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.

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.

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.