Pioneer is one of agriculture’s most iconic brands with a deep nearly 100-year history. But that wonderful, rich history was also casting a long shadow over the brand. It was becoming seen as a brand of the past, not the future. So we set out to modernize and reinvigorate the brand. As part of that charge, we reimagined what an ag website could be. We created an experience heavy in computer graphic imagery to take farmers behind-the-seeds to learn about Pioneer’s game-changing R&D and that they are indeed a brand of the future.

The resulting site, dubbed, “Corn Revolutionized,” not only earned acclaim and attention with the younger farmer audience, but outside the ag world, as well. It claimed significant wins with a Communications Art Interactive award, FWA Site of the Month, and Awwwards Site of the Year.

Experience the site in action.

Introducing the world’s first Snapchat-integrated beer can.

Mobcraft Brewing, known for their unique crowd-sourced beers, came to us with the challenge of making their everyday lager as unique as all their other brews. The result was a co-branded effort between them and Mondo Lucha, a well-known Mexican wrestling show in the Midwest. We aptly named it Mondo Lucha Lager, and then turned our attention to creating a design concept that would be as compelling as the name. The final concept featured six unique, eye-catching designs, each paying tribute to a different Lucha libre wrestler. We then integrated an on-can QR code linked to a Snapchat lens so fans could literally wear their favorite wrestler’s signature mask. It was a world’s first.

We launched the lager at Milwaukee’s Weird Fest and brought out the wrestlers to promote it. Within a week of the launch, Mobcraft had completely sold out and had to brew an unheard-of second run. We turned what would have been a basic lager into a cult classic.

In launching the new 911, the storied icon of the Porsche brand, we couldn't just talk about how completely ground-breaking the car was. That would have done a disservice to the total reinvention the car went through. We needed to, in someway, demonstrate it. So we looked to bring this ground-breaking spirit into the places where we knew the people we wanted to talk to would be. Out of this approach, we broke ground in two ways - with the world's first hologram print ad and an innovative magazine ad that utilized LED lighting.

The results were immediate. Within the first week of the work appearing in Fast Company, it received press coverage in nearly 100 magazines and websites from around the world, across the tech, automotive, lifestyle and advertising sectors. In addition, it tallied more than 8.6 million impressions on Twitter.

In just a five-year period, we transformed Audi from a second tier player into the fastest growing luxury car brand in America. Consideration, Awareness and Brand Health numbers reached all-time highs. Most importantly, the success of our efforts was seen on the dealer lot. Vehicle sales jumped nearly 100% from 78,000 cars to 140,000 in that same period. And as a nice bonus, the creative work we did won its fair share of awards. 

Over the last decade, marketing campaigns and initiatives have played a pivotal role in dropping the national teen birth rate to record lows. But across the country, there are pockets of teens living a different story – especially African-American teens in urban neighborhoods within cities like Milwaukee. There, the teen birth rate is more than three times the national average, and STIs are making a troubling comeback.

The problem for them isn’t that they’re not getting the message. It’s that they aren’t buying it. They see any message as the establishment telling them what to do.

So what do you do when no message is working? You reinvent the product instead.

Introducing Naughty Bags, an entirely new brand of condoms designed to give them a condom they can relate to. One that’s not clinical, boring and serious. One that, developed with these teens' input, can speak to them on their terms so they’ll actually want to use it.

Then, we had to find ways to distribute the condoms on their terms, too. So we left the old channels behind and instead created branded dispensers located in places where they hang out. Like neighborhood barbershops. And for those teens looking for more discretion, we created disguised dispensers, in the form of "Birds and Bees" newspaper boxes.  

Grocery stores are notoriously price-driven in their marketing approach, especially around key holiday shopping windows. But with Pick 'n Save, we took a different approach. No prices, no mention of huge savings. Instead of pulling at the purse strings, we pulled at those involving the heart. This work demonstrates how food serves as the centerpiece to holiday gatherings and brings families together. And it got us to wondering. If the quickest way to someone’s heart is through their stomach, then maybe the quickest way to their stomachs is through their heart?

Our client had a radically bold vision: She wanted to help address food insecurity for inner-city kids by creating a snack bar that integrated giving into sales. She knew how to make one with unmatched flavor and texture, but she had no name, no package and no marketing plan.

Together, we created a new brand from scratch, anchoring it in a story as sincere as its intentions. We developed an identity, words, imagery and code that brought together the humanity and love behind each and every bar. And then we launched it into the world with social promotion, pr, merchandise and a Shopify site.

To launch the new Porsche 718 Boxster and demonstrate what a total blast this car is to drive, we transcended the limitations of the printed page by turning a multi-page gatefold in the magazine into an Augmented Reality racing game on your phone. The winner who posted the fasted time won an all-expense paid trip to a special 718 Boxster driving event at the Porsche Experience Center in LA.

The Milwaukee Public Museum was struggling with a huge decline in attendance and a growing perception of being a stale museum. To make matters worse, their new exhibit featured one of the dullest, most played-out topics possible: dinosaur fossils.

So, we took the exhibit’s dusty, old bones and literally brought them to life with a dinosaur invasion of the city. No one and no thing was safe. Destruction spread everywhere. And with it, we captured the city’s imagination. The campaign and exhibit were a huge success, tallying an impressive 42% net profit and becoming the museum’s most successful traveling exhibit in a decade.

When most people think of farming, they think of pretty red barns, pastoral fields and smiling, multigenerational families. But the real story behind the farming industry is something else entirely. Our client Corteva wanted to bring to light the complexities and challenges the American farmer faces and shift people’s mindsets. So we created The Growing Debate podcast to take listeners on a journey far beyond those pretty red barns and, in doing so, developed a more emotional connection with today’s farmers.

In today's digital age, the Milwaukee Public Library, like so many libraries, was quickly losing relevance. So, we set out to change its quiet, boring, old-fashioned reputation by doing the one unthinkable thing for a library – make some serious noise. 

We created a series of ongoing events branded, “Library Loud Days.” Events have included a standing-room-only hip-hop concert, featuring the nationally acclaimed group New Age Narcissism, and a massive haunted house. Through these events, we’ve started reshaping how the city thinks about their library and are reconnecting people to a place full of vibrancy and life.

Create conversation - that was our creative brief for the Super Bowl. The commercial itself would be just one small part of all the pieces needed to create that conversation. But before we could get people to start talking, we needed to get them involved in a deep, engaging way. 

So to unveil the commercial ahead of time, we put it in the hands of the social media world. Audi wouldn't unveil the commercial. People would. We turned to Facebook with a first-of-its-kind game where in order to unlock the commercial people had to assemble all 60 one-second clips of the spot within a set time limit. By the time some guy in Pennsylvania had finally unlocked the commercial, Audi had amassed the most Facebook engagement of any brand in the Super Bowl. 

And now with that engagement in place, the conversation began. The dialogue continued on Facebook and onto Twitter. The hashtag #solongvampires was the most used hashtag on Twitter in the week leading up to the game and during the game itself. And collectively, between Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Audi had the most social conversation of any brand in the history of the Super Bowl. The campaign generated over 500 million media impressions. And the spot was ranked as one of YouTube's top 10 most viewed commercials of that year. 

The old A4 had a lot of negative perceptions. For luxury car buyers, it was seen as a pretend-luxury sedan. It was labelled as slow, clumsy, and sparsely appointed on its interior. But the new A4 was a complete reinvention. It discarded every negative of the old version. So when we launched the new model, we had to send a strong message to the automotive world. This wasn't just better than what Audi had done before. This was better than all the other brands in the category. This was luxury, progressed. And that progress was a beautiful thing.

Our campaign catapulted the new A4 to record sales and the most successful car launch in the brand's history. 

The people of Boston don't just get into The Boston Marathon. They embrace it with a cultish fervor. The town even declares it a holiday so everyone can take off work and enjoy the race. For this campaign, we tapped into the all-out passion and excitement that surrounds this historic race.

On a side note, we had no idea there would be so many approvals involved. Not only did we have to go through all the layers at adidas and with the Boston Athletic Association, but we even needed approval from some of the city councils of the towns the race runs through. 

Clear mobile internet had been in the market place for a couple of years. Yet, research showed that the majority of people still weren't sure who they were or what they did. Their brand was anything but clear. So when they came to us, the objective was simple: help people understand what they do. To rebrand them as a simple, straight-forward solution for your mobile internet needs. And naturally,  using a shirtless business man seemed the most logical way to do it. 

We relaunched the iconic British brand in the U.S. by taking an approach that, like the brand itself, didn't follow convention.

The relaunch centered around a series of six documentary films, called Veer, that told the stories of six different people who in some way defied convention. We showed the film series online, in select theaters, and in pop-up viewings that we projected on the sides of city buildings (we dropped film canisters in these pop-up locations to announce the viewings). We also created movie posters, and a multi-page magazine insert that ran in pubs like Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair to create interest about the films.

The films featured a range of people, from a street artist and bridge inspector to a roadie and a fast-driving motorcycle courier. In addition to successfully re-establishing Dr. Martens in the U.S., the relaunch earned untold media impressions and one of the films was even awarded at Slam Dance, SXSW, and the Milan Film Festival. 

In just an 18-month period, we grew the brand from 850 restaurants to over 1,000. Brand health and advocacy numbers are at the highest they have been in the company's history. Sales are growing at an average 20% rate when the rest of the casual dining segment is in decline. And to top it off, the company is one of the darlings of Wall Street. To get there, we developed and extended multiple campaign platforms, each designed to speak to sports fans in different strategic ways. 

One key area to our success was to continue to build on the equity of our overtime campaign platform. Beyond our traditional broadcast work, we came up with a never-been-done-before creative/media idea. During March Madness for games that went into overtime, we created a series of unique, specific 15-second ads that appeared immediately following the end of regulation time. Then answered those with another 15-second ad right before returning to the game. 

This effort alone led to almost 17 million impressions, over 10,000 specific mentions of #Overtime on Twitter and was called out by sportscasters during the tournament and sports news celebrities like Dan Patrick. 

In the automotive world, words like "all-new" have become bankrupt. Seems every year a car brand comes out with an all-new version of an existing model and yet, there's very little that's new about it. However, that wasn't the case with the new Audi A8. It had actually been completely overhauled and filled with smart, new innovations. So in launching this latest incarnation of the Audi line-up, we set out to show people just that - that the A8 had every reason to be called new. 

In addition to a print campaign that showcased different key innovations about the car, we took to the digital landscape with rich, interactive first-of-its-kind creative to allow people to experience those innovations first hand. 

The challenge here was taking a complex, rather heady subject and making it relatable and easy to understand. Even for investment advisors and experts in the industry, this line of products from Russell Investments was a whole new concept. No one in the financial world had approached exchange traded funds in this way before. So naturally, we turned to clowns and body builders to launch this new product line.

Sometimes, honor and fortune falls in your lap. That was the case with this project. Legendary sports journalist and writer, Gregg Hoffmann, had been penning the stories of Wisconsin's Hall of Famers for the better part of two decades. But it had remained in his attic, stuffed away in boxes. Then through our clients at the Hall of Fame, we met. And over the following eight months we had the privilege of transforming his words into the book, Immortalized in Bronze. 

By the end of its first season, The Sopranos had already achieved cult status. To say it had a strong following of die-hard fans would be an understatement. In order to connect with them, we played off some of the more subtle elements of the show - ones they would get and appreciate. 

January 20, 2009. It was a key moment of progress in American history and politics. And in the spirit of that day, it was an ideal setting to introduce people to Audi's own story of progress. 

Our idea was for Audi to own the day. To be the unofficial sponsor of the President's Inauguration. To do that, we followed people through their day, talking to them at various touchpoints along the way - from first thing in the morning to the ceremony in the afternoon to the nighttime and the evening news. On all three major networks, we sponsored a limited commercial broadcast with content specifically created for the occasion. It was the first time ever a brand created a roadblock on the evening news. 

Audi was about to unveil the first incarnation of their electric supercar, the Etron, at the Frankfurt Auto Show in Germany. To create buzz and intrigue around the unveiling, we created a series of unbranded, homemade-looking videos showing how the full power of electricity was about to be unleashed. We seeded the videos virally through unpaid channels and car enthusiast sites. The videos took off. The social chatter around them was huge.

Then in last few days before the unveiling at the auto show, we released a final video showing a crazy lightning storm over the city of Frankfurt. The etron had arrived. 

The campaign culminated in a live-feed viewing of the unveiling. 

Coming off of the franchise’s worst-ever season, the Milwaukee Bucks fan base had not only lost its excitement, but was also shrinking in numbers.  We developed this campaign to get fans excited again and grow ticket sales.  The team ended up having the biggest single-season turnaround in NBA history, winning 41 games and making the playoffs (not saying our campaign was the reason, but you never know).

Professional athletes are so often put on a pedestal. Especially by sports brands. Which is why we believed so strongly that showing the more humble, human side of the athlete was an important differentiator for adidas. In this campaign, we showed that even for the most elite football athletes their success isn't all down to simple genetics. They have to work incredibly hard too, even if it means sacrificing time by the pool during their offseason. 

To continue leveraging PG&E's eco-conscious efforts, which we'd brought to life in the "Let's Green This City" campaign, we created a solar billboard. This billboard was a first-of-its-kind. Not only did it power the lighting on the billboard itself but the energy it created it returned to the grid of the city to help light up neighborhood streets and parks. It received a ton of PR and became a tangible symbol for the entire city to rally around. 

This little ad basically cost $0 but filled up the school's classes, got tons of attention in award shows and interestingly ended up on blogs in far-away places like Romania, India and Uzbekistan.