She did an interview with me, and one with Ricki Goldhamer, another powerful lass from the DTAS coven (none of whom are still at the ‘TAS).

I (and she) have both gotten great responses from this. Though reading this now, I make it sound like I had everything under control when, at the time, I felt like I was a lot less dignified about it.

It’s All About the Chase. GMMB has tapped Oonie Chase to be their digital director and senior vice president. Chase comes from Blast Radius, where she was executive creative director.

Chase will guide the digital practice, according to a release from the firm. She is GMMB’s second big-rent technology and Internet hire: The firm picked up Obama Internet staffer and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes earlier this year.

Truth be told, I love being able to say I have a patent. It’s like I have another superpower. It’s like I have been admitted into the league of supersmartypants. It’s like I pulled a fast one and and got away with the diamonds.

heh…

always been a fan of the b-boys, now even more so. dig the way this handles widgets & preferences.

“hey professor…”

Of particular note was the Dance Machine.  We shot Ellen doing a bunch of different dance moves, sliced them up and let users put together their own “dance” that they could send to Ellen.  The idea was that she would choose the best ones and have those folks on her show.  And while she did choose her faves, the show bit never happened.  Too bad, that.  Mucho fun, though.

When people ask me to point to exactly what I did on the site, I tell them, “Everything and nothing.” Because the heartbreaking part of working with these guys was integration (back-end being only the tip of the iceberg).

A few assignments of note:

• Re-launching the Card “store” as a retail experience.
• Setting out a customer-centered, “membership unleashed” vision that is (supposedly) being implemented.
• Working with their Labs group to (among other things) create (a) an iPhone app that will call a taxi at the touch of a button, (b) a pop-up traveler’s map using Microsoft’s Surface, (c) a widget that collected together all benefits and offers into one cool little package and (d) launching the so-called ’4D’ Card activation experience that used sound and 3D design to drive some of the best metrics they had seen to date.
• Working with Ellen DeGeneres and her writers to launch an online extension to her first “My Life. My Card.” ad.
• Working with the Travel, Membership Rewards and Interactive teams to redefine the digital travel offering for the enterprise.
• Launching the very first Membership Rewards online catalogue.
• Doing all of the online ads and other activation work for the launch of Blue.
• Developing an activation and engagement strategy for new Cardmembers across phone, mail, email, online based on how we fall in love (no kidding.  I worked with Sara Brito on this one – she is a genius…)

Lots and lots. I could talk about these guys for HOURS.  A treat of a brand, and as motley a band of clients I have had the pleasure to come across.  I miss them still…

Which I am not.

Even so, I totally dug this assignment for several reasons, not the least of which was getting to hang with some of their product designers who think about things like the most satisfying weight of an oven door, or the most refreshing whoosh of closing a refrigerator door. They were, in fact, the inspiration for the photographic style and the attribute-forward content approach.

My digging also extended to:

• The research we did – an intercept survey, phone interviews with dealers, kitchen designers and customers as well as key stakeholder interviews around the company.
• The exercises and thinking we did to help them think about how their brand is experienced online.
• The “product portrait” visual style that put the gorgeous industrial design at the forefront and cast the ofttimes gibberish features into language that cooks not only understood but, apparently, vibrate to. Even better was the fact that our approach ended up guiding that of the above-the-line agency – a nice bit of turn-around for something that was, ultimately, a single-channel assignment.

I lead this work with the incomparable Todd Spiewak, both of us shipped from New York to the wilds of Chicago (the office this work was done out of).

More importantly than any of that is the fact that the overall campaign has bought over 1.4 million days of medicine for people living with HIV in Africa – in just the first 6+ weeks.

Nice to do something that counts.  Really counts.

(pun intended)

In the 3-week-long submission period, we got more than 1,800 submissions and around 350,000 visitors. The finalists were chosen by a panel that included Martin Scorsese and M. Night Shyamalan, and the winner announced at the festival.

The site experience was exceptional, prompting Dave Armano (author of Logic+Design to remark “it’s the coolest application interface that we’ve seen in a long time—possibly ever.”

This would never have happened without the exceptional Henry Min, Franke Rodriguez and Whitney Hess.

Working with the shockingly talented (if barking mad) Min Chung, we designed a site that helped put them 30% over their ad revenue goals for that year, and had them on track to exceed their ’07 goals by 60%.

Aaaaaaand then spiketv.com merged with ifilms.com. And our little site that could went down.  As it were.