Sammy Glicker

The Life of Jack

Jack Box, of Jack in the Box, you know the guy from the antennas? Well, he’s the CEO of Jack in the Box.

But how much else do we really know about him? And what does an eccentric food genius do all day? Well I’ll show you. But first, I’ve just got one more sentence of set up.

In this year long slice-of-life campaign, we Truman Show’d Jack’s life and called it: The Life of Jack.

Embrace Type A

Director: Marc Forster

After a 20-year absence from the U.S. market, much of their younger audience had never even heard of Alfa Romeo.

So how do you get future Alfa fans to fall in love with an unfamiliar car in 30 seconds?

You make the ad about them.

They’re Type A. And so is Alfa Romeo.

We created a campaign that embraces the shared Type A traits between Alfa Romeos and their drivers: ambitious, competitive, confident, and driven. And we made sure every detail was done with purpose, and applied to both the driver and the vehicle.

To bring this to life, we hired actor, Alexander Skarsgård, who exudes the Type A personality to his core and took the campaign to a whole new level of focus and perfection.

The Type A insight resonated so truthfully with the brand, Alfa markets took it from a national to a global campaign.

It also became one of Alfa Romeo’s most successful campaigns ever earning a YOY sales increase of 50% for the Stelvio and 30% for the Giulia during a global pandemic.

PR-able OOH

In Netflix’s The Politician, Ryan Murphy takes a dig at the uber privileged.

And so did we.

In the show, Gwyneth Paltrow’s character freely admits she paid her sons’ way into college, as if it was normal. And looking back, I guess it was, to an extent. And then to our luck, the show premiered shortly after the college admissions scandals.

So when (almost) everyone was going back to school, Netflix placed billboards around campuses here, and around major universities across the US, relating The Politician to their admissions processes. And of course the twins’ sweaters match each school’s colors.

Not only did students and onlookers get it, they freaking loved it.

Built to Amaze

Researching cars often means listening to someone drone on about specs or watching boring demos. But Toyota's features are so advanced, they seem to work like magic, which is more than worth hearing about.

So we made the research phase short, sweet and entertaining with (mostly) in-camera magic. We created over 40 unique, feature-focused ads for 10+ vehicles, each spot with a different camera/magic trick or two to keep them interesting. They ran as preroll and on broadcast, but are also hosted online so fans could watch them over and over again until they figured out how they were made.

Webbys Honoree

March 2017 - Best Use of Video or Moving Image.

Season 16 Promo Campaign, E!

The Kardashians are known for being business, make up, and fashion moguls. They’re also models and moms and media superstars. But behind their famously glamorous lifestyles, they’re also a normal, close-knit family. And the only place you can see them together as a family is on E! (Especially if you want the real gossip.)

In this campaign, we aimed to show that Beneath the Glitter, Family is Gold.

The TV spot/social video was fabulous, the OOH literally sparkled, and the countless other assets generated were flawless.

And the cherry on top? Ellen DeGeneres spoofed the spot! Christmas came very early this year.

We made 100,000 spots about the Toyota RAV4

This is a small sample of our mobile-friendly Facebook campaign that took targeting to the next level for the new Toyota RAV4 Hybrid starring actor James Marsden.

We wrote the scripts as first, second and third cuts that would be mixed and matched like pictures on a slot machine to make 100,000 total spots that were programmatically served according to a person’s interests, likes and searches on Facebook. That means, a person who likes running and fantasy sports would get a different video (that references those specific interests) than than someone who likes cooking and martial arts.

And yes, that math is correct.

And yes, the episode numbers at the beginning are their real versioning numbers.

It also got a pretty dope shoutout from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg a few times.

The One Show - October 2016 - Innovation in Social Media

Ellen DeGeneres's Stand Up Special

To make multi-multi-millionaire and famous-person Ellen DeGeneres look “relatable” to launch her upcoming Netflix comedy special, “Relatable,” we asked ourselves, “what’s a normal thing we all do?”

The answer was simple: hire 10 skywriting planes to ask a relatable question to your wife, duh.

So we did. And here’s what we wrote:

PORTIA. WHAT’S OUR NETFLIX PASSWORD? - ELLEN

NEVERMIND. I FOUND IT.*

#RELATABLE NOW STREAMING ON NETFLIX

The planes made three laps around LA, hitting 10 spots and covering 193 sq. miles, reaching an estimated 13,571,760 impressions, not including the post from Ellen’s account, or the views from potentially millions of Angelenos and tourists.

If this isn’t relatable, I don’t know what is.

Win or Cry Trying

The Toyota Hall of Fame is most prestigious entity in all of Fantasy Football, which means everything we create for it must be just as epic. 

Good thing we became the first major brand to sync the Oculus with Leap Motion Technology creating a completely immersive experience. It allows people to seamlessly interact with the environment using real world gestures such as picking up a hammer and swinging it, just like you commonly do in real life.

Now Hall hopefuls can attempt to carve the ultimate symbol of Hall of Fame success, a perfect bronze bust, intuitively, with their bare hands.

Nerdy stuff:

Even in the heart of Silicon Valley, few consumers had the opportunity to put on a VR headset first-hand, until this experience. Fantasy Football wins again!

We used it to wow fans with the spectacle of our virtual Hall of Fantasy Football, then went further with an interactive game to show just what it takes to be “Hall of Famous.”

We embedded Oculus Rift headsets with Leap Motion VR, allowing anyone to reach into virtual reality with their bare hands.

Leap Motion uses infrared sensors to track user's hands and fingers on the fly, which meant we could challenge users to create their very own bronze Hall of Fame busts, just like the real fantasy players who have been inducted before them, by picking up a smorgasbord of virtual hammers and tools to start swinging away.

Participants quickly found out whether or not they had a sculptor's magic touch while the crowd watched on linked monitor displays.

Hall or Nothing

The Toyota Hall of Fame is a digital representation of the physical embodiment of the cultural milestone that is the Fantasy football. Each year, five of the greatest Fantasy football players who have ever Fantasy footballed are inducted into the Hall. Inspired by our own creation, we wanted to go as hardcore as the fans do. Thus it was decided, “This year, it’s Hall or Nothing.”

We created a digital campaign with hundreds of dynamic banners, motivational pre-roll, and a responsive website that convinced countless Yahoo Fantasy players to nominate themselves into “The Hall."

But we didn’t stop there. We updated our brick and mortar Hall of Fame (installation) at the 49er stadium by adding a Hall of Fame Predictor that “accurately” predicts your Fantasy future by reading your palm, as well as a Kinect game that lets you throw a Fantasy football at on-screen targets. We even let you keep the footballs. 

We made 12 preroll videos to encourage Yahoo Fantasy football players to nominate themselves, vote and view the winners. Here are a few. Check them out or not, I don't give a mercy.

We even rebranded the most important destination on the Internet, its website.

And this was all during pre-season.

AMPAS Brand Book

Rebranding AMPAS’s voice and refining its POV was is one of the highest honors this storytelling lover has had.

And not only did this 67-page, limited-edition book define and celebrate the Academy’s brand vision, it served to introduce Academy members to the new branding while inspiring them on their never ending quest for excellence. Which means, my team and I would help to inspire Academy members. Crazy.

The book embraces and reflects the Academy’s high standards, love of film, and appreciation of imagination through exploring What We Believe, What We Do, Who We Are, How We Speak, Why We're Here and Where We're Going. 

Overall, it reminds us all why storytelling has always been and will always be important to humankind.

Also Tom Hanks has one in his house, which is pretty cool. 

New Yorker Thrillustrations

As a part of the new 2015 TLX launch, Acura wanted to deliver a unique thrill to consumers, wherever and they were. Fortunately, we knew where they were: the New Yorker’s annual New Yorker Fest.

Acura is a longtime sponsor of NYF which presented a unique, never been done before opportunity: to make real, bonafide New Yorker cartoons. We concepted the art and copy while the talented New Yorker cartoonist, Christopher Weyant, illustrated them.

They were displayed at NYF and posted to Acura’s Facebook page, receiving tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of shares – this is a lot for a brand with less than a million followers. People loved it so much, we hosted a caption contest judged by New Yorker editors.

This simple and fun idea took a wild ride of its own, illustrating our point–It's That Kind of Thrill.