I worked at McCann New York during the heyday of Priceless, the most successful campaign in the world at the time. Joyce King Thomas, who created it, gave me one of the biggest shots of my career: building McCann’s first digital creative group, starting with her most sacred brand.
The work we made together launched my career and taught me that mediums are secondary to ideas. I’ll always owe Joyce. She saw me clearly, made space for me in a sea of TV writers, and helped me become the creative I am today.
SCOPE: DIGITAL / FILM / SOCIAL / NON-TRADITIONAL / TELEVISION
Peyton Manning had been part of the Priceless campaign for years, but this was the first time we asked him to do something beyond television. I had him read an entire baby name book so we could drop fans’ names into personalized pep talks. We produced thousands of them, each one unique. Today you’d version it with AI, but at the time we relied on a junior editor named Varnoosh. He was the real MVP of this one.
The work drew more views than any television spot in the brand’s history and proved Priceless could live just as powerfully outside traditional media.
“Golf Obsessed”
This one bears a little explanation.
From a cross-platform tech perspective, it’s one of the most progressive things I’ve ever done.
Users found themselves watching a telethon for the “Golf Obsessed,” manned by a bunch of famous pro golfers, and Spaulding from Caddyshack.
They called an 800 number, punched in the five-digit access code scrolling across their screens, and were instantly greeted by one of five golfers.
The cool part was that everything happening on screen also happened simultaneously through the phone. It really felt like you were on the line with the golf legend you were watching.
The average person called nine times and spent over 36 minutes on the phone.
It’s over ten years old now, but it’s here because I’d still hold it up to anything entered in The One Show this year from a pure innovation perspective.
This was the first mobile app I ever made, and more than a decade later it's still my favorite.
It sounds rudimentary now, but the app let you leave geotagged notes anywhere in the world for other people to discover when they were in the area.
They were like love notes, but to the whole world.
It took a full five years after this launched for Google to create 3D maps, and 4-Square wasn't even a thing yet. Just saying.