A client’s best quote: It’s got to hit the heart before it hits the head.
  • JELLY BELLY
    Jelly Belly orange juice print ad
    Jelly Belly jalapeno print ad
    Jelly Belly margarita print ad

    IT’S OUR BABY, BABY.

    The Story
    In 2000, Tom started working at a Hal Riney spin-off that had about ten dot.com clients. This might explain why the agency went under subsequently. Anyway, these weren’t your average tech clients. This was super geeky, technical stuff. Aside from these dot.coms, the agency had one consumer brand, a company called Jelly Belly. Guess which client we all wanted to work on. (It didn’t hurt when the account executive would walk by daily, taking orders for flavors. Sour apple, please, perhaps with a Margarita chaser?)

    Jelly Belly is one of those remarkable success stories. Between a solid product and some guy named Reagan, the product had great awareness.

    What could we tell the world that they didn’t already know?

    The Work
    Jelly Beans, in general, are pretty yucky. Pretty on the outside, devoid of flavor inside. Jelly Belly beans, on the other hand, are incredibly flavorful. Was there a way to dramatize the fact that these remarkably tiny confections were supercharged with flavor—as close to their namesakes as you can get?

    There was. Ultimately, the company didn’t go with this campaign, which is too bad, because the true-to-life flavor is really at the heart of the brand, but that’s life in the big city.