Why do you help a nearly bankrupt school district like Detroit Public Schools? Lots of reasons. For the kids. For a district, and a proud city, in desperate need. And for a fallen colleague, mentor and friend. We did it pro bono as well. And we did it well. To the tune of an additional $6 million in funding for DPS, and the 2010 Grand Effie for us. The latter by besting the likes of Apple’s apps and Goodby, Silverstein and Partners’ Assurance idea for Hyundai. Heck, even the Harvard Business Review gave us a shout out.

Barbie is having a moment. She’s EVERYWHERE. But pink popularity came with a price: used Barbie Dream Cars (toy cars) selling on resale sites for insanely inflated prices (10+ times normal value).

America’s newest used car brand, CarBravo, insists on fair and honest prices for all used cars—yes, even toy ones. With a modest budget and the green light from Mattel, we bought as many overpriced used Barbie Dream Cars as we could and listed them on our commerce site (you can get to it here) designed to mirror the real CarBravo.com. So you could search, filter, and buy them at fair and honest prices. Just like our REAL full-size vehicles.

With each delivery, custom QR codes in our packaging connected every toy Dream car to listings of the same or similar real-life vehicles on CarBravo.com.

And the results had clients tickled pink: Sold-out Barbie inventory, 12X more views for real-sized cars on CarBravo.com, $2.3M in real-car sales and our best sales month ever.

D&AD Wood Pencil / Commerce / 2024

Cannes Bronze Lion / Creative Commerce / 2024

A simple premise based on a simple human need: Food.

Did you know 1 in 6 in the military community struggle with food insecurity? 1 in 6 who served our country so well and with honor.

That is why we partnered with our client Navy Federal Credit Union (and Feeding America) to create (and just launch) an AR experience with a simple, yet very meaningful, invitation:

FILL A PLATE VIRTUALLY, COMBAT HUNGER FOR REAL.

NFCU members, and all of us, were invited to fill a plate, and if so inspired, donate your plate — or PLATES — to help our military community feel the love and support of us all so they can feel brave enough to get the help they need — and deserve.

Visit the AR experience here.

It’s not everyday you get to help lead a team that gets to launch a brand-new brand — and a business — from scratch. From positioning, personas and a unique brand platform to TVCs, OLA, dealer toolkits, education videos and a whole lot more, if it’s coming from CarBravo and helping folks feel the usedphoria, I’m part of the amazing team that’s behind it all.

Sharing a few spots and video here, but we built a whole darn web page to collect the huge array of amazing stuff we’ve been creating for CarBravo over here. Definitely should check it out.

Winning a Gold Effie for a campaign that was effective the prior year is no easy task. Which makes winning one for FIVE years of sustained success across multiple campaigns and launches (Blackline, Black Label, Street, Fat Bob, #Stereotypicalharley, Kid Rock/Rebel Soul, just to name a few) will make you feel pretty darn good. And don't let the power of Harley fool you. Getting the new generation of Young Adult riders to throw a leg over a new H-D bike – when there are so many other options out there – is still a worthy challenge. 

And be sure to check out my work for the H-D Street Launch, some H-D fun we had with Kid Rock, and our “What Will You Leave Ahead?” pitch work here on my site, too. I wanted to give each of them their own little moment in the sun.

With the market for beer, hard ciders and hard seltzers continually growing, A-B was looking for a short-term strategy to consolidate its multiple brand loyalty programs into one cohesive platform.

That’s one way to look at that challenge. The other: Make A-B famous for becoming the leader in customer connections through an innovative, long-term loyalty experience.

With the simple mantra of “great beers, great friends, great rewards” we set out to create the first-ever social loyalty network.

155,000+ site visits in the first month
750,000+ site visits first 6 months
340,000 (45%) converted to registered My Cooler users
Nearly 100,000 purchase receipts uploaded
27 million+ points earned in the first 10 months
6.6+ million points redeemed in the first 10 months

Cleveland Clinic is the #2 hospital in the world — and yet they had an awareness problem. Crazy, right?

So we started our For Every Care In The World national campaign by looking for one-of-a-kind stories that only Cleveland Clinic could tell. And then we created a consistent, connected framework that could adapt to any story on any platform.

Each touchpoint repeatedly leveraged Cleveland Clinic’s incredible stories to develop an approach able to leave a lasting impression on the right people, with the right content, in the right context — like talking about our hospital gowns in Vogue or telling sports fans how we helped Jeff Green on ESPN.

The campaign garnered record high awareness numbers — climbing to 69% amongst our target population — over a 20% lift since the start of the campaign and 15% beyond our goal.

A little deeper dive here.

We’ve all heard a horrific used car story or two. So it’s no surprise that used car shoppers feel like their shopping experience is a gamble and their journey is driven by uncertainty.

To combat the dread (and breakthrough the boring rational clutter), we created a humorous campaign of stories that imaginatively show us when you buy a GM Certified Pre-Owned vehicle, you reach a Happily Ever After.

Each story is filled with twists, turns, quirky characters, snappy dialogue and lip-synced voice-overs, eye-popping backdrops, product benefits that prove our vehicles are better than used, and of course, a suite of supporting campaign elements.

There’s even a bit more to the story over here.

How do you inspire GM Cardmembers with unused Earnings (points) to redeem them before they expire?

Simple: The Give List.

We created a first-ever opportunity for our Cardmembers to “gift” their Earnings to one or two special someones in their life. It could be a neighbor, a friend, family member, their favorite barista…anyone.

The result: $2.1M in Earnings gifted and $37.3M in vehicle sales.

Oh, and we did it all via only CRM, via email and direct mail.

To launch the new TourX and welcome a new breed of owners into the Buick family, we crafted a how-to on how-to videos. We took a charming couple and their TourX to Camp Wandawega, and created four visually-stunning videos, each focusing on a different set of vehicle features. Using hot spot technology, we allowed owners to navigate and explore and learn. The result was a beautiful mix of storytelling and technology that blended into a truly unique experience and a great start to a new relationship with the brand.

Oh, and our friends at GMC liked these so much they asked us to do a few for them, too. Here’s one for Sierra:

https://www.gmc.com/gmc-life/trucks/pro-tips-for-a-day-trip-in-the-sierra-1500-pickup-truck

Teachers across the U.S. today deal with so many challenges. And yet, are still so dedicated and passionate when it comes to their job.

All the more reason GM asked us to help further boost awareness for their Educator Discount program (which gives teachers special pricing on GM vehicles) to openly thank them and give them the appreciation they deserve. In fact, that’s just what the program itself is designed to be – a gesture of gratitude.

We created a shareworthy video featuring amazing real teachers and their students that’s full of surprises, joy, and yes, plenty of thank you’s.

When Cadillac began to concept its new XT4 they gave their young, rockstar team of designers a simple brief: Go design the crossover you’d like to drive. That inspired us too: Go design a campaign you – and handraisers – would like to see.

Thing is, as a new ride, assets were far and few between – and we only had a CRM budget to create them. No worries, we called some friends (and called in some favors) and developed un-scripted, documentary, behind-the-scenes video content, featuring the amazing team that developed the XT4. And for a guy who’s done a ton of TV, I’d say the results arguably rival any broadcast-quality spot.

Handraisers received a series of emails, each with a short video teaser, which then leads them to cadillac.com to see the full films and get the full XT4 story. And of course, after watching the video they can begin building – and buying – their own XT4 right there on the site.

Plus, check out these other swell Cadillac Behind The Scenes cultivation campaigns, the Blackwing V Series Pit Crew podcast and Your EV Life, too.

Getting celebs next to your product is nothing new. Getting one to use your product in interesting ways while letting her to do her thing – in this case, tattoos – well, that can make for some mighty compelling content to help market a car equipped with a standard household plug. That’s Kat and her Von D Vibe. Together, their stories were shared via numerous mediums and marketing partners (online webisodes, TV, print,  Jimmy Kimmel, Maxim Hot 100 and more) to introduce a new 5-door whose predecessor was driven by old white ladies to a decidedly more diverse, and younger, male target. And yes, that lady in the video in the blue hot pants is none other than Lady Gaga – before she made it big.

So it started with having less than six weeks to get a new reveal video and print ready for the international bike show in Milan. That was quickly followed by officially launching the new Street around the world using the iconic brand's first-ever global tagline – United by Independents – penned by yours truly. 

As the COVID-19 Omicron variant surged during the end of 2021 and start of 2022, caregivers and hospitals across Ohio, and the nation, were being pushed to their breaking points. With unvaccinated hospitalizations surpassing record highs, it was clear a call for action was needed.

With so much mixed messaging surrounding COVID-19, and images of fatigued caregivers flooding the media, it was time for a different approach to encourage people in Ohio to get vaccinated.

As the #2 hospital in the world, Cleveland Clinic led the charge with 5 other local hospitals to amplify their message with a single full-page local newspaper print ad, anchored by one simple word: Help.

What started as a single word, on a single ad, in a single Sunday newspaper, expanded to a fully integrated campaign that reached billions of eyeballs around the world. (And became an Effie finalist).

Cars. Trucks. Motorcycles. So sooner or later, you had to figure the chance would come to pitch boats too, right? And it did indeed, with Sea Ray. We blew them away, and in turn blew everyone else pitching out of the water. Bad puns aside, the campaign we presented is the campaign they bought and produced, and to this day I'll still insist that the pitch rip-o we did (and seen here) is one of the best I've helped create.

password: cruzcreative

How many seconds does it take to sell you on the all-new Cadillac XT6? Only 6, of course. With our busy “active parent” audience, we knew that time is a luxury. So we served up :06 videos (XT6. 6 seconds. Get it?) in expertly crafted emails, with an accompanying landing page and social push, that helped introduce this new 7-seater SUV to a group that wants the space, the luxury and the versatility. But it was about more than delivering information — we made learning about a new SUV feel like peeking into a life well lived by focusing on human moments with a cast who could be anyone’s crew.

Beers. BBQ. Back stage passes. Oh, and selling bikes, lots and lots of bikes. That's what it's all about when you get together with Harley and Bob, aka Kid Rock. (Oh, and to be clear, this was way before things got so polarizing political with him.)

Not a question typically posed with good things — until now. Because the new My GM Rewards Card helps you earn points with everything you buy on the card so you save big on a new GM vehicle. So everything ends up smelling like a new ride. Even those sweaty socks. It’s a new kind of appreciation.

It only took a few months (weeks?) for COVID and WFHing to have us all coping with a case of cabin fever.

Well, not all of us.

Folks with a new(er) Chevy vehicle and its swell available Wi-Fi could always feel better knowing working remote didn’t just mean at the dining room table thanks to this DM, OOH and print series.

Don't worry, no Hasselhoff here. But after 112 iconic years, we pulled off the first TV spot ever shot for Harley during the middle of the night. We did it under a huge summer Super Moon, but figured why stop there, so we got a new cover of a relatively well-known track from a little band from Liverpool custom created to boot. Oh, and then it became the highest testing spot in H-D history, too. You just got to love when a plan comes together.

Even the best in class have their strategic and business challenges. So when world-class healthcare leader Cleveland Clinic gave me the chance to pitch a local TV campaign (even if at the time I was really one of the only ones who had ever done TV at VSA), I was all in. And so I led a small but mighty team to the win, and against the likes of the Martin Agency (who's pretty good at TV) no less. Check out the case study video and then just a few of the 20-something spots we've done over the last four years for Cleveland Clinic. The first launched the campaign on the Super Bowl locally in Cleveland, and the last is the most recent evolution to include their new messaging of "access, anytime, anywhere." That's proof of the campaign's staying power, and even better, their key metrics of approachability, accessibility and same-day appointments awareness are all way UP – with over 2 million same-day appointments since the launch. Oh, our well-respected CMO client called the "Power of Today" the most rewarding and successful campaign of his 20-plus-year career, while the national Health Advisory Board told their CEO Dr. Cosgrove that Cleveland clinic has the best brand in healthcare.

My very last H-D brief right before I left VSA asked us to find an emotional way to remind people that riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is truly the best way to build or enrich your legacy. And that's a truth – a brand truth, a product truth, and a cultural truth – that transcends generations, and hits home for both current and new riders alike.

That brought us to this simple, yet very powerful and inspiring thought: You influence the future days of others by the way you live your very own today.

And we pushed ourselves to create work that was as breakthrough and iconic as the great Harley work from the '90s. We also pushed us to consider our answer for the very same question we posed to our riders: What will you leave ahead?

Wasn't all that long ago (even with this campaign being a few years old), you’d get a year and $100 million to launch your brand’s next big thing, and do it with some big TV spots and lots of glossy print. Not anymore. So if you’ve got under $30 million to get the most powerful car under $30 grand out there, you’d better do it in a hurry and in some big ways to at least make it feel big. This is how the Pontiac G8 goes to 0 to its first 60 days. 

Personal faves: Spy Hunter because it was so well received by both the car and gaming/pop culture communities and the ever-so-snarky 8 vs 5.

And the last video is a collection of just about everything we did in those first two months.

Only a few weeks before GM came out and publicly struck the final fatal blow that killed the brand, we were busy hustling and pitching a new campaign to help bring new life to Pontiac. It was sold in too – until they were no longer sold on saving the brand.

Taking a brand that had become known for plastic cladding and mostly faux performance (as well as the one that created the modern-day Gremlin called the Aztek) and making it into a legit player is no small task. Fortunately, Pontiac's design, performance and advertising got a serious overhaul. Little did we all know (at least those of us at the agency) the brand would get whacked just a few years later.

For my first Cadillac spot, I got to work with Digital Domain and it ran in the Super Bowl post game. Which was great, but not quite super. So for my second, I worked with DGA Director of the Year Peter Thwaites and The Mill to create "Barrels," which ran as a :60 during the big game and was the centerpiece of the "Under 5" campaign.

Want to be a hero? Help a comic book-loving client get DC to write an original series with their product integral to the story. And that’s Rush City. Pontiac co-created a full-length comic book series with DC that even comic book purists (including our client) embraced. Diego Zhao is Rush, a NYC firefighter who now fights crime with his unique 6th sense, and his equally unique Pontiac Solstice GXP. 007 has his Aston Martin, Rush has “Sam,” complete with machine guns, subway rail attachments, and plenty of extra horsepower. And like any good comic book property, Rush had his own screenplay and video game in the works – until Pontiac's sad demise put the brakes on all that.

Sure, it was nice setting up a permanent residence for the Pontiac Garage on the Jimmy Kimmel Live stage so we could watch the hottest acts in music perform while being flanked by some big ol’ Pontiac logos. But I have to say,  I think our bigger score was working with Jimmy and his writers to bring back the “live ad” – some fun creative that just let Jimmy be Jimmy while selling our wares.

Sorry about the video quality, but honestly, doesn't seem to make them any less funny.

Okay, first, just to be clear, I had the chance to work with Steve before his "little" misstep during the Miss Universe pageant. And second, that chance was also a classic case of a client telling you they just did a deal with a celebrity endorser and THEN they ask you to help really figure out the how and why. 

Of course, Steve got paid pretty well, so the clients wanted to see their investment put to work where they also had a lot of their money invested – TV. So we used him in some new spots (the first video here) to help us introduce Strayer University new Success Coaches. And that worked pretty well.

But, I think where he was really at his best – and where Strayer got the most ROI – was during a new original event we created called the Success Summit. This all-day event was led by Steve and we brought in current and prospective Strayer students and Strayer alumni to gather and have an honest conversation about what it means to succeed in today's world, and how. 

The Success Summit was originally intended to just be an inspiring event and long-form online content. But it was so successful, we shared several key success principles through social media, and the clients became so entranced by the material it even made its way onto TV, too.

What you see here are a couple of those TV spots, a couple of the posts shared via both Strayer and Steve's social networks, and if you have 11 minutes to spare, and to maybe even be a little inspired, the long-form that was part of Strayer's Success Project site.

Videos password: cruzcreative

If there's one thing that's consistent throughout the for-profit education category it's this: It's not easy. It's not easy for the non-normative students (people who don't take the more "typical" route and go right to college after high school) to believe they can go back to school and succeed. And it's not easy for marketers to believe they can do good work, especially with all the scrutiny post-secondary education (and particularly the for-profit's) are feeling right now. Of course, we helped Strayer University and its students trust that we were ready to rise above it all and change lives for the better. And that's something mighty easy to rally around. 

But this Alibaba project had everything else. A tight deadline: Only 20 days to air date and clients needed a new TV spot. A huge stage: The spot would debut on ESPN during the first-ever regular-season college or pro basketball game ever played in China. Oh, and Alibaba was the presenting sponsor. Oh, and it was only days before Singles Day, a sort of national holiday that Alibaba created and is sort of like Black Friday here in the States. Only Black Friday did about $4.4 billion in sales in 2015 while Singles Day pulled in $14.3 billion. So, no pressure to get it right.

Lots of people have given you lots of reasons for why you can’t, shouldn’t, or won’t get a convertible. And yet they all pale in comparison to these two very good reasons as to why you should: The Pontiac Solstice and the Pontiac G6 Hardtop convertibles. Better bust out the SPF 45, because we are the Defenders of Convertible Freedom. 

It's a classic story: You get a call from a colleague that goes something like this..."So, we shot an interview with a CMO as part of a video series, and we don't know how to make it great...and we've burned through some of the budget already trying to make it great...and hey, you've done a lot of great video and know a lot of great production people,...could you help us make this into something great? So, we called in some huge favors with some of our production friends and did just that – made it great. Even if it is just a simple brand video.

Before it got whacked, Pontiac was the BMOC in college sports. And trust me, it wasn’t because they had gobs of money. We just spent what little we had a little smarter, and made BFF’s with ESPN, ABC, CBS and their talent to integrate Pontiac and its Game Changing Performance Program into their content, both on tv and online. Pontiac was also the first marketer to successfully use currently eligible NCAA athletes in their advertising. Ah, I’m being too modest, we actually helped the NCAA write the rules for this sort of stuff. It worked, too. Before getting cut, Pontiac was the most recognized brand in the NCAA and brand consideration was up over 30% for NCAA viewers versus non-NCAA viewers. All this despite the deeper pockets of our competition: Coke, Nike, AT&T and fellow GM brand giant Chevrolet.

This video is one of our annual hype videos that our clients loved to share/show off around the Ren Cen.

Knowing the FX network was going to blow their promotional wad by episode one, Courtney Cox was looking for a friend to help launch and maintain momentum for her new original series Dirt. She found one in Pontiac. Not only did her character Lucy drive a Pontiac Solstice GXP – and that played out naturally in several episodes – the show’s writers actually changed their story line so that a major plot twist led to a stalker putting disturbing photos in the trunk of her car (the promo spot include scenes from the show).

That triggered a promotion and website for viewers to search for clues and guess who had the dirt on Lucy for a chance to win her sweet ride. While the show got mixed reviews and decent ratings, the integration was so spot on FX and Cadillac ran a strikingly similar program in Damages the following season. You know what they say, imitation can be the sincerest form of flattery.