PETER ESTERMANN

How do you create a corporate training experience that employees actually enjoy? Make it into a story, and make it about them. That’s what we did for Meta.

We merged their three training courses into one Netflix-style, episodic drama. The characters’ roles and conflicts were all specific to Meta. Plus, it was filmed inside Meta HQ and it was packed with “Meta references” about the company culture.

Within an hour of launching the videos, Meta’s internal Facebook groups exploded with rave reviews, memes, even fan fiction. And when some employees weren’t assigned the training, they asked to be assigned, just to be part of the conversation.

In the end, employees completed their training earlier, and with greater accuracy, than any other year.

Asset 1: AMT Trailer

Asset 2: WSJ coverage (full article here)

College students rarely fly, so they’re overlooked by most airline loyalty programs. But we realized something: the bookworms of today are the jet-setting business travelers of tomorrow.

To create loyalty with the highest performing students at the University of Washington, we came up with a new of kind of program that rewarded academic excellence with MVP status.

It created buzz in the airline industry, got 10% of the student body to enroll in Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, and did it all with a $0.00 media budget.

Meat substitutes were becoming all the rage, so we took that momentum and flipped the concept on its head.

In this how-to cooking series, we asked world-class chefs to “beef up” their favorite dishes.

The results weren’t just mouth-watering; they were eye-catching—scoring the brand its highest-ever engagement rates, views, and video completions. (Not to mention, an unplanned, unpaid shout-out from Bobby Flay.)

Best of all, it proved that beef is actually the best “meat substitute.”

Today, clients don’t just want an “advertising agency.” They want a business partner.

So when TGI Fridays asked us to modernize their brand, we didn’t just create new logos and campaigns. We reimagined their entire customer experience.

The Griffith Observatory in LA is a world-class space-exploration facility, open to the public.

It has no fees, no lines, and no restrictions to entry.

It also has no advertising.

We created this spec campaign to change that.

Amazon had just launched Amazon Advertising for books, a platform that allows self-published authors to promote their own work. There was just one problem: authors were terrified of of using it.  

To ease their advertising anxiety, we created a video onboarding series. It had simple yet engaging animation, intuitive infographics, and a conversational tone that made them feel like a friend was teaching them a new skill.

Emails can actually work—if they’re relevant, timely, and you talk to people like human beings. Here are just a couple of the successful emails we created for Alaska.

Loss Aversion. It’s a fancy term that means people suddenly care about stuff when they’re just about to lose it.

In this campaign, we reminded Alaska Airlines guests that if they didn’t join Mileage Plan, they’d be losing all the miles from their recent flight.

My best friend from high school is now a commercial director in Honolulu.

He never did pay me for writing these spots. But I pantsed him onstage at graduation, so I guess we’re even.

NFL Sunday is an all-day sport. And there are two strategies for tackling it: hit the bar, or stay at home.

To cover both ends of the field, we created a playbook. It showed fans two different ways to to win at gameday: drop by TGI Fridays for endless wings, or pick-up a party platter and have a homegame.