The Home Depot: Microsite & Email

The Goal: To increase attendance and registration of THD’s monthly “Do-It-Herself” clinics via the DIH clinics home page update, notification emails, and newsletters.

The January 2006 DIH Clinic emphasized decorating with light and interior lighting fixtures, and encouraged users to attend an educational workshop featuring these topics and their proper installation. The tone of the copy is intended to be empowering, encouraging, and supportive of THD’s “You Can Do It. We Can Help” mantra as embodied in the notification’s first sentence: “A woman’s place is in The Home Depot.”

Art Director: John Lee

JCPenney Back To School: Website

The Goal: To promote the important back-to-school season at JC Penney’s and develop a site that would appeal to teens and tweens while integrating with and extending the story of the television commercials.

The site focuses on a cast of interrelated characters and their relationships as a vehicle to present the JCP fashions. The most engaging portion of the site invites users to explore the characters’ rooms. While in a room, the user has the ability to dynamically control the viewing angle of the room with close to 180˚ of rotation, as well as to explore and click on various hotspots to see the featured fashions or explore other content areas of the site. Each character on the site has a profile page expressing their personality and sense of style. The closet features the fashions more directly and allows the user to purchase the outfit at JCP.com. The television spots are also viewable on the site, and feature “Watch Click Buy” functionality allowing the user to click on the commercial and purchase the outfit featured at that moment.

Art Directors: David Pfluger, Ryan Page

Gatorade Endurance: Rich Media Banner

The Goal: Help consumers locate stores where Gatorade Endurance Formula is sold as they were having difficulties locating the Gatorade Performance Series products in stores.

A rich media banner containing a store locater would allow users to search for stores that carried their product by entering their 5-digit zip code in the search field. The user would then be served up the nearest locations that carried the products as well as a map so that they might plan their running routes in respect to these locations.

The Gatorade Endurance Formula website was also updated for site-wide navigation to the store locater so that consumers could reach the locator from both on and off-site (banners, text links).

Art Director: Sean Kirkwood

Gatorade Promotion: Sweepstakes

The Goal: Lend support to multiple Gatorade retail promotions online, for the very first time; and thus, helping drive retail performance to increase product purchases while re-enforcing Gatorade’s equity with consumers by partnering with the NBA, NASCAR’s Daytona 500, and the feature film “Gracie”.

These promotional microsites supported the retail promotion online by allowing consumers to input their sweepstakes codes found inside of select Gatorade packaging. Each promotional sites’ copy was intended to educate consumers on the details of prizes while dramatizing and hyping the entire promotion.

NBA: 25 Grand Prize winners received an exclusive training session with NBA pros. The winner, guest and a parent or guardian would travel to a location to participate in a unique training session including: training sessions staffed by NBA professionals and coaches, and a unique NBA experience consisting of meeting with a team trainer to discuss hydration and nutrition as they relate to participating in sports, “Chalk Talk” with a coach, skills and drills with NBA player, an autograph session with players, and a personalized jersey from their favorite NBA team.

10,000 Secondary Prize winners received a Gatorade kids sidelines package including a Gatorade Sidelines bottle and towel, a Gatorade/NBA basketball and an exclusive poster.

Daytona: 5 Grand Prize winners received round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations, and ground transportation to the 50th running of the Daytona 500 including tickets to event as well as the Gatorade Duel at Daytona, the opportunity to be in Gatorade Victory Lane with the winner of the Gatorade Duel and the winner of the 50th Daytona 500, a mid-week, pre-race tour of hte pit and garage areas, a meet-and-greet session with one of the Gatorade-sponsored drivers, as well as co-branded gear.

Gracie: Winner received a free soccer training DVD featuring Gatorade and U.S. National Soccer team members: Mia Hamm, Landon Donovon, Abbey Wambach, and others; as well as a sneak peak at the feature film “Gracie”.

Art Director: Sean Kirkwood

Gatorade “Origins”: Rich Media Banner

The Goal: To create a rich media home page take-over banner for espn.com that extended the story of Gatorade’s “Origins” television commercials featuring the 1967 University of Florida Gators, and also expanded upon Gatorade’s history by including additional milestone events in Gatorade’s time line to include the K.C. Chiefs 1969 Super Bowl victory after a pre-season filled with dehydration issues, as well as Michael Jordan’s “flu game” in game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals.

The home page take-over would “rip away” the current espn.com’s site content to reveal what appeared to be older espn.com articles about athletes, fueled by Gatorade, overcoming the setbacks of dehydration during sporting events. Each story was written as if it was reporting the events of the games while also including a message about the role the “invisible opponent”, dehydration impacted the players performance and Gatorade’s contribution to reversing those disadvantages.

Art Director: Robin Barrow

Gatorade/SI For Kids Game: Rich Media Banner

The Goal: Create a series of engaging interactive banner for tweens that integrates and extends the story of Gatorade’s print and television commercials.

In order to extend the retro “instructional” theme online, the team tapped into the style and tonality of film strips and diagrams of the 1950’s and 1960’s, and thus creating a retro throw-back “Play Your Best” interactive video banner game hosted by three of the top Gatorade roster athletes: Dwyane Wade, Peyton Manning, and Christine Lilly. Partnering with sikids.com, users were encouraged to participate in a timed quiz regarding the order of “proper technique” for an aspect of each athlete’s sport. As the user participated in the quiz, they received encouraging remarks from from the athlete.

Art Directors: Sean Kirkwood & Blake Walles

Rolling Rock: Short Video (Pitch)

This somewhat amusing, and certainly sacrilegious digital short was created in an effort to assist the non-interactive arm of my advertising agency with a pitch for Rolling Rock. The theme of the pitch revolved around the concept of the mysterious “33″ that appears on the beer bottles, as well as the concept that behind every “33″ bottle, there’s a unique story that somehow connects back to the #33.

This video was shot completely on a whim with a rag-tag crew of younger siblings who agreed to brave the rain, potential incarceration for trespassing charges and the possibility of burning in hell for temporarily defacing a religious university’s property at the promise of free beer.

Written & Directed by: Kristen Schwanz

A.1. How-To Videos

The Goal: Enhance the user’s home steak experience through an entertaining presentation of tips and techniques from A.1. Steak Sauce and their partnership with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

These eight two-minute video features live in the “Steakhouse Expertise” section of the website and range from educating the user on steak preparation and techniques to sauce and wine pairing suggestions.

Art Direction by: Keith Henneman & eatdrink

Quaker Oats Snackbars: Website

The Goal: Create an informative, “community” website that encourages users to adopt a healthy, active lifestyle for the entire family with the help of Quaker Oats Snack Bars

This website redesign concentrates on helping families adopt a nutritious and active lifestyle “every day” with the help of the wholesome goodness of Quaker Oats Snack Bars. The site’s content contains a wide variety of articles, activity planners and suggestions, as well as full descriptions and nutritional information for the entire line of Quaker Oats Snack Bar products. The site also encourages users to submitting comments/ratings, recipes, family fun activity ideas, as well as participate in polls.

Art Director: Andy Gugel

A.1. Steak Sauce: Website

“From the Steak House, To Your House”

The Goal: Create an interactive steak house experience for user to learn tips and trademark secrets they can use at home.

Written in the classic A.1. “Yeah, It’s That Important” Everyman tone, the site features animated two-minute “How-To” videos that cover a variety of steak preparation and steakhouse insight, suggested recipes, product information for the entire line of steak sauces and marinades, and a steakhouse expertise section that allows the user to explore the secrets of the steakhouse and learn more about the cuts of beef commonly used in recipes. :15 edits of some of the “How-To” videos were also created as rich media “pre-roll” banners to encourage users to visit the site to learn more.

Art Director: Vic Sanchez