Awards: Cannes Shortlist
In 2018, we got wind that Cars.com’s biggest rival, Car Gurus, was planning some screen time during the Super Bowl. To steal the show we had to think quick, act fast and had virtually no budget (I still expensed meals, they told me not to but I did.)
A lot of Game Day ads have cars in them, and those cars can be found on Cars.com. So we played matchmaker and turned The Big Game into The Big Match. We identified every car in every Super Bowl ad, then hijacked these brands' Super Bowl ad tweets to promote those cars on Cars.com. Turning every Super Bowl ad into a Cars.com ad.
How does a 100 year old appliance brand showcase its design leadership? By creating a collection that gets fashion editors talking about a kitchen appliance.
Stats
1.4 billion impressions in 24 hours | 200% website traffic increase | #1 appliance brand at NYFW
Awards
2024 One Show Winner, Experiential Design / Live Event | 2024 ANA Winner, Experiential
Facebook Live Event
Named One of the Most Innovative Brand Uses of Facebook Live
To celebrate National Burger Day, McDonald’s produced a Facebook Live event of an artist "live painting" his favorite burger muses, the Big Mac and Quarter Pounder with Cheese.
Over the course of about an hour, our host and improv artist, Bevin, “painted” his muses, while waxing poetic about the Big Mac and Quarter Pounder with Cheese.
The overall format functioned like a telethon, with an interactive portion where Bevin responded to viewer comments and questions.
When the paintings were finished, they went up for auction on eBay, with 100% of the sale proceeds going to Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Credits:
ACDs: Kristen Shwanz, Donna Foster, and Kevin McGlone (Digital Technologist)
Copywriter: Jack Dess
Art Director: Cristina Hernandez
Here's a quick overview of the show!
We teased the live event across the major social media channels.
Here's the 51 minute livestream. Best grab some popcorn.
Problem: Moms don't know that Capri Sun is made without artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives.
Insight: Who captures mom's attention better than anyone else? Her kids.
Idea: Let's get kids to share the news. Capri Sun has no artificial stuff!
This was a pitch idea. The client loved the insight/idea so much it went straight into production.
Credits:
Jack Dess
Cristina Hernandez
When you find the perfect gifts for your loved ones, it feels like a total #win. With football and presents on everyone's mind, I came up with this pitch winning idea for Kohl's. "Win the Season" tested exceptionally well and went right into production.
Creative Director: Sue Kohm
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is unlike any other hotel on The Strip. That’s because around every corner and behind every door, you’ll find Just the Right Amount of Wrong. I had the pleasure of getting a bit naughty (tonally) to entice guests and push the needle for The Cosmopolitan.
Thanks to our always-on, #BestLife world, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. In fact, we want to share our mischief with our followers.
Below is some work that gives you an idea of the creative we came up with to help propel The Cosmopolitan into one of the most Instagrammed hotels in the world.
Credits:
Creative Lead + Creative Director: Manny Fernandez
Senior Copywriter: Jack Dess
Senior Designer: Damon Shuler
We didn’t meet at some backyard party.
Or in passing on the street.
Or through a friend’s sisters’ cousins’ coworker.
We met online.
And that’s fine.
It’s better, actually.
Because that way we already knew a lot about each other.
We already knew we were into the same things.
Whether it was readiness for a family.
Or an interest in something long distance.
Or just the fact that we were both down to takes things fast.
We knew we were on the same page.
Because we didn’t just meet randomly.
We met where sparks fly in all the right ways.
We met on Cars.com
When Cars.com partnered with us for a rebranding exercise, we decided to take a more romantic approach, and “We Met on Cars.com” was born.
Our skippable Youtube ads saw a 97% completion rate. Youtube now uses them as an example of how to keep the audience watching.
Below is some work I created for the McDonald’s brand. There’s some pretty neat stuff in here!
You’ll also see a collection of Happy Meal commercials I had the pleasure of working on. Which was a blast because I got to sit around and think up cartoons all day!!
Credit: Jack Dess, Cristina Hernandez
Note on Dad Hours. This spot was originally created by Frank Oles and Mike Porrit. We tweaked it to update for the new year.
Hallmark sales were down and their brand recognition was low. They were making award-winning ads, but these ads were selling the greeting card category, and not the Hallmark brand.
My partner and I devised a plot. "Let's tell Backstories." After all, every relationship has a back story. Every card purchase has a back story. Every card’s writing and art has a back story. Let’s share these emotional stories while also training people to simply look at the back of the card for the Hallmark logo. We used real people and real stories to connect with Hallmark’s core consumers.
Credit: Jack Danger Dess, Aj Hassan, Eric King, and Cristina Hernandez
“Love is outta-this-world cool. And the one thing we all have in common is how different our love is…”
That was the thought behind this Valentine’s Day spot.
These are all real people. In real relationships. With real backstories.
Every city has its quiet heroes. The men and women who experience Holiday joy from the steering wheel of a cop car, in the rushed halls of a hospital, or straddled to a fire truck. Let’s show these unsung heroes a little appreciation by reuniting them with the people they saved.
These are all real stories.
GameStop came to us, asking, “How can we create a better in-store experience?” So we rolled up our sleeves, plopped on the couch, and smashed our index finger into the power button on our Xbox OneS… Okay, what we really did was a bunch of quantitative and qualitative research among our target consumers and created a new GameStop store from the ground up with the user journey in mind. Then, we built an entire mock store out of cardboard in a kinda creepy basement.
I created an A.I. bot, named Tag (Short for Battle Tag), who would help users navigate the story and crack jokes along the way.
The result? GameStop 2.0 is currently in testing, and so far, both the employees and clientele love the experience.
This was a Crash The Super Bowl semifinalist spot I created during my senior year of college. It was a #baller experience and my first serious foray into TV commercials/social media content.
Credit: Jack Dess, Cristina Hernandez
In school, a designer and I thought about an awesome app to help kids with long-term treatment plans in hospitals. It utilizes what kids love most, Crayola, as a systematic tool to help measure their mood, inspire creativity, and help make their stay more fun.
We decided to call it Crayola Brighten.
It went on to win a Gold National Addy.
Credit: Jack Dess, Cristina Hernandez
An art director buddy of mine and I saw this awesome competition called “Champion a Cause Creative Challenge”. Each year, it's a different cause, and this time the cause was cyberbullying. The challenge was to raise awareness about cyberbullying.
…But here’s the catch. We had to use the media space available to us in an airport. That meant no billboards, no print ads, and no TV.
That made things a gazillion times more fun and this is was what we submitted to the competition.
We came in 2nd.
Credit: Jack Dess, Philip Lofstedt
This print ad is a perfect example of how I think. Sometimes a concept comes to me as sentence, other times it’s an image.
I can’t draw to save my life. But I’ll go out of my way to find the right people for the job.
Luckily, I found a great illustrator to help me out on this one.
