Insurance companies constantly remind us that risk is something to be feared—but when you’re a small business, certain risks lead to rewards. Like the risk of starting your own company in the first place. For these owners, insurance isn’t a way to stop bad things from hurting their business—it’s how they get their business to its next goal.

NEXT Insurance saw that the red-tape and high-fees of traditional business insurance were as much a negative risk to small businesses as any mishap. Their challenge was how to say it.

As a new-comer, how could they stand out in an industry that only had two ways to talk about itself? Insurance companies are either your overly-earnest protectors from doom, or rely on the absurdity of animals and athletes to help you remember them.

So, when COLLINS asked me to help them crack a different type of brand and voice for NEXT and ways to bring it to life for small businesses, I was intrigued.

Working together with the team at NEXT, we crafted a third way—Get Going—a new industry narrative that sees insurance and risk as tools to help owners build a better business.

The result is a brand that talks about itself and its industry in a new way to help small business owners get going with substance and, we hope, a smile.

Agency: COLLINS

Client: NEXT Insurance

Full case study and team credits here.

The Internet, on a good day, is a place where we discover new knowledge that can change how we live. It might even make us and the world a little better.

Since their founding in 2012, Medium has evolved in pursuit of that mission, acting as a counterpoint to the downward spiral of online discourse. With ad-fueled clickbait on one side and echo chambers filled with our own opinions on the other, things have been heading from worse to a whole lot worse.

That’s why I jumped at the chance to work with the team at COLLINS to help Medium push its brand and voice—as well as the diversity of ideas it promotes—to travel as far as it could.

This evolution of the Medium platform encourages deeper relationships and exchanges between readers and writers—to be a place for a new idea to be challenged by different perspectives, grow stronger, reach its potential, expand its audience and thrive.

Simply put, every idea needs a Medium.

So we set out to create a brand that acts and speaks as if we’re all sitting across the table from each other—with a tone of voice that elicits good discussion and debate around ideas that matter—like the best writers, readers and thinkers have always done.

Agency: COLLINS

Client: Medium

Great things happen when worlds collide. 

And since 1997, PopTech has been one of the leading places for it to happen. PopTech brings together a global community of innovators from many different fields—science, technology, design, corporate and civic leadership, public health, social and ecological innovation, and the arts and humanities, among others—to share insights and work together to create lasting change.

I was thrilled when the team at COLLINS asked me to help craft a film to kick off the 4-day conference and transform this audience of luminaries from “attendees” into “instigators” eager to have their world views and ideas collide with one another. Since then, it has become one of the most downloaded videos in PopTech’s history.

Agency: COLLINS

Client: PopTech

Before vitaminwater hit the scene in 1996, water was just water. But, by adding some color and vitamins to it, plus pharmaceutical-inspired graphics and an irreverent voice to the bottle, they made water something else—iconic.

Fast forward 20 some odd years, when COLLINS asked me to help capture their amazing brand revitalization as well as the story of vitaminwater in a brand book. It was an opportunity for us to take that witty, clever tone from the bottle and run with it for hundreds of pages. (296, to be exact.)

Part history, part strategy, and part guidelines, the vitaminwater brand book celebrates their bold persona as the champions of vibrancy they’ve always been—from their vivid design, to their unmistakable voice, and their endless variety of flavors.

London Design Week Awards — Best in Show/Print Communications

One Club — Silver Pencil

Agency: COLLINS

Client: vitaminwater

Bose Frames are more than sunglasses with a soundtrack—they’re a prime example of how Bose continues to innovate the way we listen (and look) at the world around us.

Each style is a classic silhouette with discreet Bluetooth speakers built-in, so you can stream music and take calls without tuning out of the world around you.

Working with COLLINS, we found inspiration between the tensions at play in the product—sight and sound, fashion and function, the explicit and the implied.

The result is language, type, and design that has fun with an experience you have to see (and hear) to believe—and product names, like Alto and Rondo, that marry musical vernacular to physical design styles.

Agency: COLLINS

Client: Bose

Based on their mantra "We believe in doing," Mesa & Cadeira—one of Brazil's most innovative and sought after creative collectives—hand-picks professionals with various skills and gathers them around a single table (or Mesa in Portuguese).

There, we concept, develop, and make something great with clients in 5 days—not endlessly talk in circles for 5 months. As such, every mesa ends with a working prototype ready to be shared with the world.

To date, I've been asked to participate in two mesas for Fortune 50 clients as a storyteller and writer. While I'm currently not free to share work from those mesas, please visit www.mesa.do to get a feel for the projects and clients they have been involved with.

While many people know of Watson thanks to its now-famous Jeopardy appearance, very few understand how it's used by IBM clients across the planet. 

Far from being the evil AI overlord we all bow down to, it turns out Watson’s cognitive capabilities are augmenting employee performance at companies—and locations—you might not expect.

Such is the case with Woodside, Australia’s largest energy company. Instead of being handled with kid gloves in some antiseptic server room, Watson works with engineers on a oil platform 70 miles off the coast of Western Australia. It’s a job where the elements are severe and human lives depend on understanding the data that surrounds them. 

To document this, we shot a series of films accompanied by a long-form article on Medium and social media campaign to offer a more detailed case study to C-level decisions makers. 

Agency: The Barbarian Group

Client: IBM 

I worked at Ogilvy for many years. In fact, it’s where I first met many of the people at COLLINS.

So when they asked me to help write the film to announce the Ogilvy rebrand they had just finished, I couldn’t refuse—it felt like things had come full circle.

And it gave me a chance to tell the story of a Scottish immigrant who started a little ad agency in 1948.

Agency: COLLINS

Client: Ogilvy

Nationwide inked star NFL QB (and omnipresent advertising spokesperson) Peyton Manning and asked Ogilvy how best to use him.

Our answer? Have him pitch your brand, not your products. 

That meant having one of the world's most recognizable jingles stuck in the head of one of the world's most recognizable athletes. Even when he's eating a chicken parm.

The campaign hit a chord with people across the country, including fans, players and celebrities, to the point where Peyton was being asked to autograph balls with his lines.

The next year, we followed Peyton around once again, as well as created specific ads to run during the three Thanksgiving Day NFL games and the holidays.

Featured in AdAge

Agency: Ogilvy

Client: Nationwide

Once Nationwide saw football fans around the country were coming up with their own versions of Peyton's Jingle, they asked us to work directly with NFL teams to capture the pre-season thoughts of super fans around the league.  

Agency: Ogilvy

Client: Nationwide

For young guys, grooming is an easy way to gain confidence. When they nail their look (from eyebrows to ankles) they believe they can do anything.

However, most young guys didn't think Norelco could help. They assumed electric shavers were for poorly groomed AARP members.

At Ogilvy, we changed their view on electric shavers by demonstrating the ways Norelco—and the Click& Style in particular—helps guys achieve their perfect look and reach the ultimate level of self-confidence.

Thanks to a strong integrated push, we got young guys to clear the shelves at most major retailers—and got their their moms super pissed at us in the process.

Featured in Adweek, Creativity, Huffington Post, Archive, Mashable

FWA Site of the Day // FWA Mobile Site of the Day //  Google Creative Sandbox Showcase

Bronze Effie

Boycotted by One Million Moms 

Agency: Ogilvy

Client: Philips Norelco

Coca Cola was looking for another way to make people smile, so we decided to make people put on a t-shirt.

"The Wearable Movie" sets out to thank some of Coke's fans around the world—from the concierge in their Atlanta office, to their millionth fan in Mumbai—using a movie. But not just any movie: we printed each frame on a t-shirt, then shipped them off to fans all over the globe with a note to wear the shirt and take a photo using a specially designed website.

Then we stitched all the frames together (spoiler: I'm frame #1) in a Psyop-directed film about about two friends trying to get a pair of lips to smile.

Shortlisted at Cannes

Featured in Creativity

Agency: Ogilvy

Client: Coke

After spending seven years under an umbrella campaign for all Holiday Inn properties, Holiday Inn Express was looking to return to the line it made famous.

We brought back "No... but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night." in ways that were both familiar (film & TV) and new (OOH, guerrilla, in-hotel, experiential), to remind travelers they can Stay Smart even when they have to stay somewhere other than home.

Featured in Adweek, Creativity, The New York Times, USA Today

Agency: Ogilvy

Client: IHG

Progress is overrated. At least that's what Frank Druffel, the fictional Post Shredded Wheat CEO we created, likes to say.

We turned Post Shredded Wheat's perceived negative—the fact that it's been the same, dusty old cereal since 1892—into a positive by shining a light on modern life. So many innovations that were supposed to improve life, from food to finance, have actually mucked it up. But not Shredded Wheat. They got it right over 120 years ago and stuck with it. 

Frank made the argument for Shredded Wheat putting the "no" in innovation wherever he could, including TV, major print publications, the web, social channels, and a 6-episode online series about a cereal company that does everything it can to do nothing.

Cannes Lion — Titanium & Integrated

Agency: Ogilvy

Client: Post

I don’t know how you top Betsy Ross, but when the New York Times asks for your thoughts on how you might redesign the American Flag, you take a swing at it.

I’m thankful Brian Collins asked me to work alongside Joseph Han, J.A. Ginsburg and the rest of the amazing COLLINS team—and honored the Times chose our flag as one of the six they decided “run up the flagpole.”

Full piece and flags here.

The writing at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency always makes me laugh, so I was happy to make the cut and have my piece run on their site.

Now go and pretend you’re the POTUS and choose your way through a presidential rally adventure.

The Cartoon Caption Contest is consistently the best creative brief out there: Be funny, be concise, and be unexpected. 

Evidently, I nailed all three one week. (At least according to the cartoon editor and readers of The New Yorker.)