Jason is currently the Executive Creative DirectoR at DAVID MIAmI

There are plenty of ways to speak about a brand or a product. But, it’s rare that an ad makes you feel a lil something. When a brand can stir your emotions or show you what they believe in, in a very real way, boom. When a brand can help you recognize what you believe in, bigger boom. We’re bombarded with messages and targeted with ads for products that we mentioned to a friend over lunch 24/7. When branded content makes you smile, or laugh, or cry, or even makes you think a little… that’s a massive win.
I believe that people buy products but invest in brands. With emotion and money. People don’t always buy a something because it’s cheap or tastes great, sometimes that purchase also makes them feel like a better person. Or reminds them of a great time in their life. Or maybe it’s simply because they respect the brand. I’m certain that theory can be applied to any product or service – from cars and tech to burgers or chewing gum.

Below you’ll find a few of my favorite campaigns. Not solely because of their successes on the award circuit, but because they got people talking and nudged culture a bit.

1 IN 3 CHILD ABUSE VICTIMS GROW UP TO BEcome ABUSERS. SOME BECOME SERIAL KILLERS.

Charles Manson, Aileen Wuornos, Richard Ramirez, David Berkowitz, and almost every other serial killer suffered through a traumatic childhood filled with abuse and neglect.
In order to help Stop the Cycle, we launched a campaign that truly made people understand the lasting effects of child abuse and neglect. Getting the rights to use photos of serial killers as the innocent children they once were took a lot of work. Getting the client on board took a whole lot of work. But changing that stat is going to take all the work.
The series of print ads ran in two publications in Los Angeles and one in Daytona beach. We chose these cities for two reasons – they are the locations in which the three featured serial killers were finally arrested and, sadly, Florida and California have some of the highest reports of child abuse in the country.
America is fascinated by serial killers. Maybe we can all become equally fascinated in ways to help. See more about each of their terrible childhood experiences here.

WHAT CAN A WHOPPER JR. TEACH PEOPLE ABOUT BULLYING?

Burger King is a brand that celebrates individuality and encourages people to be their way, no matter how "different" their way is. Bullying someone because they are different is the exact opposite of that. So while at first it may seem pretty bazaar to try and compare a smashed Whopper Jr. to a child who has been bullied, it makes a lot of sense. The goal for the Bullying Jr. experiment was to encourages people to stand up against bullying the same way they stand up and complain when something is wrong with the food they ordered. And in this case, that food is a bullied fast food burger.

It isn’t easy to stand up to it. It isn’t easy to say something because most of the time people are afraid they’ll become a victim too. But the more ways we can teach people how to prevent bullying or put a stop to it, the less of a problem it will continue to be.

To view the case study, click here

WE HACKED FACEBOOK’S ALGORITHM (THE LEGAL WAY).

“ESTRELLA JALISCO TRICKS FACEBOOK'S SEARCH ALGORITHM TO ERASE NEGATIVE SENTIMENT ABOUT MEXICANS.”
That’s a pretty bold headline and it was 100% true. Facebook is the second largest search engine in the world, getting some 3.5 billion searches per day. And many of those searches lead to some not-so-friendly results auto-populated into the search bar. On Facebook, when someone searched the term “Mexican’s are…” words like rapists, animals, lazy, loud, ugly, and other hateful terms were the first to appear. So we took the bitterness out of it. We helped push the hate down and bring up the terms that more accurately describe what Mexican’s truly are – inspiring, passionate, creative, funny, artists, and more. As you’ll see in the video, it took a lot of work to figure out the right way to make this happen, but we succeeded all the while without Facebook knowing what we were up to.

LET’S NOT PRETEND YOU DON’T STUFF YOURSELF every THANKSGIVING.

You love having Thanksgiving dinner with your family and friends. But after seconds, thirds, or fourths, you feel restricted in your uncomfortable jeans, khakis, or slacks. It has happened to all of us and finally a brand that can be held somewhat responsible for getting stuffed did something about it. This is an example of inserting a brand back into pop culture in a very relatable way. Stove Top doesn’t do much advertising at all. They spend most of the year baking bread and letting it get stale so that consumers can stock up on it come fall. So we applied a small budget and some insight to a product innovation and helped boost sales 4%, earning 1.1 points market share, making it the most successful Thanksgiving Stove Top had seen in many years.

To view the case study, click here

THE ROOF IS ON FIRE. ALONG WITH THE RESTaurant.

Browse Google with the search terms Burger King and fire and some interesting image turn up of Burger King restaurants ablaze. Besides encouraging people to be “your way,” BK also believes in fire. And since they claiming flame-grilling as a USP for most of their offerings, the really like to lean into it. Oddly enough, even though “Flamed-grilled since 1954” is big and bold on the side of every location, over half of the younger population doesn’t know that BK cooks their burgers over an open flame. However, that stat didn’t make the Burning Stores print series any easier to sell through to legal or franchisees. But when it finally came to life, it performed even better than expected. The three pieces that originally ran in a publication in South America were immediately picked up by news organizations globally. The takeaway was very clear – Burger King flame-grills their burgers. And while fire may make their burgers taste delicious, it has its risks.

A LITTLE HELP FROM A BUD.

Online dating use to be an innocent and fun way to meet new people, but with 10% of sex offenders using online dating apps, women (mostly) can easily be put in harm's way. With most of these dates happening at bars, Budweiser wanted to do something to create a safer environment for women. So we went to bars and installed a series of posters that spoke directly to women who faced potential danger. The posters had a code that could be personalized by each bar for women to discreetly ask for help.
There wasn't any press about this. We didn't reach out to a PR firm to help us get "buzz." It belonged in the world so we put it out there.