Various collection of dimensional work including painted skateboards and vinyl toys. To see more of the latest - the 2008 swim team munnies - visit my facebook fan page.

H&R Block Calculatron & Social Life Simulator

Helping students get their tax returns and have some fun with viral on facebook.

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Lead Copy Writing, Design & Managed Production.

Awards/Recognition:
Applied Arts Interactive Media Award 2008  Category: Weblog/Social Networking

Illustrator: Ramon Perez

In early 2008, working with Dashboard and H&R Block (as well as Facebook and fellow ad firm Due North) the H&R Block Calculatron and Social Life Simulator digital community focused campaign launched on facebook.com. Using facebooks viral aspects the application asked students and others to first use the tax calculator - known as the Calculatron - to get their refund estimate.

Their estimate would then be locked it in as a virtual bank account on facebook. This bank account led them into the bulk of the application - the Social Life Simulator. Here they could spend their virtual money on items, entertainment, and more. Everything from a tattoo to a make over to drinks with friends. Or, they could earn more virtual money by working, begging, gambling and other scenarios. In total the Social Life SImulator had 100 scenarios (50 spend / 50 earn) each with 3 choices - in order of cost level or risk level (in earn scenarios). This gave users 300 possible things to do. On top of that - we developed over 300 additional random outcomes to users actions.So, if you earned some money at the casino, there was a chance you could loose or earn additional money either instantly or a few days from now. This randomness built in with the ability to invite friends to many scenarios added a depth that has not been seen before in a facebook community application. Stats on users as well as dynamic displays on user’s profiles pages with in facebook helped introduce others to the Social Life Simulator.

The application dominated. With users spending over $180,000 and earning over $200,000 in the first 4 days of it’s launch. By the end of the first week the application had 1,053 users, with over 25% of them using the Social Life Simulator daily and earning over $400,000 - with the number one way to earn virtual money being the casino. As users sent out invitations to their friends and helped the application grow through out facebook’s global network of 60 million plus users.

Various 3D Game Art Modeling & Design (dated)

Project Role: everything

A collection of various 3D game art models both level and character development. These are a little old - as they were developed for the last generation gaming standards of low polygon. Now a days you can squeeze ten times the polygons into a model. Yet I still like to show them with my high res characters as it was a welcome challenge to have a limited amount of polygons to work with and small textures to boot. Made it fun to see that every single part of the model was thought out and planned to ensure maximum embellishment and that the texture mapping was having to be more contrasted to help further define the models.

Hellmann’s Real 2008

Agency:Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Director, Designer & Managed Production

2008 Hellmann’s Real campaign online focused around the question of what is the difference between “real food” in regards to local versus traveled. A pair of tomatoes may look the same - however in reality one may have traveled thousands of miles while sitting green on a truck absorbing pollution. The update also consisted of supporting Chef Chuck Hughes - who conducted a series of online live chats and lived as virtual host over a community forum - as well as updates on the 2008 urban garden initiatives and food facts.

Ontario Toyota Dealers Klick Club

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Illustration, Design & Managed Production.

Site: KlickClub.ca

Klick Club is a lapsed Toyota owner focused campaign from the Ontario Toyota Dealers. Working at Dashboard I helped develop a custom logo, emails, post cards, seasonal based coupon book and a micro site (seen only by targeted users) to host coupons. It was rolled out in the fall of 2008 and continues to extend into 2009.

Hellmann’s Light Taste Test Video Micro Site

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Video and online Art Direction, Design & Managed Production.

 Can you taste the difference?

In August 2007 Hellmann’s launched a nationwide campaign and taste test to challenge Canadians and see if they could tell the difference between Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise and Helllmann’s Half The Fat Mayonnaise. Dashboard was asked to create an entertaining and strategic online campaign. We decided to hire a pair of hosts and a production company and venture out with camera in hand to ask everyday people from all ages and cultures in Toronto and in Montreal if they could take the taste test.

Over the course of 2 long days and a longer week of editing, we found our top dozen or so videos and hosted them along with product information and additional taste test locations on Hellmanns.ca. Not only did we nail our objectives and the brand strategy, the client loved the results and commended us with our initiative and work.

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Design & Managed Production.

Site: Realpartsandservice.ca

In the fall of 2007 Dashboard helped the Ontario Toyota Dealers Association launch a new division focused on service to help existing vehicle owners called Parts And Service. In what became one of the longest single first phase initiatives in Dashboard (and my) history, we spent twelve plus months developing a strategic and creative power house for the OTDA which included this web site and the launch of a new regular Parts and Service focused direct mail brochure to be mailed out out to nearly 200 thousand customers from all the current 78 Ontario Toyota Dealerships.

Breaking new ground in customer service and launching along side a well received sales site, realpartsandservice.ca focuses equally on three key points; education, retail and lifestyle. It’s not just about getting your brakes fixed. Its about learning how your brakes work…what is a brake drum?….why and when do you need to have it checked and reminding customers that preventative maintenance will not only make your vehicle last longer, but keep you and your family safe. Honesty and sales working together, who would have thought.

The project featured a three day photo shoot, video recorded conversations with senior Toyota technicians for what added to hundreds of hours of research, months of build and development and for myself a complete understanding of all sides of advertising and client services as well as creative development. The project is ongoing with future phases already in development.

The direct mail brochures focused equally on three key points; education, retail and lifestyle. It’s not just about getting your brakes fixed. Its about learning how your brakes work…what is a brake drum?….why and when do you need to have it checked and reminding customers that preventative maintenance will not only make your vehicle last longer, but keep you and your family safe.

The direct mail brochures were structured in a very specific manner: we start with branding and mission statements (an introduction to the OTDA’s beliefs), then starting at the tires the brochures take the ground up approach (wheels to brakes, brakes to internal components like the engine or battery, and out to external and additional, yet still important parts and services. While doing all this it constantly infuses lifestyle and reality into why all this matters along side useful information such as the prices and benefits of each part and service that your dealer can help you with, all designed to push customers into the dealership.

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service
Realpartsandservice.ca Web site

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service
Fall Direct Mail

Ontario Toyota Dealers Parts & Service
Winter Direct Mail

Ontario Toyota Dealers Sales DVD

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Design & Managed Production.

In the fall of 2007 Dashboard helped the Ontario Toyota Dealers Association further amplify their newly launch sales site and service site with a dealer DVD.

Packaging all seventeen 3-5 minute vehicle walk around videos from one of Toronto’s largest summer commercial shoots to run on a standard DVD player was only part of the effort. We also developed animated screensavers, wallpapers, an icon package and a desktop video player for all the videos to further help the OTDA sales teams in communicating Toyota vehicles’ benefits included on the DVD. Delivered with a custom dealer mouse pad it was used in dealerships through out Ontario.

Juicy Fruit Synchronized Interactive Banners

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction & Managed Production.

Extremely interactive, ground breaking, online banners. Using a three separate interacting flash banners, these ads were able not only to pull users in through strong and unique calls to action and maintain their interaction for an extended time while they played with a dynamic braking of traditional banner boundaries.

This set in particular where targeted at late teens over the summer of 2007 and specifically made to fit into muchmusic.ca and tsn.ca page templates, yet brake the banner boundary boxes when interacted with. The banners literally took over the screen and allowed the Juicy Fruit brand to be infused into their audiences minds. The strategically and creatively placed new product (new Juicy Fruit Tubes, featuring 22 pellets of gum) are thus used as the games main interactive mechanism and the branding of more gum-the 22 pieces-being the games goal to achieve.

Hellmann’s Plot Your Own Garden

Agency: Dashboard Communications

Project Role: Lead Art Direction, Design & Managed Production.

Awards/Recognition:
Davey Silver Award 2007   category: Branding
Also included the hellmanns.ca 2007 refresh.