Having been a girl creative for 17+ years, feminism had been secretly trending in my heart for a long time. When Secret came along with its stress-sweat fighting products for women, it was like a gift. The best part of it (for me) is that female creatives, female directors, and great female acting talent needed to be part of this to keep it feeling authentic, and knowing that women’s careers took off because of this work is what makes me so proud of it. I loved working on this brand; it's the first time I felt that being a girl was a good thing in Advertising, rather than something I needed to compensate for.
Writing the big new Old Spice campaign was probably the most terrifying brief you could get in 2014, because pretty much everything that came before it was the best thing that was ever made. I guess fear can be a great motivator.
This is one of my favorite things I ever made with Ruth Bellotti, who is hands down the best Art Director in the universe. Look at her site to fall in love with advertising all over again.
A surreal idea based on real audience data and consumer complaints became Pringles’ most talked-about campaign ever. Which was exactly what we were aiming for in the 2022 Super Bowl.
Cuanan Cronwright and Leo Barbosa were the team who sold this idea through, and Peter Alsante came in to partner with me on all the production choices. Lucky clients, lucky Grey, lucky me.
The Good Goes Round brand platform we brought to Cheerios was grounded in the positive energy of oats, and opened up a world of content and partnerships that the client’s village of agencies were excited to execute on.
Right on Tracks was a passion project close to our hearts, as the United States saw a significant uptick in school bullying after the 2016 election and we saw an opportunity to put some good into the world.
Devon Hong was the CD at the time. His eye for craft, as well as his unique brand of soulful charisma, is why this is among my favorite things I’ve ever been a part of.
This project really was like catching lightning in a bottle. ECD Lance Parrish came across this song and wanted to do something, and we made it an absolute hit. Cut to the Grammys, picking up Gold at Cannes, and the Grand Effie. I also heard it on the radio in my Dad’s car in Australia and we don’t even have Applebee’s down there.
A pitch-winning idea for a client who wanted to be talked about for their advertising. Our starting point was the fact that you can eat the whole pint of this ice-cream without guilt. Who even needs a whole pint of ice-cream? Adults with existential dread.
I worked closely with the hilarious and talented Nick Kaplan on this, who made the critical choices that made this work so fun.
Working on funny ideas with funny people is the absolute best way to spend your days.
We all know the horrifying stories around guns in America, and my personal feeling is that we’ve seen enough advertising work that pokes at that horror. It is desensitizing, demotivating, and it’s not changing anything. For me, the only valid work in this space should focus on lowering the death toll and creating more safety. Happy to debate it.
This work was a passion project for our long standing client, States United Against Gun Violence. Led by Jessica Ehrhardt, and our first project with then emerging Director, the spectacularly talented Kevin Wilson Jr.
When the world’s largest advertiser wants to use their muscle to combat racism, making an ad can be a great way to get a conversation going. But making a program that dismantles a structure that reinforces racist thinking, and rebuilds it into something equitable, for us that was a big scary ambition worth taking a swing at.
This program has revolutionized the way P&G approaches production choices, and has opened up hundreds of opportunities to shape culture for underrepresented creatives through the entire production supply chain.
Joe Mongognia, Ben Howard, and Alvaro Soto were the team on this. A magical combination of creative humans.
A personal project I worked on with three friends, including the bona fide genius Micah Walker. We heard about some guys who owned a vibrator company, so we reached out to see if we could make them some ads. After talking, we saw an opportunity to actually create an entirely new brand for them that we became partners in. Our team created the brand concept and voice, the packaging, named the products themselves, and consulted on the design. In the process, I became an expert on all things women and pleasure.
This was the last thing I made in Australia, right before moving to Portland. There wasn't much to say about this beer, but look - it had the word SUPER in it. I always want the work to be based on an insightful human or ownable product truth, and factory ideas have been done before, so honestly, I wasn't expecting this to turn out as well as it did. But my partner Ruth Bellotti really fought for this idea, and I'm so glad she did. We won every award. What a legend.
My last thing at 72andSunny was a fun little project for everyone’s favorite music streaming platform. Based in the truth that families influence each other’s music tastes when we share.
Devon Hong led this work. One of the most caring and pure creative beings I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
To launch an all new global campaign for Smirnoff that would need to run in different guises in many markets, we created a rich visual world built on a single, ownable idea that was true to the brand’s heritage. The history of Smirnoff is almost too wild to be true, but true it is.
This work was lovingly executed by the craft masters Hugo and Dean, with Design led by Guy Featherstone. Best of the best.
The year is 2018. Young people are not having sex, #MeToo has hit the advertising industry, and our team needed to make a campaign about sex positivity in a manner that left everyone feeling like they didn’t get sexually harassed at work. There was a LOT of consent talk. There was also a lot of fun.
Nick Kaplan was the lead on this. He’s exceptional at sneaking really good little details and extra executions into a campaign that give it magic. The song lyrics are my favorite.
Dodge didn't tweak an old model with the Dart, they built a whole new car from scratch, and they wanted you to know every single thing about it. We had to convey a lot of information with this campaign, which the agency hadn’t needed to do on Dodge before. But when you make the biggest challenge of the brief your central idea, this is what happens.
For any copywriter in Australia, working on a beer brand is the ultimate brief. The clients are ambitious and want work that differentiates, and this platform based on the mystical aspects of Tasmania, where Boag’s is brewed, gave us a lot to work with.
Micah Walker was our creative leader on this, and the platform is his thinking. There is so much more in this campaign that I didn’t work on. One of the best brand platforms to come out of Australia ever, in my opinion.
I love work that makes the problem the creative solution. What do you do when you can’t say your product name on your TV ad? You go to TikTok, where your audience is anyway, and you sing about it, loudly.
Javier Bonilla is the best kept secret at Grey and led this work with a team of women creative stars.
A call for entries campaign we made at Publicis Mojo. Ian is a copywriter who (very reluctantly) agreed to undertake a humiliating self-improvement program so that we might make people laugh, and also inspire them to get their work ready for AWARD. We made a ton of work for this, including a full-sized Ian site where you could explore our friend in extreme detail, plus a bunch of video episodes and the award annual.
Looking back on this reminds me of how much fun our jobs can be, especially when you get a bunch of friends together and don't take it too seriously.
