That's right. Tonight, it's a no-holds-barred, cage match. Mono y mono. John Cena vs John Cena, dramatizing the You vs You inner dialogue we all have with ourselves! (Those of us that are lucky enough to be only two people, anyway.) Will we get up and kick some motivational ass? Own the day!?, or roll over and hit the snooze button!? 

As an added twist, there's English vs. Mandarin. Who will walk away the champion? English John or Mandarin Chinese John. 

No matter who wins, John Cena is one (count e'm, 1) impressive guy. 

Key personnel - what an amazing team! 

AD/ACD: Gabi Hastings
CW/GCD: Ryan Karrell
​CW/GCD: Max Godsil 

ECD: Andy Hirsch
Director: Peter Berg
Producer: Donovan Green

 In case you don't watch golf - every year Mercedes-Benz is one of the three sponsors of the Masters and we create a sort of brand campaign. It's a chance for us to stretch out, and let John Hamm lay some philosophy on you. This one is Ideas - a subject dear to my heart. Thanks to the awesome team. 

Drummond Berman CD
Greg Wells CD
Max Godsil CW
Gabi Hastings AD

Went to the Bills-Falcons game last Sunday to check out some of our in-stadium creative in action. We did four of these videos to run on the world's largest HD screen. To give you an idea of the scale - the screen itself is 6 stories tall. We shot these videos in the Mojave with a 360 camera array. Super interesting how new technology begets new approaches. You can't see it here, but the animated LED ribbons in the rest of the stadium were synchronized with the halo board and ran the line "Be first to the tailgate." Falcons lost, though. Bummer. At least our production team did not fumble ....;)  
CD/AD: Brian Hall
Producer: Scott Mushinskie
​Director: Vico Sharabani 

Our fifty year anniversary commercial for AMG (Mercedes-Benz' racing division) was recently translated into Russian for those oligarchs in need of a high performance vehicle. Who knows. Perhaps soon, we will all be able to understand it. CD/CW: Drummond Berman - CD/AD: Simon Nickson - 

This year, we ran five print ads in the 2017 Masters Tournament Program. This fine advertisement kicked off the campaign with an inside cover placement. Upon receiving the program I realized only too late that something was missing: For crying out loud, we forgot the sheet metal.
​GCD/CW: Max Godsil. CD/AD: Brian Hall. 

So I was perusing instagram last night and I came across a Finish Line post with #shoessofresh hashtag, which means that the integrated, cross-platform campaign that we pitched and won the Finish Line account with is now a living, breathing, integrating, cross-platforming entity. Thanks to Shane "The Human Blowtorch" Diver and everyone at Innocean for bringing the idea to life and bringing it home. Click and see the extended launch vid. 

Update, Shane called from his new job (not in Orange County) to say that this campaign had won best of show in the OC Addys. Which isn't quite as huge of an honor as say, being cast in the Real Housewives of Orange County, but close. I mean if only because there are more telegenic housewives creating mondo drama in Orange County CA than there are advertising agencies, so you gotta take into consideration that there is a lot more competition to be a real housewife of Orange County. Anyway, here's the credit page. Note down at the bottom they refer to us as professionals. Sniff! I'm so overwhelmed. I've never been called professional before. I'd like to thank all of the real people, housewives and otherwise, in the OC who helped make this campaign a reality. Okay, you can go back to whatever you were doing. Move along folks. Fun is over. 

Hyundai is set to reveal their new line of 'Prius-killer' alt-fuel vehicles at the New York auto show. There's an electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid version. It's called the Ioniq (I know, just when you learned to say Hyundai, right?) Anyway, here's a little intro video we shot with Mr. Joe Wright of Sibling/Rivalry. ACD: Kiran Koshy. Writer: Joel Dugar. Art Director: Reed Conway. Cheerleader/CD/Chief Bullet-taker: Me. 

Todd Rose is an interesting guy. Didn't really fit in growing up, had a lot of energy, poor impulse control, liked to do stuff like throw rocks at cars and even he didn't know why. (Sigh, I can relate.)
A bit of a juvenile reprobate, and a square peg by his own admission. Needless to say, he didn't do particularly well in school. In fact, he flunked out. And yet now he's on the faculty of Harvard University, a professor of education and applied neuroscience. In his first book, Square Pegs he outlines his own journey and also a way that we can change the educational system to be less "one size fits all" and more customized to each student's personal learning style.

In his new book, The End of Average: How We Succeed In a World That Values Sameness he gets ​​more specific in his plan to move forward. We (myself, Shane Diver, Tricia Ting, Brad Johnson, Chad Saul and Parker Collins of Innocean, among others) created the above video outlining the problem with our current outmoded school system and demonstrate how we can go beyond standardized tests, etc, and even the very notion of average (which, as Todd points out, doesn't really even exist.) Enjoy. Be inspired. Find out more. Because you, of all people, are definitely way past average. 

Below, a couple videos from Todd.