Social was once the wild west. Before pay-to-play, brands flooded the feed to get in front of people. But the smart ones made content worth seeking and sharing.

Then the algorithms came and everything changed. It all became about humans as content creators and finding ways for your brand to fit into their story. The metrics have changed too. Followers used to be cool, but now engagement is where it’s at.

I’ve been working in social through all of it, and the one thing that hasn’t changed is people. They want to feel seen and they want see their values are shared. Simple. Pulling it off is the fun part.


THE FACEBOOK REF 

                   

Facebook wanted to be the second screen destination during the World Cup. Not Twitter, with it’s fancy near-zero latency timeline. So they created the Facebook Ref, a character for fans to engage with. They shot a ton of videos of him responding to any conceivable on-field event and then posted them throughout the games. A red card went down during Germany vs Spain? The ref would throw one down on Facebook. Goal in Brazil? The Facebook Ref is ready with a dance.

My role? I was the ref (the voice, not the actor). I developed his voice and wrote both his captions and responded to fans live in the comments through a team of translators in 44 different countries. Since humor is nuanced and cultures are never the same, this required looots of back-and-forth. Somehow, we managed over 5,700 real time responses, a few marriage proposals, amassed over 700k followers, got 11.4 million video views, 1.65 billion impressions, and got more people talking about the World Cup on Facebook than Twitter (more people than Twitter even had on their entire platform.

Client: Facebook 
Role: Senior Copywriter


GOODYEAR SOCIAL



One day the Goodyear folks in Akron woke up and thought to themselves “We should get on Facebook and Instagram. And maybe Twitter too.” So they hopped on their Blimp and scattered their RFP across America. TMA won and they in turn hired me to help make it happen.

We launched their social channels, got them to a million followers, then started helping them with their sports sponsorships too. Highlights include getting Dale Jr to fly the Goodyear Blimp, having him crash the morning news as a bumbling meteorologist, and unearthing a 100 year old Goodyear basketball legacy that Goodyear themselves didn’t even know about and turning it into the focus of their NBA partnership. Did you know Goodyear invented the basketball sneaker? Crazy huh?

Role: Senior Copywriter @ TMA
Group Creative Director: Rob Neatherlin
Art Director: Jason Kauzlarich


UNBANNING PAM

 

My partner and I did a lot of fun work for Chili’s (including designing a specialized sweat suit desinged to help sneak chicken crisprs and dipping sauces into the movies which got AMC theaters all kinds of mad), but the most fun “work” we did just fell in our lap. 

One day (our second day on the account, actually), the actress Jenna Fischer posted a picture of herself outside of Chili’s asking if she should try to go in, a reference to her character on The Office being banned from the restaurant in one of the most popular episodes of the show. So we immediately put together a plan of action, got client approval, and got to work.

We jammed out a press release, dropped it on twitter, and broke the good news to Jenna. Within minutes it was being covered by blogs, news outlets, shared by celebrities, and endlessly batted back and forth by fans.

But most importantly, the client was happy. Gah.

"We wanted to play it more tongue-in-cheek the way [The Office] did. They [my peeps and I] did a brilliant job of making it feel like you were in on the joke, which is why we took that approach rather than taking ourselves too seriously."



Role: Senior Copywriter @ TMA
Group Creative Director: Rob Neatherlin
Art Director: Jason Kauzlarich

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