Whatever, USA
Bud Light
Bud Light had done something genuinely difficult — launched a live Super Bowl commercial starring an unsuspecting real person. The follow-up brief was every creative team's nightmare:
now do something bigger.
The answer wasn't another ad. It was an actual town.
Whatever, USA was a real place where anything could happen — a brand experience so ambitious it functioned less like a marketing campaign and more like a cultural event. Our job was to define the vibe before anyone had been there, and make enough people want in that the demand itself became part of the story.
We built that desire around a single character: The Mayor of Whatever. A human embodiment of the brand's ethos, brought to life across TV and social to give the town a personality before it had any residents.
It worked. Over 200,000 people auditioned for 1,300 spots — a rejection rate that would make most exclusive clubs envious. The 1,300 who made it generated 37,000 pieces of content over a single weekend, producing 600 million impressions that no media plan could have bought.
The best brand experiences don't feel like advertising. They feel like something you're lucky to have been part of.
now do something bigger.
The answer wasn't another ad. It was an actual town.
Whatever, USA was a real place where anything could happen — a brand experience so ambitious it functioned less like a marketing campaign and more like a cultural event. Our job was to define the vibe before anyone had been there, and make enough people want in that the demand itself became part of the story.
We built that desire around a single character: The Mayor of Whatever. A human embodiment of the brand's ethos, brought to life across TV and social to give the town a personality before it had any residents.
It worked. Over 200,000 people auditioned for 1,300 spots — a rejection rate that would make most exclusive clubs envious. The 1,300 who made it generated 37,000 pieces of content over a single weekend, producing 600 million impressions that no media plan could have bought.
The best brand experiences don't feel like advertising. They feel like something you're lucky to have been part of.
Up All Night
We Work
Every business owner has one. The 3am thought that won't let go. The decision that isn't made yet. The thing that looks fine on paper but doesn't feel fine anywhere else.
In 2019, WeWork wanted to reach the owners of growing mid-sized businesses — a more seasoned audience with more complex anxieties. Rather than make an ad about shared office space, we pitched a podcast that spoke to the universal experience of building something and being terrified of losing it.
Up At Night featured successful business leaders talking candidly about what keeps them up — hosted at night, because the format was the insight.
It launched months before a global pandemic turned work anxiety into a universal condition and branded podcasts into a standard entry in every major marketing playbook.
Sometimes being early looks like being wrong, until suddenly it doesn't.
In 2019, WeWork wanted to reach the owners of growing mid-sized businesses — a more seasoned audience with more complex anxieties. Rather than make an ad about shared office space, we pitched a podcast that spoke to the universal experience of building something and being terrified of losing it.
Up At Night featured successful business leaders talking candidly about what keeps them up — hosted at night, because the format was the insight.
It launched months before a global pandemic turned work anxiety into a universal condition and branded podcasts into a standard entry in every major marketing playbook.
Sometimes being early looks like being wrong, until suddenly it doesn't.
The GOAT
Subway
In 2020, Subway became the Official Sandwich of the NFL. To launch it, we got the most NFL person alive — Bill Belichick, in his first commercial appearance ever.
Getting Belichick on camera during COVID protocols, in a single day, and walking away with two TV spots, nine social shorts, OLV, a custom GIF library, and a Snapchat filter is either a miracle of production or a testament to what the right idea can make possible.
We didn't even need to edit the footage before the internet found it. Behind-the-scenes images lit up Twitter immediately. Boston sports radio dedicated thirty uninterrupted minutes to speculating what Bill was up to. The campaign had gone viral before it existed.
The work leaned into exactly what makes Belichick compelling — the gruff, unvarnished certainty of a man with eight Super Bowl rings who has never once said more than necessary. And almost always makes the right call (except when it comes to girlfriends).
So we put the better call in a ball. The Magic 8 Bill — a custom Magic 8 Ball dispensing Bill's signature blunt wisdom on everything from football to lunch — sold out within hours. We also built a library of Beligifs: Bill's gruff advice in GIF form for every moment in life that requires a better call.
It was a one-day shoot that became a week-long cultural conversation.
Getting Belichick on camera during COVID protocols, in a single day, and walking away with two TV spots, nine social shorts, OLV, a custom GIF library, and a Snapchat filter is either a miracle of production or a testament to what the right idea can make possible.
We didn't even need to edit the footage before the internet found it. Behind-the-scenes images lit up Twitter immediately. Boston sports radio dedicated thirty uninterrupted minutes to speculating what Bill was up to. The campaign had gone viral before it existed.
The work leaned into exactly what makes Belichick compelling — the gruff, unvarnished certainty of a man with eight Super Bowl rings who has never once said more than necessary. And almost always makes the right call (except when it comes to girlfriends).
So we put the better call in a ball. The Magic 8 Bill — a custom Magic 8 Ball dispensing Bill's signature blunt wisdom on everything from football to lunch — sold out within hours. We also built a library of Beligifs: Bill's gruff advice in GIF form for every moment in life that requires a better call.
It was a one-day shoot that became a week-long cultural conversation.
You In?
FTX
In 2021, FTX had a problem common to every crypto platform: the product was real, but nobody trusted it yet. Their goal wasn't just awareness — it was legitimacy. They wanted to be the brand that made crypto safe for everyone.
To do that, they needed icons. They had two already: Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, both investors, both willing to put their names behind the vision.
The campaign launched in the first NFL game of the season, driving almost half a million searches for FTX within minutes. The second film was trending on Twitter within a month. The press that followed wasn't ad industry coverage — it was the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, ESPN, ABC, and the Hollywood Reporter. Publications that don't normally cover advertising covered this one because it had crossed into something larger.
A fact later confirmed when the hype, the celebrity, and the breathless optimism about crypto's future crashed and were parodied across an entire episode of South Park.
FTX's goal of becoming iconic was accomplished. Just not entirely in the way any of us planned.
To do that, they needed icons. They had two already: Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, both investors, both willing to put their names behind the vision.
The campaign launched in the first NFL game of the season, driving almost half a million searches for FTX within minutes. The second film was trending on Twitter within a month. The press that followed wasn't ad industry coverage — it was the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, ESPN, ABC, and the Hollywood Reporter. Publications that don't normally cover advertising covered this one because it had crossed into something larger.
A fact later confirmed when the hype, the celebrity, and the breathless optimism about crypto's future crashed and were parodied across an entire episode of South Park.
FTX's goal of becoming iconic was accomplished. Just not entirely in the way any of us planned.
The Only Diet with Dew In It
Diet Dew
Diet Dew had a perception problem no amount of media spend could fix. Dew drinkers worried about sugar weren't switching to the diet version — they were leaving the brand entirely. The assumption was that "diet" meant less of everything, including the kick that made Dew worth drinking.
The reframe was simple but counterintuitive: stop treating "diet" as an absence and start treating it as a whole menu of things worth wanting.
The campaign launched immediately after the Super Bowl — not during it — with a spot featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr. that was so well-timed it mistakenly appeared on multiple Best Ads of the Super Bowl lists despite never airing in the game. Which became its own kind of media story.
What happened next was harder to plan. Fans flooded Twitter demanding to buy the Dale Call — the turkey call featured in the spot. So we made it real, put it on sale on Amazon and NASCAR.com, and watched it sell out immediately. Resale prices climbed into the hundreds on eBay. We restocked and sold thousands more — turning a prop from a commercial into a cultural object and a staple at NASCAR races.
Sales lifted not just for Diet Dew but for Mtn Dew broadly, bucking a category-wide slump at a moment when most beverage brands were losing ground.
Great brand thinking works regardless of the category.
The reframe was simple but counterintuitive: stop treating "diet" as an absence and start treating it as a whole menu of things worth wanting.
The campaign launched immediately after the Super Bowl — not during it — with a spot featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr. that was so well-timed it mistakenly appeared on multiple Best Ads of the Super Bowl lists despite never airing in the game. Which became its own kind of media story.
What happened next was harder to plan. Fans flooded Twitter demanding to buy the Dale Call — the turkey call featured in the spot. So we made it real, put it on sale on Amazon and NASCAR.com, and watched it sell out immediately. Resale prices climbed into the hundreds on eBay. We restocked and sold thousands more — turning a prop from a commercial into a cultural object and a staple at NASCAR races.
Sales lifted not just for Diet Dew but for Mtn Dew broadly, bucking a category-wide slump at a moment when most beverage brands were losing ground.
Great brand thinking works regardless of the category.
Telecom
Sprint, Nextel, AT&T
A long, long time ago, before the Super Bowl briefs and the awards, Jason toiled in telecom.
He worked on AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, Nextel, Verizon — accumulating a body of work, and a ton of reps, at production. But the one on the right still holds a special place.
It was his first commercial and a few weeks after it aired, his Dad called him, excited. “I got in an elevator and two people that I don’t know, were talking and they quoted your ad and then laughed. Did you know people were doing that?”
A few weeks later a newspaper article popped up about the commercial, then the actor was interviewed on his local TV station. It was the first taste of making something that crossed from being an interuption, to something that people looked forward to seeing and shared. It’s the type of work he has been chasing ever since.
He worked on AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, Nextel, Verizon — accumulating a body of work, and a ton of reps, at production. But the one on the right still holds a special place.
It was his first commercial and a few weeks after it aired, his Dad called him, excited. “I got in an elevator and two people that I don’t know, were talking and they quoted your ad and then laughed. Did you know people were doing that?”
A few weeks later a newspaper article popped up about the commercial, then the actor was interviewed on his local TV station. It was the first taste of making something that crossed from being an interuption, to something that people looked forward to seeing and shared. It’s the type of work he has been chasing ever since.