Our best work of the past year? Where do I start? Well, strangely enough in New York — with Maker’s Mark and the work we did for the Grand Central Station domination. It’s still getting buzz. The work was fantastic, and we literally covered the station with nearly fifty original ideas located from the escalators to the support beams to the walls next to the bathrooms.
And yes, we also did some phenomenal work for The Healing Place, Skier’s Choice, (Ri)1 Whiskey, Independence Bank and Norton Hospital. I think it’s fair to say we made the absolute most of our opportunities when it came to producing award-winning creative this year. With that said, what I really consider to be our best work for ‘08 may be a campaign that won’t win many (or any) awards at all – the Medicare campaign for Humana.
See, when you have an understanding with a client like Maker’s Mark, producing great creative is expected. That’s not to say it’s easy. But Maker’s wants radical, edgy, sometimes even controversial work, and we deliver it. They don’t mess with it, and the work is very effective. It’s a relationship any creative dreams of, and it just gets better every year. With Humana, however, we were working with a client we didn’t know very well, an insane deadline and a category (Medicare plans for seniors) that’s a breeding ground for boring, truly forgettable advertising. Still, the client bought into a campaign concept that some on their team weren’t all that comfortable with, and they let us run with it. They trusted us, they worked with us, they gave us what we needed to make it happen. And in the end, the work reflects all of that. Yes, some creative concessions were inevitable, but the work still stands out in the category. More important, it’s been one of the most effective campaigns Humana has ever run. We’re proud of that. We should be.
Of course, some of the best work we did in 2008 hasn’t even run yet. But we’ve got all of 2009 to talk about that.
