thejimbowling

This 2011 global holiday campaign is my latest work for Western Union. It pays off the new brand line, Moving Money for Better. The first spot titled “World in Her Eyes” also aired in Romania, Bulgaria, Germany and Dubai, so we needed locations that were not overtly American. The third spot, titled “Tie Guy” was a shadow shoot in triplicate, with talent for African (shown), Filipino and Indian audiences, so the apartment had to be non-descript, with props that could swap out relative to each country. All three spots were shot in Chicago by Paul Schneider of Hello (and his DP who shrugged off food poisoning to finish the final two days of shooting.) I love how beautiful the picture turned out.

Western Union has a new positioning line, Moving Money for Better. This spot is a one off execution running in African-American test markets. The idea is a big one though, and it’s behind the new national campaign we’re working on for the 2011 holiday season.

We created this spot in early 2011 for Western Union to promote their U.S. outbound money transfer service. We did a lot with a little, creating a framework that allowed us to build out 1o additional versions in 3 additional languages for country-specific money transfers. Huge props to Man on Fire in Dallas for the animation and for handling the insanity of changes, revisions and approvals from across the globe.

everyone in advertising should consume luke sullivan once every six months.

The Virtues of Simplicity. from Luke Sullivan on Vimeo.

This 15 minute TED video is worth the watch for any creative mind working in the corporate world. Basically, the speaker likens work to sleep – if you get interrupted, you have to start all over again. And what happens at the office? Constant interruptions. The two main culprits – “the M&Ms: Managers and Meetings.” I tend to agree. In the advertising world, I would estimate that half of the meetings on my calendar are completely unnecessary, and half of the ones that serve a useful purpose have too many people in them. The speaker happens to be Jason Fried, one of the creators of Basecamp,

a software my employer purchased that’s designed to make it easier for groups to communicate without meetings. In our case, it theoretically should eliminate the need for status meetings. In practice, that does not happen, because half the group uses the software, and half of the group doesn’t. Maybe the managers should meet about that.

Mrs Baird’s State Fair of Texas Partnership

Two Texas icons teamed up when Mrs Baird’s Bread decided to partner with the State Fair. Specifically, Mrs Baird’s became the official sponsor of the Texas Skyway, a gondola ride that carried passengers high above the midway. We had the idea of branding not just the insides of the gondolas, but the bottoms – so that all of the fairgoers could take notice of fun headlines like, “Wafting Across Texas since 1908,” “Get Your Buns Up Here,” and my personal favorite,“Bread Zeppelin.”

Mrs Baird’s Texas Local Outdoor

With factories from Amarillo to Abilene, the smell of fresh baked Mrs Baird’s Bread is well known all across Texas. They wanted to run an outdoor campaign in these markets that would reinforce the brand’s presence both in the state and the town. Lines included, “Out of the Oven and Into the Panhandle,” “Baking in Texas All Summer Long,” and “Amarilloaf.”

Control First Prepaid Energy

They say you’re only as good as your
last ad. Well this campaign for
Control First Prepaid Energy
is currently running on DART
transit media including light rail,
busses, and stations.  The idea with
the prepaid energy plan is that it
puts the customer in total control of
their energy account. So we created a
series of posters and bus kings
depicting customers as “control freaks,”
but in a good way, highlighting the
key ways prepaid puts you in control.

Midas Radio Creative Shootout

I would have included this campaign in the Top 10, but the request was for work that got produced. This assignment was for a national Midas radio campaign and the client asked Moroch to organize a creative shootout between not only our own creative department, but the best and brightest freelancers in Dallas, as well as a handful of Mercury Award-winning copywriters around the country. Add to that, Midas had been working with DDB Chicago on national brand assignments at the time. If you’re as confused as I am as to why the assignment was distributed the way it was, you will probably not be surprised to learn that the job eventually got killed and no work was ever produced. But not before we recorded scratch reads of our work, and not before those tracks made their way in front of the Executive Creative Director at DDB. And not before he proclaimed my spots the best of the bunch. Thanks for the compliment, and the confidence boost.

The idea behind the campaign was the honesty and quality of Midas. The premise behind each spot was to expose the “song and dance” of other repair and service shops through music in various genres. From show tunes, to country blues, to hip-hop, the wide breadth of musical options gave the campaign legs for a huge number of spots throughout the year. Click below to play an example.

Did you know the average layover time at DFW International Airport is about 90 minutes? There’s a lot you can do in 90 minutes. But then, you’d probably miss your flight. But what about 5 minutes? There’s also a lot you can do within 5 minutes of your gate, and still get back in plenty of time for departure. That was the impetus behind this poster campaign for the airport’s Shop & Eat concessionaires. The creative centered on giant, concessions-themed 5’s. I’m very proud of this campaign, not because it was my idea, but precisely because it was not. A junior team had originally sketched it up, but it fizzled. When it came time to narrow the concepts that would get comped up and presented to the client, I spoke up for it because I still believed in it. It lived to see another day, and I became heavily involved writing lines and providing direction as the campaign moved into the execution phase.