Banks are sort of annoying. If they’re not charging you ridiculous fees, they’re asking for hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid. FirstBank is an exception, though. As a financial institution, it’s safe and secure, has amazing customer service, and offers the same convenient technology as the big banks. And amidst the worst economy since the age of the dinosaurs (who didn’t even use money!), FirstBank actually grew by a crazy 28% in 2008. Basically, FirstBank is exactly what a bank should be.
Featured by Stuart Elliott in the New York Times, December 14, 2008.
AERIAL
This banner was printed at an enormous 30’ by 115’. It will fly over Coors Field for the Colorado Rockies 2009 season opener and throughout summer 2009.
Celestial Seasonings makes delicious herbal teas that are adored mostly by grandmothers. So to grab the non-grandmother demographic, they wanted to highlight the fact that their teas have zero calories, as well as a number of other health benefits. Wintertime commuters were greeted with this message on subways, most likely while sipping from some sort of many-caloried beverage.
TRANSIT
Featured by Stuart Elliott in the New York Times, November 26, 2007.
Every election year, Americans are told by politicians, special interest groups, and Susan Sarandon to vote, no matter who it’s for. What they’re really telling you, though, is that voting for your guy is the only way to cancel out a vote for the other guy.
With Cancel-Out 2008, we turned the democratic process into a bloodsport.
FACEBOOK APP
We started by designing and enacting a Facebook application that paired up Republican and Democratic friends and/or foes who would cancel out the other’s vote. Of course, the only way to complete the Cancel-Out was to, in fact, cast a ballot for your candidate. And with every single young American devoting half of their daily existence to Facebook, it was the perfect place for our somewhat backwards get-out-the-vote effort.
The candidate with the most uncanceled supporters by election day would be the winner. The outcome: Barack Obama was the Cancel-Out champ. He’s also President now.
BLOG
We developed and maintained the blog, cancelout2008.com, with multiple daily updates leading up to the election, including the Cancel of the Day.
COLLATERAL
To bolster our efforts, we created customizable e-cards, competitive lawn signs, and our own take on the indispensable “I voted” stickers.
Ali had Frazier. The Lakers have the Celtics. The Cubs have the harsh realities of logic. The storied struggles between two opponents are what make sports amazing. And the Special Olympics are no different: it’s all about athletes overcoming the greatest of odds to achieve what is seemingly impossible. For the 2009 World Winter Games in Boise, we wanted to remind people that the Special Olympics have all the drama, passion, and glory of any other great sporting event.
PRINT
OUTDOOR
Teaser billboards placed throughout Boise, ID, leading up to the opening ceremonies of the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games.
Kids love two things: 1.) candy, and 2.) hating food that isn’t candy. Lucky for candy-wary parents everywhere, Annie’s Homegrown makes all-natural and organic food that kids love, like mac-and-cheese, cereal, crackers, and cookies, all of which are made of the healthiest ingredients and are completely picky eater-proof.
We took six vehicles from Stevinson Automotive, a Colorado-based network of car dealerships, hid them around the world, and asked people to go find them. If they found them all, they won a free car. To make things easier, we hid them in Google Earth, so they never had to leave their computer. To make things harder, we hid the cars in the middle of deserts and car-packed cities, so they never really had the option of leaving their computer.
Elephant is a progressive magazine based in Boulder, CO, that focuses on sustainability, yoga, politics, and other left-leaning topics. So it was not entirely surprising when they decided to run a cover image depicting a couple of same-sex makeout sessions for a feature about gay rights.
Hillel, the University of Colorado Jewish student organization, puts on a number of amazing events to commemorate Holocaust Awareness Week. In 2008, many of the events focused on the issue of Holocaust deniers.
1% For The Planet is taking an unconventional approach to the environmental non-profit: it’s a coalition of businesses around the world committed to donating 1% of their yearly revenue to environmental causes. Thus, 1%’s ads had to be different, too. So once we stripped away the guilt and scare tactics that afflict most non-profit ads, we were pretty much left with lazy dolphins and asexual condors.
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