CLIENT: ADventures Marketing Group
PROJECT: Holiday Flash Cartoon Campaign

While working full-time for a fast-paced ad agency called ADventures, I developed the concept for a series of Flash-animated cartoons based on the company's logo, which featured a stick-man character. Each cartoon's theme centered on a different holiday or company event, and would be emailed to both current and potential clients to remind them that our agency was always there to service their creative needs. The cartoons paid homage to the old "Mr. Bill" cartoons, in which some sort of humorous disaster befalls the character in every installment. For each cartoon, I wrote the script, sketched storyboards, and did all the Flash animation. Eventually, the agency opted to rebrand to something a bit more sophisticated, so I created one final farewell cartoon that ends with the graphics transitioning into the company's new name and look. Each cartoon is only 10-15 seconds in length, so please take a look at the samples below.

CLIENT: ADventures Marketing Group
PROJECT: Movie Reel Mailer

Another fun project I developed for ADventures was a short promotional film created from archive black and white newsreel footage from the early 1940's. Prior to my employment, the agency had purchased the rights to the footage for a project years earlier, but had used very little of the extensive collection. I decided to put the footage to good use, and began putting together a script and storyboard concept based on specific clips I pulled from the library to adapt to our promotional message. Leading a small team of editors, I began dissecting the footage and assembling the clips using AfterEffects. I also created the retro "movie studio" logo featured at the beginning of the clip, which features the agency's name. With the aid of a sound engineer to record my voice, I provided the fast-talking voice of the narrator as well. Upon completion, the film was burnt onto DVDs, which were then placed in round tin containers that resembled movie reel cases. We adorned the outside of the tins with filmstrip graphics and production labels. Finally, we filled the inside of the containers around the DVD casing with popcorn. The packages were then shipped to 100 potential clients in the DC Metro area, many of whom helped generate considerable new revenue for the agency after enjoying the presentation I had developed on a shoestring budget.

CLIENT: ADventures Marketing Group
PROJECT: Flash-Based Promotional Clip

I developed this campaign to promote the agency's ability to get large returns for clients with an extremely small budget, based simply on our creativity and ingenuity. Like many creative agency environments, our office was filled with toys and trinkets for inspiring creative thought and fun. One of these items happened to be a small rubber dinosaur, so I developed a concept warning clients to not let the creativity behind their marketing campaigns "become extinct". Using video we shot of the dinosaur in-house, accompanied with Flash animation, we created an insanely low budget presentation that we sent to potential clients via email link. Done with tongue firmly in cheek, the presentation drew a lot of laughs, and new business.

CLIENT: ALL Student Loan
PROJECT: Mail, Email, & Outdoor Advertising

While working full-time for ALL Student Loan for over six years, I developed ad campaigns that directly generated over $80 million in student loan volume for the organization. Campaigns typically had three components; direct mail, email blast, and outdoor advertising. The organization purchased address and email lists for 10-20 thousand potential borrowers, to whom we targeted our postcard mailings and email campaigns. The budget for these campaigns was very low, so I was often forced to use existing stock imagery or create my own graphics from scratch when designing the components. Photo shoots were simply out of the question. In order to distinguish our mailings from common SPAM and junk mail, I had to make the designs standout with catchy headlines, humorous images, or eye-catching colors and visuals. Mailings were often sent out every 1-2 weeks, so they had to be designed quickly, then passed on as soon as possible to several levels of upper management for approval. The designs for the postcard mailings were typically done first, then the same look and concept was adapted into an email graphic with HTML text. Finally, some campaigns were taken a step further and adapted into outdoor advertising such as billboards, bus ads, and street kiosks located in and around college campuses throughout California.

CLIENT: WeezyTown T-Shirts & Merchandise
PROJECT: Online Ads & Guerilla Marketing

After opening my own online T-Shirt store called WeezyTown, I soon realized I needed to somehow drive customers to my site in order to make a profit. With little to no budget for marketing and advertising, I also knew I would need to get creative and put in a lot of "sweat equity" of my own in order to get things rolling. First, I figured out as many free options for advertising and building a buzz for my brand as possible. I registered my site as an online merchant with Google and all the major search engines. I also created a unique page for WeezyTown on Facebook, which enabled me to easily let my friends know about my products, then pass the word onto their friends that I didn't already have connections with. Then, as more and more traffic came through my site and I started making sales, I could finally afford some low-cost advertising. I created business cards, flyers, and stickers, and then began handing them out all over town. I put materials on wiper blades, handed out cards at sporting events, plastered stickers on bus stops, and posted flyers on bulletin boards of college hangouts; pretty much anywhere that would hit customers in my target demographic. As sales continued to grow, so did my marketing budget. Eventually I purchased print ads in local newspapers, created online banner ads, and bought Pay-Per-Click ads on Google and Facebook. The online advertising was especially successful after lots of careful keywording and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Although WeezyTown is by no means pulling enough revenue to afford me an early retirement, it has been a rewarding and educational experience turning a hobby into a legitimate source of income. With a lot of hard work, I am now able to share my designs with people who are willing to purchase them in over 20 nations worldwide and counting.