iNeedSun Winter Campaign

Preying on frigid victims of the winter's “Polar Vortex”, we launched St. Pete/Clearwater's iNeedSun campaign in 3 key feeder markets: New York, Chicago and Toronto. Taking over subways, trains, buses, busy downtowns and even coffee cups. We also employed teams of snow sculptors during the first blizzard of winter. They sculpted icons of winter in St. Pete — the sun, a dolphin and a palm tree. Each was accompanied by a custom snow stamp directing them to iNeedSun.com. All this served to remind them how amazing a sun-drenched beach escape would feel in the dead of winter.

The campaign, which was featured in the New York Times, helped lure a record setting 14+ million visitors for the year including some 5.5 million overnight guests. It also helped propel bed tax collections to new records as well, exploding 22% in the most important month of April.

Evel Knievel Exhibit Campaign

The Harley-Davidson Museum hosted an exhibit celebrating the iconic stuntman Evel Knievel's life and legend. It still ranks as one of the most successful temporary exhibits the museum has hosted. And here's another stat for you: Evel holds the Guinness Book of World Record for most bones broken in a lifetime at 433. Puts my three to shame.

It’s not widely known that in most markets McDonald’s supports local agriculture by purchasing produce from the area. Also not well known, my wife got to be the Grimace for a day.

We created a campaign to promote the St. Regis Residence Club which gave people an opportunity to be part of their fractional ownership program and enjoy all its privileges. After all, who wouldn't want to stay in the same suite Marilyn Monroe once called home. Or, if you have a thing for surrealist painters, Salvador Dali's room.

Strong Baby Campaign

The goal of the Strong Baby campaign: reverse the skyrocketing infant mortality rate.

The result of working with a total of nine babies in one day: confirmation that my wife and I made the right decision to stop at two of our own.

Riffing on the practice of pairing food and wine, we had some fun doing the same with Tsingtao — the number one beer in China. We played off of that last fact as well, creating a digital LED counter that increased along with the population count.

WineSpeak is an in-home wine tasting and education business. Great idea. Another great idea: asking to experience it ourselves as part of our “research”.

You walk a fine line when using humor in healthcare. As illustrated by an overwhelmingly positive response to these spots, we were able to pull it off. The first is for ProHealth Care's urgent care clinics and the second is for their free online health risk assessments.

Getting beyond the medical breakthroughs, the science and the skilled doctors, we chose to celebrate a powerful human quality: Courage. Courage of those personally confronted with cancer, but also those it affects.

Our integrated campaign extended the power of courage, taking the emotionally higher ground to change hearts and minds when presented with the decision for cancer care.

They say you should never work with babies or pets. Between this poster campaign for the National Barefoot Waterskiing Championships and the work I did for Strong Babies, I apparently haven't learned that lesson.

Dream Dance Restaurant Campaign

Dream Dance is one of the finest restaurants in Milwaukee. To make sure our food stylist was covered, the chef created 10 platings of each dish we photographed. While we didn’t need nearly that many, we made sure all that extra food didn't go to waste. Tastiest. Photoshoot. Ever.

Sometimes your ideas don't make the final cut. This is one of those. Four Winds brings Vegas-sized winnings to the midwest. Still think it should've made it.

In the field of healthcare, Chesapeake Regional was at the forefront of innovations such as ER bedside registration and newborn training classes. Sure, we could have been straight-forward in speaking to those points, but where would the fun be in that. Plus, it was a bit cathartic replaying those times every kid suffered through when going to a family party.

99 Awards Show Book

The local advertising awards show is known for being nuts. In keeping with the group's nod to Milwaukee’s working-class history, the medals are giant metal nuts in gold, silver and bronze. When asked to design the awards show book, we decided to play off that connection as well by featuring old metal tool shop cabinet drawers on the category splash pages.

World Cup Posters

This poster campaign was created to promote WSSP’s continuing coverage of the beautiful game. While they ultimately went with a friend and fellow AD's work, there's no shame in coming in second if you're proud of the work. Unless you're in the big game. Then it sucks.

Clients large and small. Budgets generous and meager. I've worked with them all. Here are just a few of the brands I've been lucky enough to work with throughout my career.