Innovating Corporate Responsibility (2019)

To change the things we care about, advertising is not enough. Real money needs to move, and companies need to engage. They can’t just ask donations from consumers.

This is why we helped MARS create The Lion’s Share Fund, a platform to encourage companies to donate 0.5% of their media spending to protect animal habitats. And to make sure it was trustworthy, we asked the UN to manage it.

By early 2019, the fund had raised half of the $100 million goal set for 2021. And it was also awarded with the Cannes Grand Prix for Sustainability and the D&AD White Pencil, (the ultimate accolade for creative work that makes a real difference in the industry).

Service Design (2017)

This was a really interesting experiment: could technology help individuals get better at a sport?

Unfortunately for confidentiality reasons the work cannot be public. Happy to talk in private about the strategic perspective.

Marketing & Advertising (2019)

The chance of bringing the most recognizable brand in the world into a new space, includes a massive risk to fuck it up.

But that’s what makes it a great opportunity. Especially if that new space does not really see as relevant one of the brand’s key attributes.

Unfortunately for confidentiality reasons the work cannot be public. Happy to talk in private about the strategic perspective.

Reimagining Television (2019)

Being last in a crowded category like streaming is not a bad thing. It’s actually a good one, if you have a foundational element in your offering that is vastly different from all your competitors.

Unfortunately for confidentiality reasons the work cannot be public. Happy to talk in private about the strategic perspective.

Personalized storytelling (2017)

Ask “how you doing?” in Asia and you’ll get a one-word answer from everyone - toddler to auntie: “busy”.

So why not celebrate the whole year of hustle and accomplishments of each one of our riders, instead of blasting out one of those tired, cookie-cutter Holiday campaigns?

And it worked: we got +275% brand opinion uplift, we won The Drum’s Design Campaign Of The Year in APAC, got a bronze at the Campaign Tech Awards and at The Markies, and got shortlisted for the APAC Effies.

Product Innovation (2010)

It’s hard to convince countries with a strong gastronomic tradition to buy into the fast food habit. They might love it, but they won’t necessarily trust the brand.

So, instead of running campaigns to reassure on the quality of ingredients, we designed a sandwich.

A proper sandwich, made with 100% Italian ingredients. Because people tend to trust what they can taste.

As you see, there is not really any advertising material, just the press coverage - international, at that - of Italian Ministers endorsing the effort. The sandwich was the idea.

The results were really good: we got +20pp in brand trust. And the success of this idea, drove McDonald’s “Local Relevance” food strategy. And now everywhere you go, there is a local item on the menu.

Only with one sandwich from a country raised on spaghetti.

Retail Service Design (2021)

Truth is, no one likes to wait in a store. No matter how inspiring the space, 10 minutes can seem like forever. But ultimately, the store is the brand, and it really needs to incarnate what the brand wants to stand for.

So we thought about helping kill time in a very purposeful way: by learning more about the brand and its key offering.

And people did it. Engagement with the game went above 70%, and the perception of fun in store growing steadily quarter by quarter.

Another step towards building our vision of the Xfinity store as a true digital playground.

Service Design & Advertising (2015)

It’s really difficult to relaunch a product as specific as hair coloring, when people are unhappy about the end results.

But you can’t fight biology: every individual has different hair, and the process of applying color to achieve the desired shade changes, due to biology.

So instead of a campaign to relaunch the product, we designed a real digital hair coloring salon, complete with hair structure analysis, personalized recommendation, guided - and timed - application. And we advertised the digital salon, instead of the product.

The results were really good: +30% sales through e-commerce in the first six months of testing in China (category average: 15%), and +20% repeated purchase in a category with no loyalty whatsoever.

Innovation Design (2020)

When Benjamin Moore asked us to rethink how to digitally help their customers navigate their color offering, we thought about some white paper claiming the human untrained eye can recognize a bit more than 100 shades.

But Benjamin Moore’s offering goes well beyond 1500. That’s a bit complicated. So, to make things easier, we created Dot.

Dot is kind, almost as kind as nice people.

Advertising (2019)

To give a brand visibility beyond its potential reach you don’t have to do much. You just have to do the right thing. And what is the right thing for the last store of a once-globally famous video-rental service?

One billboard. One billboard that is really a service, designed around the key differentiator from all those algorithmic recommendations that just because you like Narcos, want you to watch enough stuff to become a DEA expert.

And when that single billboard is picked up by a Redditor, and in a few days it receives more that 51 thousand Reddit points, the once-globally famous brand is back into the attention of national news outlets like NBC News. And back on the map.

Advertising (2020)

Is it nice being the punch line of the joke? If you got a CEO who’s rumored on Twitter (and by Jim Gaffigan) to take himself too seriously, but in reality has a deadpan, Buster Keaton-esque delivery, it might even serve the brand’s purpose.

That’s why Chris took it upon himself to respond to the most feisty Twitter users. One by one, in the first Direct To Consumer TV campaign. To remember all of us that just because the pandemic hit, we didn’t have to look sloppy.

And the business saw sustained growth during the pandemic,and a new and refreshing positive social media sentiment. Take that, skeptics.

Advertising (2006)

The oldest one. I have a peculiar attachment to this: the brand and I share almost the same name, the company is from my city, and they agreed back in 2005 to create a real content series. Something quite unheard of, back then.

We created a total of fourteen short films that told the same story from different angles. The idea was quite simple. Imagine how hard it is for an American to learn how to make real Italian coffee.

That American turned out to be Academy Awards winner Dustin Hoffman.

Oh, we did that way before George Clooney. Because let’s face it, Nespresso is good, but it’s not the real Italian espresso.