How do you get employees of a financial firm, hit by the recession, to embrace the firm’s marketing?

It’s no small feat.

For iShares, leaders in the ETF space, we put together an internal campaign that mixed equal parts humor, inspiration and fun—along with some twists.

Posters and clings reminded everyone that the company tagline, Keep Evolving, was a means to a larger end; a 22-page graphic novel was perhaps the world’s first brand guidelines book to be read cover to cover; finally, we created a contest, asking people to come up with ways they could Keep Evolving.

Participation was so remarkable, upwards of 90%, that we decided to capture it in a video.
The video subsequently aired in iShares offices worldwide, to ovations.

SOCIAL MEDIA. USE YOUR POWERS FOR GOOD.
There’s a blog born every half-second, according to CNET. (Nearly as often as School of Thought tweets.)

So when iShares asked us to help develop a social media campaign, our first question was: does the world really need another blog, Twitter and Facebook page?

In this case, yes—because tens of thousands of investors look to iShares for financial insights.

Sixty days later, iShares had a social marketing strategy and campaign up and running. Within six months, a company that, prior to our involvement, had no blog, was voted as the top blog in the financial services category*.

Proof that, when clients and agencies work as a team, great things can happen quickly.

*Kasina, Top 5 Social Media Leaders in Asset Management, May 2011.

Some people decide to adopt a new pet. We went a step further recently and decided to adopt a whole menagerie. One new pro-bono client is Animal Care and Control, the San Francisco city agency that rescues and finds homes for a veritable Noah’s Ark of animals. Cats, dogs, birds, rats, snakes, bears (yep). . . every creature out there, including, of course, chinchillas, like Tobin.

The ACC faces a big challenge in getting recog- nition for the amazing work they do. By contrast, everyone knows of the SPCA. Yet few people know that the SPCA only accepts dogs and cats, and only in limited numbers. The ACC is the only organization in San Francisco that accepts every

kind of animal, with no limit to the numbers they accept. Our mission is to get the word out—drive awareness of the incredible work the ACC does. And drive donations at much higher levels, as well.

While we’re offering our services for free, a client could hardly be more rewarding. Or dangerous, as the ACC clients usually arrive at meetings with at least one impossibly adorable, eager-to-be-adopted creature in tow.

So the next time you’re visiting, don’t be surprised if you see an office python, parrot, kitten, and puppy.

Just not all together.

Our art director and copywriter created this TV spot for Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP) while at a previous agency. CHOMP is an integral part of Monterey – generations of residents have been born there, and community-focused programs make it a caring and open part of this small Northern California town. But this community landmark is also

the region’s most state-of-the-art facility. These two seemingly opposite traits were woven together to create a storyline that felt unique to the CHOMP brand. This simple TV spot, created on a small budget and an even smaller timeline, set the tone for a completely new brand positioning that is currently being rolled out across all departments.

Palo Alto start-up WePay, PayPal’s main competitor, is the newest addition to our client roster. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be teamed up with these high-energy and like-minded folks. Thinking outside the box is at the core of both of our companies, so we’ve been able to quickly build a successful partnership.

Our first assignment? A billboard that needed to make a big statement – and it needed to be finished in less than a week. Most agencies would have said that it couldn’t be done. Luckily, we aren’t most agencies. Our team was able to complete this thoughtful billboard on an extremely tight turn around. It will soon be featured on a major highway in the Bay Area.

VeriSign wanted to do a testimonial.  Of course, the challenge is, there are lots of companies out there, each with customer success stories that they’re proud of.   The issue isn’t the story. 

The issue is, getting anyone to read the story. 

This was our task at hand. By creating a distinctive portrait of the customers, we were able to draw readers in—and set VeriSign apart.

iShares’ tag line is Keep Evolving. For their audience, financial planners and investors, this is a call to use ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) as a way to keep moving forward in the investment world.

But what about employees? How can employees be inspired to feel that the company’s positioning is something they can get behind, and live in their day-to-day work?

The answer was an internal campaign including a playful, engaging brand book, large ads displayed throughout the office, and a contest, fill in this blank: Keep ___________. Keep evolving. The winner of the contest was awarded a Kindle. You’d have thought the prize was a yacht—the employees were incredibly passionate and creative in their pursuit of the prize.

One final note on the sticker contest. Originally, the video was intended for a one-time showing. After that showing, a few iShares employees were moved to the point of requesting copies of the video for themselves.

We always try and make a mark with our work, but it doesn’t get much better than that.

The Story
Our agency began when we landed the account of Milliman, a $700+ million dollar actuarial consulting firm which few people have heard of. (Hence, the need for us). Banks, however, number among their clients, and as far back as 2003, the Milliman consultants began to see signs of trouble in the housing market.


A dangerous, statistically unlikely event—the tail on the curve, in actuarial speak—posed grave dangers, which the Milliman team relayed.

About two years ago, we filmed the consultants who were ahead of the curve, and put together this still-topical story.

The Story
When you have meetings with Milliman you can always be sure of one thing: you’re not the smartest person in the room. The challenge becomes explaining their highly complex work in a way that the rest of the world can understand.


For one division of the company, we produced this animated video as a way to distill the material down, and it’s proven to be very effective.

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The Story
Virtually every municipality in the U.S. is struggling with pension issues these days. Last year, we traveled east to Avon, Connecticut, to document how the town was weathering its own budgetary crisis.


Filming real people can be a challenge, but when it comes together, the results can be both genuine and engaging.

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The Story
We talked about our desire to use real shots—photojournalism, in effect—for the Milliman campaign. For Milliman’s financial modeling software, we found this remarkable shot: the employees from the London office of Lehman all gathering to hear that the company is closing.


To be effective, advertising has to be arresting and distinctive. This ad was rated by readers as the most effective ad in the category, and among the best two or three of the year.

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The Story
This is the print ad which went along with the mortgage video story, described above. For the campaign, we decided to use actual editorial photos, reflecting the topical, serious nature of


Milliman’s consulting work. This photo was taken about three years ago, although it might have been taken last week.

]]> http://schoolofthought.com/2011/for-cascadia/milliman-mortgage/feed 0 http://schoolofthought.com/2011/for-cascadia/ishares-blog http://schoolofthought.com/2011/for-cascadia/ishares-blog#comments Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:27:27 +0000 Jamie http://schoolofthought.com/?p=858

The Story
iShares has a remarkable story to tell. They virtually invented the ETF, and they are the category leader. But when we started working with them, they certainly weren’t the leader in social media, in that they had none. No blog, no Facebook, no Twitter, nada.


In about sixty days (make that, sixty busy days), we changed all that. We designed and built their blog, Twitter and Facebook pages, and began both Twitter and Facebook campaigns. In two weeks, they went from zero to 13,000 followers. More recently, their blog was voted #1 in the category.

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The Story
Lots and lots of them. Joe spent more than a decade designing and building sites for all sorts of Fortune 500 companies. Tom spent a decade working on sites for all the others.


Okay, truth be told, he’s done many Fortune 500 sites, as well. The point is, we know our way around the web.

Here’s another project we recently wrapped up for iShares, that we thought might be of interest.

Pete Boland’s team needed a dramatic video to frame this year’s global iShares meeting, and they asked us to create a video, based on something that was done a few years back. Our team significantly re-edited the video, adding perhaps 40% new material as well as a entirely new soundtrack and voice over talent.

When we said it recently wrapped, we meant, recently—the West Coast meeting took place two days ago. And from what we understand, several of the senior iShares and BlackRock executive team members were very complimentary.

Nortel was in a rough spot when we started working with them. The company has lost its way to some degree, with the workforce distracted by numerous issues, the least of which was the fact that the stock was at its historic low.

In marketing, things were no less dire. The brand was no longer part of the networking conversation.

With this short film, featured prominently on the web as well as at trade shows, we attempted to get the brand back on the table, and re-establish their position as a tech leader. Obviously, the company’s issues were more than advertising could solve. But we certainly did our very best to get Nortel back into the consideration set.

Joe and Tom have worked on a truckload of technology accounts over the years. (At the bottom, we’ve listed some of the more relevant brands we’ve worked on.) Here’s one recent project we thought we’d share, in part because it was actually a co-op effort, produced in partnership with NVIDIA.

Not long ago, somebody in HP’s VooDoo lab division needed an ad for their latest offering, the Firebird. The prototype (probably priceless) arrived at the office a few days later. We immediately set out to frame this computer in a way that lived up to the engineering. Considering that the thing looked like it had been lifted from the Minority Report set, that was no small feat.

In any event, we convinced the client that we needed a distinctive presentation—something truly arresting.

We’re not exactly sure how we pulled this off, but the next thing you know, we were on the studio set, placing the oh-so-precious prototype in a tub of oil. (The client elected not to be on the set, which may have been best for everyone’s blood pressure.) Luckily the oil stayed where it should, the prototype stayed clean, and our jobs stayed intact.

We’re proud of this ad. Like the product, it stood out from so much surrounding noise. However, what’s also interesting about this ad is that the back panel (page 3 of the PDF) is almost singularly focused on the Firebird’s NVIDIA components.

A quality product, through and through.

For Microsoft, the developer community is everything. Lose the faithful, and you’re done.
It’s as simple as that.

Awareness certainly wasn’t the goal. This was all about relationship marketing. We had to remind the community that Microsoft was, at its core, just a really big group of developers, too. People who knew what late nights were like. What deadlines were. And how to put away Red Bull like there was no tomorrow.

So we created a series of short web films about a group of developers struggling to overcome those everyday challenges. On each film, we touched on a developer truth, which we tied to a new product enhancement (the 400 Differences in Visual Studio).

This was among the most successful campaigns in Microsoft’s history—even compared with some of the direct consumer campaigns—earning glowing praise from the CMO on down.

And a reminder that technology advertising, at its core, still has to overcome that critical first objective: get noticed.