O-I Makers of Glass
O-I makes 65% of the worlds glass bottles and jars. In other words, they’re the global leader in making something that’s healthy and inert, infinitely recyclable, reusable, beautiful ... and a product that no one ever thinks of. We have used our very modest budget to organize and grow a thriving community of people who believe in our mantra Glass is Life ®. We produced content and managed social communities in six languages in nine countries with over a quarter million participants.
This is a sampling of the day-to-day social content for O-I. Some of it ties into current events - the World Cup, the meta tee-shirt, french bulldogs, Wimbledon. Some of it is evergreen glass happiness.
A sixty ton sand sculpture at the BLUE Ocean Film Festival for Glass is Life ®. Glass is simply made from sand, soda ash and fire. Good stuff.
VISA COMMERCIAL SOLUTIONS
So, there’s an 80 trillion dollar addressable market for Visa in companies that use paper checks and wire transfers. However, Visa is known as a credit card company – it’s an upstream conversation to talk to CFO’s about payment systems. But what if that relationship changed, and the perceptions of Visa changed? We advertised directly to CFO’s and set up a private group for CFO’s through Bloomberg to change the conversation. It’s a lonely job, rarely lauded for its heroism. Happy to be spoken to, happy to know others, CFO’s joined in a heartbeat. As for this film, it was shot by Chivo Lubezki. Ah. Say no more.
LIZ CLAIBORNE FOUNDATION
Two years after making this film for the Liz Claiborne Foundation a father tracked me down. I had moved on so it must've taken some effort to find me. But he did. He told me that I had saved his daughter's life. I have done more expensive work, more visible work, more awarded work. But I have never done more effective work.
THE STANDARD
The Standard. This is what happens when a brand, allergic to definition, must define itself for investors. Like a skittish wild animal. From agency Point One Percent.
NIKE RUNNING
Wieden didn't ever love this because Pre was sacred. We could write about sex, love, birth, death... but not Pre. Robert Nakata's art direction - so, so, so good.
There's something enduring about goals that people set through the lens of life and pain. (Wieden liked this one.)
SANIBEL SEA SCHOOL
This is Sanibel Sea School. It's a fundraising dinner party film - purposefully languid. It will give you a sense of an institution I am tremendously proud to have co-founded. Shot by Mark Meyers.
RUSSELL INVESTMENTS
Russell Investments was founded in Tacoma at the foot of Mt. Rainier. People at Russell do things differently. In that Pacific Northwest style, they work hard to do the right thing. They developed the indexes (Russell 2000, Russell 3000…) to properly evaluate managers so that pensions would be safer. The work we did from identity through advertising was rooted in a literal and philosophical geography that was different – a moral high ground – a literal high ground, far away from Wall Street.
Yep, it ran sideways. Keep the copy lean and it can happen. Props to Laura Forde, art director and designer.
NIKE WOMEN'S
Susan Hoffman and I (and Spike Lee and Bill Davenport) took the US Women's Basketball team to play a pick-up game with the regular guys at Rock Steady in NYC. It was good stuff - messy and real. The film itself was the last Kodak 5239 film stock from Do The Right Thing - it was a high-speed color reversal film intended for photography under low-level daylight illumination, which was previously used primarily by the Air Force and by NASA for their onboard cameras on the space shuttle.
Why include this when you already know how I write? It's a Nadav Kander image - pretty amazing. Props to Warren Eakins, art director.
I think women's brands have more room for an aging conversation. Even now, years after this particular ad was written, I realize no one is saying this stuff well.
And then ...
I've done a lot of work. In deciding what I wanted to include on this site, I've asked myself - would I like it if I saw it today? What was interesting about doing it that anyone will find relevant? In terms of what I haven't included on this site - feel free to ask to see banner ads, website copy, brochures, collaborations with media partners, full campaigns with all the touch points, and/or what I still think are beautiful ads in Japanese, etc.
Award Winning Things and Other Things I Love
This is stop motion animation. We shot EXACTLY the amount of film in EXACTLY the order of the cut. Which meant that all of us shot all night. If the math had been wrong or if the talent had collapsed .. well, that would've been a problem. The director was an eccentric artist who had never done a commercial project. This work won a Gold Lion at the Cannes Film Festival and the director couldn't be found because he was in jail that night. Crazy times.
Nike Just Do It
David Fincher, director. Intense athletes - downhill speeds of up to 50 MPH.
Shot in Iceland (no power lines - yet another benefit of geothermal power.)
The Anne Klein work also won at Cannes and was the first commercial film Tarsem had ever done. Everything mentioned in any of these films sold out immediately (although never shown onscreen.) Mr. Michael Prieve on the art direction and Jerry Cronin's purposefully dissonant voice.
Who divides up a brand and says - your assignment is the color red; you can shoot anywhere in the world?
There's Always More
There's always more. Particularly the work that I had the honor of creative directing - the Nike Olympic work with John Jay "You don't win silver. You lose gold." The Westin and Sheraton work with Florence Buchanan. The Alta Vista work that won so many awards for a brand that is no more. Coke in Pakistan and India. Nike in Japan. So much good Microsoft work that the computers look like dinosaurs in now - Jeff Daniels was so good as the voice of humanity as technology was exploding. Crazy obscure cool work for electronic trading algorithms shot by a rock 'n roll photographer and work targeted to hospital blood bankers shot by a fashion photographer. But we'll just have to have a conversation or even better, let's talk about the work that comes next.
Instagram below because it's a little window into my life.
