As a pioneer in fast-casual dining, Chipotle democratized an elevated food experience through understated convenience. Shouldn’t the same care, respect, and big-picture thinking they apply in the kitchen show up in everything else they make?
When asked to update their merch, we saw an opportunity to go beyond disposable swag and launch something new: a fashion-forward collection that embodied their values of sustainability, quality, simplicity, and personalization.
We worked with partners to ensure every item was made to last, as planet-friendly as possible, and filled with playful winks to the Chipotle experience itself: a burrito foil duffel, the “extra” charge for guac, the ability to customize tees and totes with personalized go-to orders—even using up-cycled avocado pits from restaurants to create one-of-a-kind dyes.
Fashion, food and lifestyle media outlets lauded the collection. Many items sold out within days of launch, boosting merch sales to $100,000 the first month—versus $400 in a typical month—with all profits benefitting sustainable fashion or farming organizations.
Be The Match, a nonprofit focused on saving lives through marrow donation, is facing a critical business problem: their registry lacks 18-24 year old guys, a hard-to-reach, though biologically ideal, donor type.
While nonprofit marketing typically focuses on the patient, we flipped the script, focusing on what the opportunity meant for the donor—that being young and male qualifies you to save a life, despite the oddities that come with being young and male.
Pearson’s approached us to modernize its classic brand story through a new responsive website. We delivered a bright and colorful site that draws inspiration from the brand’s rich heritage and nostalgic flair through the hyperbole and double-speak of a bygone advertising age.
We created a series of Instagram videos to launch the new site.
Hilton needed a creative world for their new hotel brand aimed at modern travelers graduating from young adulthood into careers that keep them on the go. We built out a stylish and contemporary experience designed for the rhythm of life—where guests can pace themselves amidst the disorientation of travel, look up, take a beat, and enjoy the moment.
In addition to naming and creating a brand guide, we worked with the architects and designers crafting the hotel spaces to ensure guest-facing collateral—from key cards to door hangers and common-space signage—unified the total experience.
3M is well-known by most as the people that bring the world Post-It Notes and Scotch Tape. Truth is, they play a far bigger role in our world, from autonomous cars to ultra-light bike frames to granules in shingles that are cooling our world. You’re never more than 10 feet from a 3M product.
When tasked with bringing to life their first brand campaign in a decade, we focused on the thing that brings all of their products, innovation and impact to life—wonder. Wonder is the spark of curiosity, the act of asking, “What If”? The campaign was focused around 4 videos. In each, the goal was to uncover 3M's role in our world through places both expected and unexpected.
Video was central to campaign. Within each, we asked the questions that led to 3M solutions. Through distributed content across social, as well as a campaign website, we were able to bring our audience the answers to the questions we were asking as well as a means to explore further how these products are shaping our world.
Oobli challenged us to introduce the world to sweet proteins, a breakthrough food innovation poised to radically change the way our culture eats and drinks. But to do that, we had to get smart on emerging food tech, translate it for a wide audience, navigate misinformation and counter the nonsense of diet culture—all to restore the joy of sweetness.
The California-based company had developed precision fermentation tech that could take sweet proteins, previously only found in rare fruits, and make them climate-positive, accessible and affordable to everyone, everywhere. Unlike alt sweeteners, these proteins actually taste like sugar—with none of the downsides.
Oobli wanted to spark a revolution in our culture’s idea of what health looks, feels and tastes like. And they wanted to start with sweet tea and chocolate bars.
We built a brand staked on the radical idea that sweetness should be as good for the body as it is for the soul. We carried that thread through a brand narrative and visual identity, naming, consumer testing and launch support.
Leading with a feeling, the inaugural products caught the eye of Time magazine editors, who included Oobli sweet proteins on the 200 Best Inventions of 2023 list. In an industry that trades in guilt and shame, we built a brand that uplifts, supports and restores.
The dessert table at any get-together is truly a competitive sport. No one wants to do the leftovers walk-of-shame. But an Edwards Dessert is an easy win—convenient and irresistible.
So own the occasion.
Bring the sweet.
Teen dudes are still discovering who they are. With this in mind, we built a social following from little more than a logo and the tagline, Feed the Beast. With the term “beast” as a stand-in for something that’s totally freaking awesome, we focused our social efforts on emerging platforms Snapchat and Tumblr, investigating new topics weekly with the question: Is This Beast?
To answer the question: Is Space Beast?, we launched a weather ballon more than 120,000 feet above the Earth to capture the world's first-ever native Snapchat Story from outer space.
I also velcroed my kid to a wall for the "likes", so there's that.
When Pearson’s asked us to design a parade float for the Halloween Capital of the World, we went to the Halloween experts—kids.
How do you get 10,000 18-35 year old guys to join the bone marrow registry in a short amount of time? How about a Facebook Live telethon?
We pulled together guys from all walks of life to showcase their talents, both awesome and strange, for 10 minutes at a time, which is about how long it takes to join the marrow registry at BeTheGuy.org.
3 days. 4 hours each day. 72 talent slots. ALL LIVE.
Jack Link's asked us to generate some social buzz around Halloween. The brand’s Sasquatch mascot is widely recognized and loved by many, but most of the “messing” with him was done by the brand. A large social following is only of value to the brand if they are engaged. Our idea involved ending the one-way conversation, allowing our fans the opportunity to “trick” or “treat” Sasquatch.
We reached out with a simple question: Would you #tricksasquatch or #treatsasquatch? As people responded on Facebook and Twitter, we replied with customized video and photo posts in near real-time.
Anger is the Internet’s most viral emotion. The problem is obvious: people are hungry. And those people are putting the entire World Wide Web at risk.
Jack Link’s asked us spread “ate” instead of “hate”, so we built a website to identify, track and solve Hangry Moments. We gathered Hangry facts, developed a Hangry Heat Map to track real-time #Hangry tweets across the nation, and empowered fans to respond with jerky GIFs and messages of hope. We also made it easy to buy jerky directly from the site so people could stop Hangry Moments before they start.
77kids asked us to create a memorable interactive experience to launch their Rock to School fashion campaign at their new flagship store in Times Square. We transformed kids into rock stars by featuring them in their own music video. They got their 45 seconds of fame at one of the biggest intersections in the world on a four-story digital screen that could be seen from virtually anywhere in Times Square.
Who wants to make money? You do.
Who's gonna help you do that? Me do.
I write songs and front a band called Greycoats. Sometimes we get ambitious.
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INTERPRETATION, PLEASE.
With lean times on the mind, we set out to create a Dust Bowl record. We found our way through the 1939 World’s Fair instead. The dreamers of yesteryear looked to the future to lift themselves from a Great Depression. It was January in Minneapolis. The timing couldn’t have been better for an exhibition of our own.
We asked 12 artists whose work we love to interpret each song from our new album, World of Tomorrow, in any fashion they saw fit. Each piece was on display near a listening station, where visitors could offer their interpretations.
We lead a series of walking tours through the entire exhibit, playing acoustic sets of the entire album and offering our own interpretations as we traveled from piece to piece.
My band, Greycoats, was asked to create an experience for the dusk-to-dawn Twin Cities art festival, Northern Spark. We decided to build a spaceship and debut our new space-themed material. Teaming up with an engineer and a designer, we created an interactive, audience-controlled light show with some midi controllers, a few projectors, lots of sweat and programming, and a desk from Ikea.
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PER ASPERA AD ASTRA
"You are a crew member aboard spacecraft Aspera. You’ve just awoken from hypersleep on an interstellar flight. Good morning. The ship’s been on auto-pilot for hundreds of years. But now, it’s up to you to keep the ship intact. Certainly, your memory’s a little foggy. Trust your instincts. Follow the instructions. You’ll do fine.
Your in-flight entertainment will be provided by us. For your pioneering spirit, we will debut never-before-heard songs from their upcoming album. Each set will bring us closer to our destination. Showtimes begin at 9:30pm, 10:30pm, 11:30pm, 12:30am and 1:30am.
Sound. Light. Switches. Levers. Knobs.
Try not to blow up the ship."
It’s a play. It’s a film. It’s a rock show. All at once.
My band Greycoats’ wildly imaginative, artistic collaboration with playwrght/director Seth Bockley and cinematographer/director Kevin Horn, about the rise and fall of that all-American icon, the televangelist, was a media-saturated performance propelled by yearning beauty and a bump of gold-tinted 1980s nostalgia. Drawing inspiration from true stories of American evangels who flew too close to the sun, CHARISMA invited audiences on a marathon of telethons, confronting a cult of personality, humanity’s carnal nature, and the impossibility of living up to a divine ideal.
With sellout crowds, it was one of the most successful shows of The Southern Theater’s 2018-19 seasons in Minneapolis.
Stuff I made in school.
