Not in the trail-mix-eating no-deodorant-wearing kind of way. For 90% of my professional career, I've been creating billboards, and I'm pretty damn good at it. But no matter the medium, I'm driven to make cool shit for cool people.
When the Sonic brief landed on my desk, I imagined the roads dotted with these giant colorful billboards. The slush texture and 3D straw beckoned people to dive in (drive in?) for a cool respite from the heat of a Charleston summer.
This campaign won Best Billboard Campaign at the 2015 OBIE Awards.
McDonald’s is one of the largest corpor… oh, you’ve heard of them. Nevermind then.
No budget. No problem. Sometimes my smallest clients get my best ideas.
This WTA tournament is a huge event in Charleston. It would be silly to make this feel like anything less than a bunch of bad ass women beating the snot out of each other on the tennis court.
Bojangle’s is a regional fast food restaurant specializing in fried chicken, biscuits, and other Southern delicacies. In Charleston, the perception of the brand was… let’s just say, not good. When a new franchise owner took over the local stores, his first mission was to improve the staff and operations. His second mission was to change public perception, and that’s where I came in. We decided to refocus the conversation about Bojangle’s back to one of their core values — good ol’ made-from-scratch cooking. Sales exploded almost overnight, and Bojangle’s in Charleston has enjoyed tremendous and consistent growth for over three years.
In the out-of-home biz, we like to say we make brands famous. To prove the point, we launched a fake prescription drug that claims to make you popular. Billboards went up across the entire Adams Outdoor footprint and quickly went viral. The “reveal” happened at the website where viewers found an error message explaining that there is no magic pill to make you famous. But outdoor can.
Adams Outdoor rebranded in 2011. Because I was one of the few art directors that has enough knowledge of HTML and CSS to be dangerous, I was brought in to help speak “web” with our developers. The design, flow, functionality, and organization are 95% mine.
Visit AdamsOutdoor.com
Grocery store shelves are a warzone. I have a soft spot for little brands trying to battle the behemoths. They don’t usually have much money, so I get paid in eggs, sauces, bacon, and fresh seasonal veggies.
Out-of-home is easy to do but hard to do well. That’s why so many local billboards just plain suck. I am remedying that by writing a blog that showcases the best out-of-home ads not just from big brands but also the very tiny local businesses.
One of the first articles I wrote was The 10 Commandments of Outdoor Advertising. The site’s traffic has grown enough that I’m now spreading the gospel of out-of-home at state outdoor conventions and ad club meetings across the country. Tell your local AAF, ADC, AIGA, OAA, 4H, or GDBVD that I’ll come talk for cheap.
Visit TheHangline.com