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Forget the metaphors. What is your brand actually doing to literally get on that list? How are you helping people and being a utility in a way where you’ve made the brand easily convenient at the place structured in time to make trial and habits easy to build?

Last Friday at PhillyChi’s DesignSlam, I was reminded of this all over again. For those who don’t know, DesignSlam is a geeky gathering of professionals across the interaction design spectrum. Split into teams, a faux-client presents business challenges, and the teams have 45 minutes to conceptualize and then pitch their solutions.

This year’s DesignSlam challenge was to help a family Supermarket chain gain traction against the giant regionals. One of the concepts the winning team presented was dynamic shopping lists based on frequent shopper club data. It’s an idea we explored at Emerge, along with Paul Marran (interactive creative director) and Scott Wagner (Interactive Art Director) for Kraft. To prove out and prototype the concept, we used the Kraft and Publix Game Day Greats campaign.

The microsite was initially just a way for people to enter the ticket giveaway they found out about at the in-store promo (don’t get me started about why CPGs need to start sending out networked kiosks). But we wanted to deliver more than an ending, but a beginning to the second half of the cycle: coming back to the store to buy.

Adding recipes to every microsite is a staple of Kraft’s, and for good reason: they’re giving you new ideas on what to cook (which people are always looking for), and how to use the product. We all know there’s one more step to the process, though: making it onto the shopping list. So in this microsite, we created the way for Kraft and Publix to alleviate that tedium: automatically generating printable shopping lists based on user-selected recipes.

Since then, Kraft has rolled out the iPhone app that takes list-making to the next level, and been paid well by consumers for it. Without revealing metrics, I can say it was one of the most successful efforts they’ve had in microsites to date. Because we’re extending the usefulness all the way through the narrative of the target instead of serving up more BrandCandy for good-looking presentations in meetings, but doesn’t help the relationship.

What is the shopping list of your audience?

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What resulted is similar to this slide deck: a mix of Aristotle, Billy Collins, and Eisenstein; informing projects I’ve had the pleasure of working on, and other examples showcasing the relationships between people, brands and technology.

The trip was a lot of fun. With Craig Pladson as my Minneapolis sherpa, I got to meet a ton of wicked-sharp people. I was also introduced to a world where cheeseburgers and fried eggs live together in harmony.

Thanks so much to Christine Fruechte, Adam, and Craig for the opportunity and your hospitality. I’ve been told that a video of the presentation will be released soon. Which I’ll post here when it’s ready.

What do you think? Please, leave a comment and add your perspective…

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This campaign was driven by the "Cooler Coffee" concept, and delivered a rich, unconventional experience in two parts. The first part of the campaign was old-school refrigerators decorated by artists and planted around these cities. The fridges also drove people to the site, WhatsInTheCooler.com to sport a guess. A few weeks later, we launched thecoolercoffee.com, revealing the drink online and through tastings from vintage milk trucks located where the coolers were stationed.

Above is the site intro for the teaser, which quickly led users through recognition of the fridges, foreshadowed the milk trucks, and to launch one of the city-based microsite. Each site gave users the chance to try the fridge, post a guess, and send those guesses to friends.

On this campaign, I was responsible for strategy, ECD, Video editing, motion graphics, sound

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The initial client request for ServerSpeak was to consolidate the diaspora of Miller’s bartender educational videos into one spot online.

My solution was to consolidate them, but not in a site: in a platform.What resulted was ServerSpeak: a scalable video education, quiz, and prize platform. Each new user is assigned one of five “bar types.” They’re then delivered a custom Flex interface with videos, quizzes and prizes for retaining the video information.

Now, everyone wins. Only having to promote one URL, bartenders have an interaction more closely tailored to their own offline experiences. Miller no longer has to rebuild when it’s time to scale. Whether they want to make one additional site, or quiz level, or prize, or a thousand of each, the system is equipped with an administrative system to create or edit any part of the system.

What’s more, the metrics system allows Miller staff the ability to see how the sites and quizzes are performing. Adjustments can be made to really help bartenders learn more, instead of delivering an old-school repository of content blowing in the wind. Another facet of the system that was a lot of fun was the prizing. The challenge here was to create a prize that would be valuable as an incentive to bartenders, but did not have a particular dollar value.

To develop this strategy, I went back to the bar (figuratively) and realized that bartenders are naturally the center of their own social ecosystems. This resulted in virtual bartending trophies that appear on bartenders’ FaceBook pages, and notify all their friends that they’ve received the official commendation from Miller.

Another win for everyone. Miller’s strong brand equity is lent to bartenders via FaceBook, and promoted to an average of 115 friends for each bartender. Above are a few screen shots of the initial visual concepting of the user experience, wireframes, and the final designs for each segment.

My responsibilities for the project included strategy and executive creative direction.

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We used Flex to create a seamless environment for Miller to say, “Thanks” to Texas veterans, and promote Operation Homefront, an organization dedicated to supporting active and retired troops and their families.

More than merely helping people understand the mission of Operation Homefront, we achieved a level of interaction not previously seen in such cause marketing sites.

As you see above, we included video thank-yous from Kurt Busch, Miller, and Operation Homefront. Users can also choose which area of need they’d like Miller to donate to.

Once they’ve selected an area of need, we integrated Yahoo maps to show the “votes” cast by zipcode, and provided an easy link to donate personally.

It has been a huge success for everyone. Miller has been using it to show the promise of their cause marketing efforts.

My responsibilities included site strategy, ECD, video editing and formatting.

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Here’s the teaser movie I created for the gogo launch site.

Working from about two minutes of footage inventory, creating a “movie teaser’ type into that uses a variety of editing methods to create a different meaning. As with any site into movie, the greatest challenge was creating a narrative that adds meaning while engaging and fast enough visually to stop someone from clicking “skip.”

On this site, I was responsible for strategy, ECD, video editing, motion graphics, video formatting and implementation

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