What’s the most relevant business and/or creative lesson you learned in 2023 and how will you apply it to 2024?
This year I put a lot of thought into how I can be a better manager – inspiring teams, ensuring that they feel the engagement and ownership that’s so key to the making of great work. I was lucky enough to recently attend TBWA’s Master Gunners training program in Madrid, with creative directors from around the world. I was struck by an idea we discussed that, as a CD, your job is mostly about relationships. How do people feel around you? Do they want to come toward you or away from you? I love the simplicity of that.
We have a new program at Chiat called Boat Building, where creative leaders choose a topic and lead a discussion on it with the creative department. I decided to lead a session on brand manifesto writing, having just come out of a weekend of work on a new business pitch. As I built the presentation, I realized I had more and more to say on the subject–more actionable tips, more watchouts. Even stuff I was unsure of, or felt was subjective, I left in, so we could talk about it. It was a great session – lively, fun. I could feel, in the room, this desire for practical, applicable knowledge.
If you’ve been in the trenches long enough as a creative, you have a lot of wisdom to share. I think we all need to be sharing it more. I’ll be looking for opportunities to do more of that in the new year.
Are you involved in virtual production or experimenting with AI, AR or other emerging disciplines or new technologies? Have you engaged in any real-world projects on these fronts? If so, relative to experimental and/or actual projects, briefly tell us about the work and what you’ve taken away from the experience. If the work is complete and you’d like to share a link to it, please include.
At ChiatDay, we’ve been building a lot of internal capabilities to work with AI, AR and other technologies. More and more, we’ve been building prototypes early on for our clients so that they can actually interact with the technology themselves, just as a consumer would. This helps us get out of decks and show the power of our ideas in real life. We’re currently prototyping in multiple ways for our clients, from designing AR filters to creating worlds in Unreal Engine to building AI integrations. All in-house.
What was the biggest challenge posed to you by a recent project? Or share insights to a recent project you deem notable. Briefly describe the project, why it was particularly noteworthy or what valuable lesson(s) you learned from it. If the work is complete and you’d like to share a link to it, please include.
IRL activations are so important to any campaign in terms of gaining traction with consumers and the media. Traditional work needs to be amazing, and that alone requires a ton of energy, but activations let you take your idea to the next level and surprise and delight. We worked with Snoop Dogg for Jack in the Box to promote Snoop’s Munchie Meal and made great content for TV and social, but it was a restaurant takeover in Inglewood – “Dogg in tha Box” – that became the centerpiece aspect of the campaign.
We soon realized that the activation could take many forms, each of them offering up different complicating factors. Would it last a week or a few days? Would there be a launch event? Would Snoop show up? We dug into it all. In the end, our north star became customer experience. What would result in the greatest number of people saying you gotta check this out, it’s amazing. That led to a host of smaller scale, exciting experiential ideas, like “Snoopifying” the whole menu, from Tiny Tacos (“Tiny Tiznacos”) to hot tea (“Nothing but a Tea Thang”), gilded, throne-like booths and partnering with a local low-rider group to have badass cars for fans to sit in and pose with. There was a DJ Drama-curated playlist, an exclusive “Snoopadelic” shake, free 90’s concert-style swag, a new local muralist each day, and more. It was a 3-day party, and when Inglewood showed up, so did the world (or so it felt).
