This cracks me up to no end.

Hard to believe I’ve been blogging and working at Pop Art for more than two-and-a-half years now. In that time, I’ve tried to write posts that other writers will find useful, and maybe even demonstrate that we know what we’re doing.

Lately, my blogging has fallen off since I’ve taken on our media planning and buying department. But I thought it’d be a good time to look back.

1. The fake layout above comes from one of the funniest jokes ever made at Pop Art. Well, it was funny to me, anyway.
2. At some early point at Pop Art, we moved a lot of the SEO responsibility over to editorial. Here’s why.
3. What good will those brand workshops do if your writing doesn’t reflect it?
4. Viral ideas need support to get them to pandemic mode and beyond the sniffles. One way to do that is to study how wildfires grow.
5. I actually had a client say that they wanted to market their small travel agency to everyone. Bad idea. But here’s a good idea: figure out different elements of your company and let them appeal to different people. Targeting online is a great way to do that.
6. In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a recession on. Here’s what I’ve learned about managing people and balancing work demands during lean times.
7. When we set out to re-do the Pop Art site, one concept we considered bringing forward was the people. I did some quick and dirty research into our team. Very interesting.
8. How do you measure creative? Perceived ad spending.
9. Call it the Tiger Effect; it says in the face of a dominant force, people play for second place.
10. When I look back on hiring my most recent intern, Kevin, I’ll remember the experience not so much for finding him, but for having to say “no” to three other insanely qualified people. One continues to work for Babywit.com, and we correspond every so often about interactive marketing. Here’s an interesting conversation about e-commerce and email.
11. Social media and transparency. Duh.
12. Last, but the first blog post I wrote at Pop Art: The nine-point copywriting checklist.

They stripped this tool to the bone. There’s nothing left but the tools you need. If you can’t get out of trouble with these tools, you probably don’t deserve to get out anyway.

These ads helped launch the Leatherman Skeletool and Skeletool CX. I carry mine everywhere, and despite how light it is, I can feel it when I’ve somehow forgotten it. Forgetting your Leatherman feels like forgetting to wear your seatbelt. It feels like walking out with your fly down. It feels like going on the jobsite without a helmet.

Target Audience

Alternate GIF backup to the Flash ads we created. I wish we'd made a poster out of this one.

The Leatherman Skeletool represented a giant step forward for the brand. It spoke to a younger audience: more outsidehub.com and less Field & Stream. More GPS and less Jeep. More backpacking and less horsebacking. (Yes, I know “horsebacking” isn’t a word. Who’s the copywriter here?)

The Skeletool also looks completely bad-ass.

Using data from Nielsen @Plan, the team targeted a younger outdoor crowd online. We found they post their photos online, love to talk gear, and tend to be a little more affluent.

We also found a sub-genre of people who love techy looking gear like this, and while they may not be the ones leading the charge up Mt. Baldy, they do aspire to be that guy.

The Creative

The copy had to stay sparse. We knew we just needed to show the tool and the name and we’d have people hooked.

So knowing all that, I Sharpie’d up a few approaches with my designer. The GIF ad here was actually just a back up, albeit a very provocative one. The brand has headed in a different direction (see our re-launch of the Leatherman website).

This GIF represents the tougher side of Leatherman, but it’s not a position they actively court. Their competitor, Gerber, is the Red State, blood-n-guts, Ford F-350 brand. Leatherman wants the smarter, wilier, quieter, more respected outdoorsman.

The SWF ads took a more aspirational approach. One thing that I’m particularly proud of is very subtle: Notice how the clouds are sort of moving in the background? We were struggling with that last screen feeling very static, so I suggested we copy the look of those sweet Gatorade ads with Kevin Garnett — the ones where they fake slow-mo using AfterEffects? — to give it a little bit of motion.

Inspiration: League of Clutch from Gatorade

Carrier wanted help positioning generators as a necessary safety item in areas that fall victim to big storms frequently. Being without power in the middle of a heat wave or a deep winter chill means no HVAC, and that can be dangerous.

We bought space for Carrier down in areas of Florida during hurricane season, and then ran different campaigns. Unsurprisingly, the ad that faked the news killed it.

From the ad, the user arrived at the microsite we built. Generators work by figuring out how much wattage you’re going to have supported by the generator. When the power goes out, those circuits you choose will keep running.

The question is: which circuits should you choose? Go visit the Carrier Generator site: It’s seriously a very cool experience.

No seriously. You should go visit the Carrier Generator site. We had a blast designing this immersive experience.

The Cascadia gave us an opportunity to revisit the Run Smart manifesto.

Breathing New Life into “Run Smart”

Freightliner Trucks is the left brain of the trucking world. They make durable heavy duty trucks that run until the wheels fall off. They pride themselves on total cost of ownership, uptime, and ROI.

They are, however, almost apologetic about it. When they launched the new Cascadia truck — their first new truck in nearly a decade — we tried to change that.

The oil crisis in 2007 and 2008 sent diesel prices sky-rocketing. Carrier contracts could absorb small swings in diesel prices over a quarter or two, but fuel was double and triple what it was.

And here was Freightliner with a truck that got better fuel mileage, looked hot, and, unlike previous trucks, had a luxury car ride. After all, this is a company owned by the parent of Mercedes Benz.

So rather than touting the numbers, we went on the attack.

We used drivers talking about their test drive to give the claims credibility. And we used Google to target competitor’s search terms and steal their traffic. And we could get away with it because Freightliner had done their homework in the wind-tunnel out on Swan Island. Freightliner provided us with direct comparison fuel saving numbers*.

We gave the numbers context. Saving money became a cause. Run Smart meant more than padding the pockets of the owners — it meant keeping everyone working.

A few weeks afterward, Frank Roehr of Young & Roehr fame, stopped by our offices. He saw the Hard Facts manifesto on the wall, and said, “When I came up with Run Smart, this is exactly what I had in mind.”

* Postscript: As it turns out, the numbers we received were disputed. We ended up taking the campaign down. Seems to me the thing to do would’ve been to fix the numbers and move forward, but I don’t know all the details.