning a marquee style logo into a more 3-dimensional rendering to help emphasize the transformation the zoo makes at night. We used this on a landing page and Flash banners that allowed viewers to switch the lights on and off themselves. 

Incidentally, I really like the way it looks when the lights are off.

I lit and 3D-ified this one.

I lit and 3D-ified this one.

This was the original.

This was the original.

Solutions for America

There aren't a lot of solutions in politics. But here's my idea to pay down the national debt—product placement.

Think about it.

The State of the Union address is carried by all the major networks and the cable news networks too. What might a company pay for that kind of exposure?

In 2014 the going rate for a :30 Super Bowl spot was about $4 million. A :60 was double that. Granted, the Super Bowl beat the State of the Union in total estimated viewership 111.5 million viewers to 33.3 million viewers—ouch. But that being said, the top rated prime time show in 2013 was NBC’s Sunday Night Football, which had an average nightly viewership of 21.5 million. They charged $545,000 per spot. By that logic, with 50% more viewers, The State of the Union could fetch 50% more in placement revenue per product. At least. Factor in total screen time and an implied presidential endorsement (which admittedly may depend heavily on the popularity of the sitting President) and I think you could justify something approaching Super Bowl costs. Imagine Obama pausing to wet his parched lips with a sip of Pepsi.

Cha-ching.

Of course we’re only talking tens of millions annually, when it’s all said and done, which is ultimately just a drop in the bucket with our national debt approaching 17 trillion. But what the heck, at the very least it’s money that could go toward reviving the Death Star initiative.

Obama to America: Snap into a Slim Jim.

Obama to America: Snap into a Slim Jim.

Cocoa Matrimony

Cocoa Metro is a dark belgian chocolate milk with little brand awareness. We wanted to help put them on the map by giving Facebook fans a chance to make their relationship with chocolate official. The idea was a fake post to timelines that mimics the look of Facebook relationship status changes. Unfortunately, after initial optimism, our programmers deemed it undoable. Crap.

Regrets

As an intern at Fallon, I was given the chance to develop a print campaign for the Citi Simplicity card. The key benefit was no late fees. The awesome part was that we were the only team on the project. Our executions dealt with the many reasons you might be paying late. Much to my regret, the strategy as well as the media shifted out from under us. Too bad. I still like what we came up with.

Hard to tell in the sketch, but this man's eye glasses are igniting his bill.

Hard to tell in the sketch, but this man's eye glasses are igniting his bill.

We had plenty of options.

We had plenty of options.

Job interview

I made this video after a job interview that didn't go as planned. Somehow I knew I wouldn't be getting an offer.

Deja vu

A common part of a RadioShack brief back in the day was a bullet point about how RadioShack had stores within 10 minutes of 95% of Americans. While concepting one day, my writer and I came up with the idea of putting the consummate small-box retailer in an even smaller box—a vending machine. That way we could reach the other 5%.

From the artist's sketch book.

From the artist's sketch book.

A few years later while walking through an airport, I found this. Well played, Best Buy.

From somewhere on the Internet.

From somewhere on the Internet.

From the vault

My first ad. Incidentally, not my worst ad.