Brand & Cause Marketing

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Tide Loads Of Hope
  • Executive Producer
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  • Music Composer
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One of the all-time most successful cause marketing programs, Tide Loads of Hope was born in 2005 from the need to provide fresh laundry for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Drawing on hundreds of hours of amateur footage, we crafted TV spots and short films that brought the domestic program to life.
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Ford Warriors In Pink
  • Executive Producer
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  • Music Composer
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Flow Studios partnered on two campaigns and produced over 30 pieces for Ford Warriors in Pink, a vibrant clothing line that has raised more than $120M to help fight breast cancer. The Cause Marketing Forum honored the work with the Gold Halo Award for Best Video Campaign.
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Pantene Beautiful Lengths
  • Executive Producer
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  • Music Composer
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Before advancements in synthetic hair technology made manufactured wigs the best choice for cancer patients, Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths program facilitated thousand of real-hair donations to the American and Canadian Cancer Societies.
Poster frame for PetSmart video
Petsmart
  • Executive Producer
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  • Music Composer
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Some areas of the US have more dogs and puppies than they can handle. PetSmart’s Rescue Waggin’ transports these future-pets to shelters around the country who are eager for more adoptable pets. The Journey Home follows one puppy on an adventure to its forever family.

Remember when the only practical way for a business to reach an audience was with precisely-timed TV spots? Facebook didn’t introduce in-line video until 2007, and it was later still before so-called brand videos became ubiquitous. These longer-form, unscripted videos were far from a safe bet.

Fresh off a pro-bono assignment to demonstrate how NGOs were using corporate donations, my former partner Matt Naylor and I knocked on a few doors with our notion that a “Facebook video” could be a fresh face in the market. Procter & Gamble was willing to test the theory, hiring us to make a short documentary about the Downy Touch of Comfort program. With a now-unthinkable run time of seven minutes, the video was a hit: their Facebook community grew, and so did sales.

Realizing the material we’d captured in a single shoot day could be re-cut and repurposed indefinitely, Downy’s brand manager commissioned excerpts, outtakes, and most importantly, a 30sec TV edit. Delivering a broadcast spot was a big win for us and for DeVries (the PR agency who helped originally sell P&G on the project), but Downy’s ad agency was aghast: a simple, inexpensive repurposing of the documentary’s footage - made by a start-up working out of a garage - supplanted their scripted six-figure commercial.

P&G Chief Marketing Officer Mark Pritchard presented the case study at the 2010 Cannes Lions, affirming our fundamental value proposition: authentic, believable storytelling is the most powerful way to build brand affinity and loyalty.