Cats Against Clay

The Challenge:
Feline Pine wasn’t content being the best-selling natural cat litter in the country. It wanted to start clawing market share away from the category’s brand leaders—the giant clay litter companies. The challenge was to transition Feline Pine from the “alternative” king into a mainstream competitor.

The Solution:
Research revealed that consumers who bought clay-based litter
understood very little about its potentially harmful effects and had no compelling reason to switch. Since most consumers aren’t aware of the problems with clay and cats don’t speak, we decided to give them a voice. We created a revolutionary movement of blogging cats. And not just any ordinary cats, but activist, revolutionary cats that had a deep-seated hatred of traditional clay cat litter!

The Results:
The Cats Against Clay campaign was initially an unbranded, stealth campaign. It utilized limited outlets including random acts of resistance like sidewalk postings, billboards, online video ads, a YouTube-posted Berkeley protest march, a blog authored by underground feline members, and a full page ad in the New York Times.
• The campaign gained more than 60k fans on Facebook—more
than any litter company, including Feline Pine, within 3 months.
The website also had some of the highest traffic in the litter business.
• A full-page ad in the New York Times generated so much
response, it crashed the switchboard for an entire morning.
• Fans requested the ad as a poster (we gave away 10,000 prints)
• Cats Against Clay t-shirts were enthusiastically snapped up by
pet shop owners and cat lovers across the country.

When the campaign’s benefactor was revealed, it directly impacted Feline Pine sales (through a distinctly indirect approach). Cat owners immediately understood the joke and grew closer to the brand. And the retailers embraced it as a valuable, attention getting effort.

Brandweek, Promo, Chief Marketer, and American and international bloggers added extended exposure.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Charlotte has a good reputation and no problem with awareness. But participation rates were flat, and the need was growing. Put simply, they had more Littles than Bigs.

We understood that many potential volunteers might have the mistaken impression that mentoring a child would be a perpetually weighty and serious time. When participants told us about their experiences, and that it was actually more fun than they ever expected. That became our story.

But, showing happy people playing together would be invisible in the marketplace. So, we chose a slightly mysterious call to action from iconic toys of childhood coming into people’s work lives and inviting them to “Come Out and Play”.

With no budget, but a big idea, we quickly found people willing to donate photo and production help. The campaign included print, digital, social, wild postings, radio, and TV.

The campaign was a great success winning many awards but, best of all, they saw an increase in participation of 41% over the previous year. Now that’s what I call fun.

Have you ever known anyone who was into horses? They sort of lose their minds. That was my inspiration for this campaign for EquuSSource — a new sub brand, uniting all the Equine products from the Southern States Stores. (Think Purina, Dog Chow).

Horse people are at least sane enough to know they are a little crazy. And we had fun pointing out their extreme behaviors. The good natured reflection-of-reality and acknowledgement that we are like that too, built a sense of authenticity and credibility for this new brand.

The phrase “you’re my kind of people” also began being echoed around the corporate offices and stores of Southern States—an important moral boost having just come out of a difficult bankruptcy restructuring.

• This program resulted in a 30% lift to their web site traffic, over 100.000 additional names in their database, and nearly 10% gains in sales.

Cat People Know.

Research showed that the long-running, animated campaign, for Whiskas was working well against a relatively small “crazy cat lady—cat as child” audience. But the brand wanted to reach the much larger “cats as roommates with intersecting but separate lives” target.

This campaign achieves that with executions that did something that few clients would allow—it confused half the viewers. It uses visuals and situations that "Cat People" would understand. Dog people would be left scratching their heads. It demonstrated a shared understanding, a “secret handshake” of sorts which made it much more meaningful and unifying to the Cat People who “got it."

Cheerwine Soda. Chillax...

Cheerwine soft drink is one of the oldest sodas in the country and a particular favorite in the Southeast. They came to us and two other agencies with the results of a six-month long research study. The study concluded there was a large, untapped, strategy in the soft drink category that was just right for them. It was summed up as a “relaxed pleasure” idea that no other brand was targeting—and that Cheerwine’s flavor and history was uniquely well suited to.

We suggested they use their long-neck bottle against the sparkling, luscious, red background with an approachable retro type headline loaded with lots of kicked back attitude. You may also notice we used a variety of tag-lines that expressed the point, in a casual, non-dogmatic way.

General Tire. Take Command.

Our challenge was to re-invigorate the General Tire brand. We had to break away from the commoditized, “cheap, black and round” curse that had overtaken their business. To achieve that, we chose to strike a new posture, one that emphasizes the meaning of “General” that is strong and in command rather than “generic and average."

This iconic visual campaign does that by using copy that urges the viewer to "take command" and combines that with visuals that focus on beautiful, archetypal, open-road images that express the breathtaking freedom of driving. The approach is also flexible enough for headlines that speak to the joy of driving as well as important performance attributes.

Since over 70% of tire sales are influenced by tire store sales people, this campaign had to work for both consumers and trade. The campaign was very well received by both audiences. And it created a renewed sense enthusiasm for the tire store personnel, and the home office.

Belgard makes exterior hardscape pavers, veneers, and walls.

Growth in the home improvement category has been phenomenal. Belgard wanted to take advantage of that.

We identified that many people were beautifying their interiors could be inspired to expand their efforts to the exterior. We created this campaign to establish Belgard as the specialists in making the outdoors more beautiful and live-able—to match the rest of their home.

This concept for Sperry Top-Siders is one of my all-time favorites. Combine an arresting visual with a headline that’s a bit of a puzzle that lets the viewer close-the-loop, and you win every time.

The campaign work for UNCG Online includes a vast number of elements designed for Awareness, Search, Lead Nurturing, Retention, and Closing. We use unique landing pages and provide different offers, social media stories and blog posts, and all kinds of information and links that are relevant to the target's place in the marketing funnel. It's a data wonk's dream.

In addition to all of the expected digital components, we also created pieces that run on arena Jumbotrons, truck sides, printed and digital billboards, and even restroom posters. 

I love telling complete stories with a visual. Among the many worthwhile programs that I had the pleasure of working on during my time at UNCG, the Masters in Conflict & Peace Studies was one of the most interesting. It also provided an opportunity for one of my favorite concepts. This campaign was inspired by the work of the French artist Mister Blick, who I saw featured in one of my favorite online art magazines My Modern Met.

Save A Lot is a popular discount grocer in the Mid-West. To help keep prices low, they feature a limited selection of products in smaller store footprints.

They came to our agency because they wanted to grow their customer base beyond the traditional discount shoppers. Their differences could be a confusing surprise for shoppers used to the decadent overabundance of options at traditional supermarkets.

We chose to use that difference as a point of pride, rather than a disadvantage. Combining common sense, straight talk, musings from founder Bill Moran, in combination with a hand-made, low-tech graphic technique, “printed” on classic brown-paper shopping bag background, we positioned Save-A-Lot as the right choice for savvy, cost-conscious shoppers.

Although I am more of a “Big Idea” conceptual Ad Guy, I have had opportunities to design a lot of packaging. I find them to be fun opportunities for what I like to call “Little Ideas”. When possible I enjoy establishing an attractive personality through visual and graphic touches. I find that can yield a powerful emotional connection with the consumer.

No where were my packing talents applied than at The Fresh Market. While there, I personally Art Directed the redesign of over 200 product packages across all categories and departments.

• Yielded average sales increases of 30% over previous packaging.

• Led redesign of brand’s private label packaging to achieve a more premium and cohesive visual system.

• Center store sales increased from $83M to $100M+ after packaging redesign.

Bigger, Better, More Exciting!
Traditionally Point of Sale displays were 24”x30” flat signs placed into floor stands. I was challenged to create bigger, more impactful pieces for our major promotional efforts.
The catch was that they still had to fit into the same sized shipper to fit into the regular truck deliveries to stores. The Valentine’s Day example here shows the standard floor stand solution. In this case I added a heart-shaped “topper” for more interest and fun.
From there I created various solutions using folds, die-cuts, easel-backs, and interlocking pieces, for a new take on displays that grabbed guests attention and improved sales by an average of 30% year over year.

The Music Academy of NC

What can you say about this sort of pro-bono thing? It should be a chance to try new things and stretch some creative muscle. Check, check.
I had a ball working on this. And they saw a great improvement in participation in their events. It feels good to do something good.

There is something very singular and challenging about logo and identity work. Although it's not what I would describe as my specialty, looking back, I have done a lot of it over the years. It is an enjoyable design exercise. Here are a few examples.

I’ve had the honor of creating many TV spots over the years. Here are a few of my favorites. I hope you enjoy them.