It’s tough to sum up almost four years of creative at a speedy-movin’ shop like Skip Studio. What follows is a Greatest Hits of some of my favourite executions I’ve been a part of, by no means exhaustive. We’re a small, nimble team, and four years of writing and directing creative has included TV, print, radio, OOH, web, social, digital, emails, in-app (product), stunts, push notifications, swag, and just about anything else you can think up.
1. Of course, the return of Jon Hamm is a huge standout. For years, those of us who’d joined the company after he’d been retired as spokesperson were calling for his return. Then a script I proactively wrote ended up being the push the company needed to make it actually happen.
2. Just before I started with the company, Skip released what’s now an award-winning TV spot introducing the world to Playoff Pants, the first item in what was to be a tongue-in-cheek line of “wearable technology.”
Then a couple years passed and we never did follow it up. Until the 2023-24 NHL season, when we introduced hockey fans to the Skip GameTime Tarp, a way to protect your home jersey while you’re watchin’ the game. If you’re lucky, maybe even with Leon Draisaitl of the Edmonton Oilers.
The campaign included a deadpan Vice-style fashion shoot featuring Leon, Team Canada’s Marie-Phillip Poulin, and professional models. That inspired a limited number of the actual garments to be sold through the app, which were snapped up almost instantly.
3. A whole whack of brand work I’ve written for OOH, digital, and social.
Skip has partnerships with every Canadian NHL team, except one: the Toronto Maple Leafs. Our competition beat us to the puck that time.
So. we needed a way to get to Leafs Nation, some kinda workaround.
We pitched Leafs star winger Mitch Marner on the idea of a virtual restaurant, Mitch’s Dishes, that would live exclusively on the Skip network for the duration of the team’s run in the playoffs.
Turns out he’s a notoriously picky eater. There’s our hook. And if we let him help choose the menu alongside our Chopped Canada award-winning chef, well, then, “if Mitch likes it, it’s gotta be great.”
Employing a series of 43 ghost kitchens across Ontario (from Timmins to Mitch’s hometown of London), we gave Leafs fans some fare they could truly call their own: Mitch’s signature Right Wings, Sammitches, Goalie Pulled Pork, The Mitchell Burger, The Zeus (named after his IG-famous dog), and Helmet Salads to name just a few.
Maybe the best surprise was a two-and-a-half-minute segment on TSN with Mitch and his teammates talkin’ Mitch’s Dishes that we surely would’ve paid for but didn’t.
And hey, we even took home Gold at the 2023 Sponsorship Marketing Awards. Good game indeed!
The arrival of Starbucks to the Skip network was a very big deal.
Although we were third in our category to launch delivery of the one of the world’s most celebrated coffee shops, we focused on the intersection of our two joyful brands finally coming together and the warmth of the moment when a courier hands over your cup of happy.
The result is a catchy, highly (re)watchable TV spot and campaign that extended to OOH, paid social, digital, in-app, and eCRM.
It’s funny to think of two-minute videos as longer-form storytelling but, these days, if you can hold someone’s attention that long, you’re doin’ pretty well.
I’m proud of these little indie restaurant spotlights as they didn’t turn out this great by luck. Starting with a rigorous curation of Skip’s 40,000+ partners in key cities, we interviewed several restaurant owners with places on the network and narrowed our selects down to the stories we found the most absorbing.
Then, after extensive pre-production and planning, we knew going into each shoot day exactly what the principal storyline was we needed to capture, the menu items we’d hero, and how to make each video in the series stylistically feel like a visit to the featured restaurant. Here’s a few of my faves. Enjoy!
Five9 is the Intelligent Cloud Contact Centre, a suite of software and tools that empower agents to work from anywhere and engage with customers through their preferred channel: voice, text, email, or social.
Our Reimagined meets Realized campaign extended to print, radio, social, web, personalized videos, and more. Oh, and then we put an agent on the side of a cliff in Wales to really bang home the point of working from anywhere.
The biggest and most successful campaign Jays Care Foundation has ever run celebrates its most remarkable, real-life young leaders as #UnstoppableKids.
I even had to step in as producer for the 3 most recent commercials, which expand upon the previous year’s hero spot to dive deeper into the impact of its programs on kids.
Three back-to-back-to-back shoot days, two directors, 25 kids and their chaperones, and one tired writer/producer.
The opportunity to write and craft a series of storytelling videos about Toyota introducing accessible go-karts to its young driver safety program, kartSTART, was a standout project for me.
This is the hero spot, which returned ad tracking numbers that were simply off the charts. Three times the creative efficacy scores and more than double the “authentically Toyota” markers.
We teamed with Sony to announce the arrival of the Xperia XA1 Ultra phone at Freedom Mobile and timed it with the theatrical release of Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Print, OOH and Cineplex showtime ads got everybody’s spidey senses tingling, and our web climbing experiential at Union Station even came with a visit from your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.
I had this idea after volunteering at Matthew House, a refugee home that has welcomed over 1,500 refugee claimants from 100 different nations over the past 20 years.
I wanted to develop a provocative mechanism to raise awareness and support for its Refugee Hearing Program, designed to help prepare refugee claimants for their day in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Working to the non-profit’s customary budget of zero dollars and nothin’ cents, I came up with a cost-effective DM piece that could stand out from the clutter of junk mail while giving us a platform to tell one of the many urgent, powerful stories of those Matthew House is helping to remain in Canada.
#heretostay
Because many of these people have fled terrible, even life-threatening circumstances back home, they are often so overcome with anxiety and emotion at the prospect of being turned down that they blow their opportunity to plead their case with adjudicators.
Matthew House greatly enhances their chances by staging mock hearings with volunteer lawyers and law students in advance of the real hearings, often in rooms decorated to look much like the one they will be in on the day.
And, really, who doesn’t like to get a postcard?
I didn’t mind the extensive “research” required to write for Ontario’s first craft brewery one bit.
On top of romance copy for at least 20 beers, here’s a few fun bar posters I wrote to celebrate the brewery’s 35th anniversary.
Writing for Harry felt like destiny given their flagship Toronto store can’t be 25 yards from the very spot a friend convinced me I should consider becoming a copywriter.
Okay, you might be thinking by now, “Sure, he’s created stuff for all these big brands, but a lot of it was while he was working at Skip.”
True, but I still have to stand up in front of these Goliaths and sell the work the same as I have at an agency. Plus, I have to answer to my own bosses and not allow our brand and attribution to get lost in the shuffle. In fact, I’d argue it calls for an even stronger ability to be persuasive while protecting the relationship, not to mention nerves of steel.
So here we are! First, with a fall campaign to remind Canadians their McDonald’s faves are key to surviving the post-summer hangover return to routine.
And then just a smattering of stuff I’ve worked on for McDonald’s while at Skip. McHappy?
