When Pokemon Go launched, everyone was running around NYC chasing after invisible monsters. But there are REAL monsters all around us! We decided to self-fund a stunt involving our actor (Gary Mahmoud) trying to capture “New Yorkemon.” It ended with Equinox calling the cops on us. Yay!

Awards: Effie Finalist, One Show Interactive Finalist, Hatch Silver Award

Zappos wanted to do something fun an impactful for Easter. In a market (Portland) that was wary of brands. So we just drowned them in happiness.

I used to never include this in my portfolio but it’s fun so fuck it. I was drinking with some of coworkers at Translation, and a few old fashioneds in I started going off about the State Farm universe. Chris and Cliff Paul. The jingle summoning agents. The Hoopers.

We were creating a whole world but never going that deep into it. I mean, hell, look how many people on Reddit talk about Jake from State Farm.

I told them I thought I could come up with a crazy backstory for it all. They laughed and said “sure, haha.” Which I took as a challenge — so I ran home and drunkenly composed this ENTIRE fan fiction blog about State Farm, explaining EVERYTHING. Here’s a taste:

JK Rowling

JK Rowling sat at her desk, trying to figure out what she was going to present to her publishing company. Monday she had yet another check-in with the editor, and she still had jack shit to show. With a sigh, she broke the only promise she had ever made to herself.
“Like…a good neighbor…State Farm is there.”

The State Farm agent appeared and looked at who he was summoned to assist. “JK Rowling? Wow! This so cool! The author of Harry Potter!”
Rowling was attentive. “Harry Potter, you say? Tell me about it…”

Over the next few hours, the agent described (verbatim) the entirety of the Harry Potter series to JK Rowling, it’s future author.
“…and then there’s this weird scene where you see the future, and it’s Harry, Ginny, Hermione, and Ron – they’re all kind of old but they’re bringing their kids to the Hogwarts train. Wait – I actually just saw the movie for this one…”

Rowling scribbled furiously. She left the agent sitting there and went off to type a book plagiarized from its own author by its own author. Which was originally plagiarized from a few dozen other literary sources. Because she then went on to write the book, there were no interruptions to the space-time-continuum.

Bobby Spencer is the owner of Spencer Team Racing on the newest Netflix comedy: The Crew. Bruce McGill’s character makes a cameo in the first episode of the show, but the rest of Bobby’s life has been shrouded in mystery. Until we made it up. Turns out Busch Beer was a huge influence.

Newsweek: Is Bobby Spencer Real?

American Eagle is the denim brand with the most fits, cuts, and washes. No matter who you are, American Eagle makes denim that fits your body as well as who you are as a person. The next step was to show the world that whoever you are is perfect, and that we want the jeans to fit you instead of the other way around.

I came up with this idea in the shower on a Thursday. With CW David Sloan and AD Billy Veasey, AgencyFight was launched at 330 am the following Wednesday morning. One week later and over 100k battles had been fought by ad agencies and clients from around the world.

The concept was to pit random agencies against each other based upon past work and agency perception within the ad world. The idea still has a lot of love amongst our group as a potential aide to clients for gauging agency relevancy.

[NOTE: The site isn’t functional any longer but I mean gimme a break it was a decade ago. The creativity-online link below proves we did it and I’m happy to share richly detailed anecdotes about the site to any interested parties.]

Creativity-Online || Agency Spy

       

DEVOUR Frozen Meals wanted to make a splash during the saturated Super Bowl media frenzy, but with a fraction of the budget usually required. We wanted to see how far customers would go for a bite of DEVOUR in a “Super Bowl Ad.” The ad would actually run during The Big Game (only regionally), but we were much more interested in the audition process itself for our content. All of the wacky auditions themselves would be our ads. In an attempt to reverse the male-leaning tone of previous DEVOUR campaigns, we flipped the genders of popular “casting couch” trope and the results were…interesting?

To kick off the auditions, we launched a talent search to see who would “Go All The Way for $100k” and star in our Super Bowl halftime commercial.* After auditioning nearly a thousand dudes in three different cities, we had our star. His television bow would have him recreating the erotic eating he performed during his actual audition.

While most of the audition footage is no longer on the internet, there are a few videos here that showcase the type of preroll content we were after with our fake audition.

I decided I wanted to start my own fashion label…using only my laptop trackpad lefthanded to create designs. Each design, a homage to streetwear icons…kinda. It was ALMOST a real thing, until I started seeing quotes for minimum orders. But someday soon! I’m aware that this idea is also referred to as “trademark infringement” but I kinda wanted to remix these things anyway. Even if my reward was a cease and desist letter on Nike letterhead.

 

Netflix wanted a way to talk about their new show (Space Force) as well as the accompanying Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream (Boots on the Moooo’n). In our film, the show’s under-appreciated Astro-botanist is tasked with yet another questionable assignment from his bosses at Space Force: invent a better “Astronaut Ice Cream.”

This campaign was conceived in a Pre-Covid-19 world, and quickly pivoted into something that could be executed for a fraction of the budget. Working and collaborating with the Netflix team, the B&J’s team, and brilliant comedian Jimmy O. Yang was a dream come true. Hearing that Greg Daniels and Steve Carrell were really happy with the idea/scripts didn’t hurt either!

Despite the pandemic restrictions, B&J’s was also able to execute one of our first ideas: launching a pint into space. The production company that specializes in space launches handled the content itself, but it was still great seeing one of our favorite ideas come into the world (and then immediately depart said world).

James Corden and Apple partnered up to announce the relaunch of Apple Music. Corden wanted to create something artistic, cool, hilarious. Apple wanted to talk product points. On the phone calls it became clear that they weren’t in the same place. My idea was to simply replicate the brainstorm phone calls as the actual campaign. Apple could educate the audience, while Jame could respond with hilarity. We shot a 2 min longform, and also cut it down to a :60 and three :30s. The :60 even debuted during the 2016 Emmy awards.

Adweek || Entertainment Weekly || Mashable || Billboard || Creativity-Online

 

Dominos has been enjoying the success of the Pizza Tracker for years, giving customers a tangible way to stay involved from the time they order until the time the pizza arrives. Pizza Hut, their biggest competitor, was losing the attention of a captive audience during the 30-minute gap between ordering and delivery. Make it Great Entertainment was the solution.

At the time this was pitched (2013), the idea of an original content portal was relatively ahead of its time. While now we have Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu crushing the original content space, there was a brief moment in time where this could have been something very special.

Once we pass Thanksgiving on the calendar, I start to feel some benevolent pangs. I find myself wanting to do something decent for others. I also noticed that every time I pass a homeless person on the street, I have no cash. I want to donate, but in 2017 we’ve mostly stopped carrying around cash. That’s when I had an idea — if homeless people could use cashless payment services (like Venmo) to accept donations, more people would donate. We walked around NYC looking for an agreeable test subject until we found one: Eric Roster.

 

We just launched a remake of the D23 Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker trailer, but only using Star Wars toys ranging from the classic ones we made memories with to the hottest merch from the shelves of Target. This piece of work is the one thing in my entire career I was most excited to make. It almost doesn’t count as work.

Prior to the toy trailer remake, Target wanted to excite the incredibly diverse Star Wars community over the midnight drop for their The Rise of Skywalker merchandise collection. On a tight timeline, we put together an emotional film that everyone can relate to: from the most passionate fan to the most casual. We made a fan film out of fan films.

AdAge article

I decided to start my own WTF w Marc Maron-esque podcast, only as a not famous person my Rolodex was limited. So I decided to interview the personalities I had access to: the voices in my head. After some equipment purchases, I was ready to go.

The format of the improv show is me (the hilarious host) talking to my co-host (also played by me), as we interview guests (me) and have live radio ads (me). I even play the show intro music. Here’s a few samples.

While watching Donald Trump’s presidential campaign throughout 2015 and 2016, one thing become obvious to me. The guy just doesn’t know anything. And somehow in spite of this, his support continued to grow. When by a freak chance I stumbled across his actual e-mail address, I knew what I had to do.

Educate him, by any means necessary. And so I began signing him up for every “educational” newsletter and e-mail chain I could find. From the NAACP to the Power Rangers fan club, Trump’s email inbox began to fill up with newsletters that ranged from contrarian to his beliefs to just plain antagonizing. I began placing the proof on http://SignUpForTrump.tumblr.com and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

 

 

At MOD Pizza, everyone pays the same (no matter how you like your toppings).

This message of inclusion is something baked into the DNA at MOD Pizza and was something we were excited to use as differentiation. As a result, we were able to launch MOD Pizza’s first major campaign: All Pizzas Welcome.

This shoot happened literally the day before we began our Safer-at-home WFH policy, and was my first-ever remote edit. Proud of our clients for caring about more than just the bottom line as well as being willing to do weird, memorable work in a category that has a reputation for the opposite.

I made a website based upon my dating experience in New York. It supposed that the women I was meeting might be just as happy dating anyone at all — even a robot — as they were to go out with me. As a result, Girls Who Date Computers was born. Girl messages dating site profile,  A.I. “Cleverbot” responds, hilarity/sadness/romance ensues.

Some of the press:

Buzzfeed || Today.com || NY Mag || Bro Bible || Bustle || Oyster Mag || NBC News

After the huge Tumblr following and online press came out, I was interviewed by HLN for a show pilot that is currently in development.

Also, the site was presented by Tumblr CEO and Co-founder David Karp to the entire company as an example of the cool stuff happening on Tumblr.

UPDATE: I’m not going to say Parks and Rec referenced my site. But I’m not going to say they didn’t reference my site.

Sprite wanted to do something to celebrate LeBron James’ return to Cleveland. Instead of contributing to the rest of the “Welcome back!” messages from brands, we decided to own his first game back in Ohio by making sure it wouldn’t be on NBA opening night.

Bleacher Report

Agency Spy

Buzzfeed

USAToday

Sporting News

Huff Post Sports

 

Wrote jokes for three Madden/Walmart spots. See the second and third in the series.

For the newest Netflix x Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor “Punch Line,” doing anything other than delivering laughter to fans would have been a waste of time. Everyone is sick of everything. I personally just wanna sit at home and eat Tostitos while watching Superstore and that’s okay! We created the Punch Line Hotline! Call 1-866-Punchline and listen to some needed hilarity. That’s it!