Earthquake Warning California
Challenge: Convince California audiences to educate themselves on a website and download the new MyShake app to their phones, so that they can be better prepared for the next earthquake. Campaign: We created an entertaining and informative campaign that dramatically demonstrated how our preparedness tools help people not “get caught off guard” by earthquakes. Materials included a newly designed website, digital banners, social media organic and paid advertising, TV, and SEM produced in six different languages across the state.
Results: PR and paid media outreach achieved a combined impression reach of 77 million, driving 49,000 visitors to the website each week.
This campaign was developed to promote the Deals & Getaways packages offered by the Long Island Railroad, which offer customers discount rail and attraction tickets when bought together. With so much to do in Long Island why not get out there. The main issue to solve was how to make a government run mass transit heavy rail systems service enticing to people who want to have adventures. We used the typography and imagery in combination to create depth and excitement. To allow your eyes to wander through the ads in a 3-dimensional way. I worked coming up with the concept with the team and helped develop the look.
This was a spec campaign developed in a pitch to California State Parks. The project was to generate awareness of waterways safety and the use of life jackets in particular.
After we rebranded the transit system we went to work on the ad campaign. The main goal was to create a look and tone that would appeal to a much younger, hip audience. For the TV spot it got really interesting. I worked primarily as a team with my copywriting partner at the agency. Budgets were extremely low. Real creativity is tested when you have little to no budget. We shot the tv spot with a local cable crew. It was done for almost nothing and in a 3 hour time period. I was holding the boom box to keep the girl on time with the lyrics. It was just a crazy shoot. But I feel the end product came out great because we pushed ourselves when the odds were against us.
Virginia Department of Taxation (VATAX) needed advertising, public relations, outreach, website development and marketing services to persuade delinquent individual and corporate taxpayers to come forward and pay their back taxes during a 60-day amnesty period established by the Virginia General Assembly. The comprehensive marketing, public relations and advertising campaign that came in a few hundred thousand dollars under the $1.5 million budget and yet helped the Department of Taxation collect over $103 million for Virginia state coffers – more than doubling the goal of collecting $48 million. With just a $1 million media spend, this was a $103 million return on investment. My role was I helped come up with the square head idea. I was thinking about smiley faces and it came to us if we made it square it just gave us a fun connective tissue to run through the whole campaign. I helped flush the rest of the pieces out with my copywriter as a team.
Like much of the country, Orange County, California is battling an opioid epidemic, with alarming numbers of residents overdosing and dying each year as a result of taking prescription painkillers. So we decided to combat these drugs directly, with an opioid misuse prevention campaign designed to look and sound just like the countless pharmaceutical ads our audience was already familiar with. By turning the clichéd positive imagery and language from pro-drug commercials on its head, this campaign is making people think completely differently about what they should do when they receive an opioid prescription from their doctor.
Challenge: Shift perceptions among non-Hispanic white males age 45–54 from thinking that prescription painkiller addiction “couldn’t happen to me” to realizing that “anyone can suffer from the consequences of opioid addiction, so it’s good that there are alternative ways to reduce pain.”
Results: Within the first month of the launch, the campaign site wrongforyou.com drew 2,000 new visitors. Social media videos accounted for 53% of traffic, with 20% coming directly, and Google Search providing 15%.
And site traffic continues to increase. After three months, the site had garnered 20,484 unique users, with an average bounce rate of only 46.81%, average pages per session of 3.06 from organic Google traffic, and average time spent on the “Help & Resources” page of 1:45.
My role was that of senior art director working with my copywriter to concept and help develop the basic look to match that of existing pharmaceutical ads in the marketing place. So it matched our idea of using those existing preconceptions to our advantage for the campaign.
It is hard to stand out amongst educational institutions. There are so many of these ads out there. But they all look the same. Nothing stands out. This college focuses on professionals wanting to enhance their skills while remaining in the workforce. My copywriter and I felt we needed something that was so different it would shake things up. So we rolled with the idea that adding to your current knowledge was a great way to fill your head – making this unique, memorable and impossible-to-ignore. We only got to run the two ads because the a part of the client got scared of the campaign. They said it might make people with Down Syndrome question if they were being made fun of. We felt as their marketing department did that it was non-issue. But their sales force overruled their marketing team and the campaign got crushed after these two ads. Always frustrating when you have an idea you believe in whole heartedly and they get crushed by those not bold enough to execute them.
They were looking for a strong brand identity to reintroduce the service as they expanded it. They wanted people to see themselves using the service and attaching their joys, goals and aspirations to it. Something that people could latch on to emotionally. I search for this a lot in my work. I try to make it personal so people can feel it relates to their life on a personal level. This enables a product or service to not just be some abstract idea but to mean something important to the end user. For this concept I came up with the idea of I AM AMTRAK. Then I worked with my copywriter to expand on the concept. As you can see it had a lot of legs because I AM can have a personal meaning to each of us. During this period of time ridership across the country on Amtrak went up 11% as everyone else used the national campaign. In the state of Virginia where this ran ridership went up 25%.
We were hired by Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to create an ad campaign that promoted the new destination services being added to Dulles Airport. This was highly successful leading to a much greater awareness of new service being added to Dulles’ International flights. I came up with the concept and executed it. Only brought in a copywriter towards the end to work on the body copy.
Come up with an image campaign that would remind people in San Francisco just how using BART can benefit their lives. Danny Glover was the perfect choice as he has long been a huge advocate of public transit and resident of San Francisco. This was a highly successful image boosting spot for the service. It generated a lot of buzz and increased ridership for a service that most people just take for granted. I worked to help come up with the idea, select and work with Mr Glover and I saw all aspects of the project through to the end.
Gaining riders in mass transit is always a challenge. The key has been to emphasize all the productive things you can get done while riding the service. Here the goal was to create a general brand awareness campaign and a student campaign at local colleges. The student program materials needed to be easily customizable and meet the needs of individual colleges in the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys.
My role in this was from concept, to generating the overall look of the campaigns, to art directing photography and production. So really a top to bottom execution as creative director, art director and production artist.
