Aiming high with amazing teammates.
During the time I led strategy at Colle McVoy, we received our first-ever Jay Chiat awards, which recognize the best strategy in marketing around the world. The Tag Responsibly campaign to promote sustainable tourism for Jackson Hole received two silver awards. Architecting the Houston White brand to stand for style as a voice for cultural progress received an honorable mention. Here we are at the 4A’s StratFest celebrating the award! From left to right: Katie Anderson, Hilary Lund, Casie Cook. 4A’s StratFest photo by Margarita Corporan.

From moving teeth to moving people’s lives forward.
We won and grew the Invisalign business with a vision for how they could reclaim their premium, leadership position with a new brand purpose and unifying human insight that stretched across consumer and business audiences around the world. How we worked was important as the work itself from insight generation to facilitated teamwork to quantitative global positioning validation. The strategic evolution moved the brand beyond a functional product benefit to an emotional human truth connected to the universal desire to move foward in life and the power of a smile to make it happen. Expressed in a brand idea called Made to Move, this platform shifted Invisalign from a medical brand focused on aesthetics to a lifestyle brand committed to human progress. Invisalign’s users more than doubled from three to nearly seven million worldwide.

Content strategy comes in clutch.
Land O’Lakes was known as a butter brand, but it was so much more. With expertise spanning farm to fork, Land O’Lakes was a thought leader on the future food. Our challenge was to modernize their brand perception with a more engaging story around their views on the future of food. Using a data-driven approach and insights into brand fit, we developed a content strategy that forecasted future-looking topics as content pillars. It all came to life as a powerful activation called The Food Effect at SXSW. This platform fostered strong engagement that created a national dialogue and resulted in 83% of people perceiving Land O’Lakes as forward thinking. Mission accomplished.

Challenging the brief.
What could’ve been an executional project turned into a powerful platform championed by General Mill’s CMO as his favorite work of the year. The initial brief was to create a TV spot for the Biggest Loser featuring General Mill’s partnership with D-Life, an organization supporting people with diabetes. It was clear we needed to go further, but we had less than a day to dive in. After finding powerful personal stories about diabetes online, we were struck by people's frustration not just in managing the disease, but also with the misperceptions surrounding it. This inspired us to create the Diabetes Won’t Stop Me strategy, which not only created an emotional connection but also drove people to deeper content to support their journey.

Can strategy win a pitch?
Recently a 4A’s Pitch Boot Camp participant asked if pitches were ever won on strategy. A Hershey new product launch came to mind. With less than a week before our first meeting, we hit the streets in pairs to do intercepts. Our team was energized, and the chemistry was palpable. We brought forward three strategic sparks that the client team loved, saying that we’d done in four days what had taken them six months. They also shared that the strategy is what tipped the pitch in our favor! As it goes with some new product launches, this one unfortunately didn’t make it to market, but the story lives on forever!

The power of design thinking.
When we pitched Target to be their in-store marketing agency of record, we were freshly energized by design thinking training with instructors who taught at the Stanford d.school. The strategy team put the practice into action to create empathy for the end user and to design, test and iterate prototypes. Through intercepts, we discovered that seeing summer merchandise while doing everyday errands and shopping in-store made Target feel like summer’s first adventure. We built that sense of summer anticipation and whimsy into our ideas, which helped to win the pitch and later influenced the work in store.

Going deep on problem definition.
It’s rare to capture a photo of research in action. This was taken during the pandemic when UnitedHealth Group was consolidating its agency roster. We’d recently launched a new provider value proposition for UnitedHealthcare (UHC) and were invited to pitch. One of the assignments was about reaching on-the-go workers, such as those at FedEx, with healthcare offerings. While working and studying at home, we kept our eyes out for delivery trucks in the hope of learning more. Credit to my son for his videography and for making this insight gathering so fun to do. Good news! We made it on the roster with top marks, which resulted in opportunities such as helping Optum land its brand purpose and working with UHC on brand-level initiatives.

Believing in the potential in every child.
MOFAS, the Minnesota Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, had become a national leader in the prevention and support of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. They needed a brand that could take them into the future. We conducted in-depth research and a positioning workshop to define a new brand and creative strategy. MOFAS relaunched as The Proof Alliance, accompanied by a powerful prevention campaign and digital tools based on a strategy we called Just A Drop May Last a Lifetime and a purpose to help every child realize their full potential. Shortlisted for a Clio, this work energized the organization, reached new audiences and positively impacted fundraising.

Starting with a strong foundation.
We had the opportunity to work with Medtronic on several B2B projects from neurology to cardiology to gastroenterology, which ultimately led to a new opportunity to develop a direct-to-consumer digital campaign to promote their Vein Health Portfolio. We built the entire strategic foundation from the audience persona and customer journey to the brand positioning, creative brief, and messaging guide. Our platform was called Break Free. It opened people’s eyes to what life can feel like without leg pain, which they didn’t realize was possible, and carried them to deeper content to help them take action. The campaign captured attention and achieved immediate results in market.

Disease awareness to save lives.
Edwards Lifesciences is a leader in heart valve technology. With thousands of people dying each year from a very treatable heart condition—Aortic stenosis (AS), our challenge was to help raise awareness of the disease. Through conversations with internal stakeholders, patients and caregivers, we discovered two barriers: the name of the disease itself and people confusing its symptoms with what they believed to be normal aging. We created a simple call to action to make heart valve disease better understood and better known: listen to your heart. The campaign market test raised disease awareness 29% and resulted in a 10% in echocardiograms performed.

Shattering category conventions.
While much of the travel category relied on epic, yet inaccessible imagery, we discovered modern travelers weren’t motivated by these unrelatable depictions. Wanting to feel less like tourists and more like locals, they loved serendipity and yearned for more authentic and unique experiences. This inspired our socially driven #OnlyinMN campaign, which won us the business and transformed perceptions of Minnesota from a flyover state to the place to be. We created $75 in new traveler spending for every dollar invested.

The heart of a challenger.
From pitching to working on the Associated Bank brand over nearly a decade, our partnership strengthened and expanded. From the get-go, we saw a big opportunity for Associated Bank to act as a challenger brand. From challenging people’s apathy for staying with a bank they didn’t really like to challenging their perceptions of what national banks do with their money, we found ways to evolve strategically while staying true to the brand DNA, all while driving results across multiple lines of business, product offerings and initiatives.

Understanding what makes your audience tick.
Caribou had a big launch with big goals, but coffee blends launch frequently so we needed to find a way to stand apart. We found the answer through our audience. The Caribou customer is different. They interact with baristas and write messages on the chalk board in store. They like co-creating so we invited them to share inspiration on Pinterest, which roastmasters used to create the new blend, Real Inspiration. We launched with a five-story Living Pinterest board at America’s largest mall and lifted in-store traffic by a remarkable seven percent.

Capturing a brand’s unique essence.
Cenex was created to serve the energy needs in farming communities across the U.S. and is one of the largest c-store networks in the country. Competing with energy giants in a commoditized category, Cenex had stronger equity in being locally owned and part of the community. As a brand that believed energy comes as much from relationships as it does from products, Cenex was more than a place to fill up. It was a place to feel connected. This led to an enduring brand platform, Powered Locally, which has captured the brand’s unique essence for B2B and B2C audience alike to grow awareness, preference and sales for more than five years.

Elevating from products to brand.
The work we did with Purina Animal Nutrition, the farm animal feed unit of Land O’Lakes, centered on the brand’s long-standing commitment to animal excellence and stood out in a few ways. First, it entailed a significant shift from a house of brands to a branded house. Only after presenting this recommendation to the c-suite did our client tell us it had never been done in the history of the brand. Second, it unified Purina's species groups and thousands of product SKUs with a powerful brand identity and singular website experience for the entire portfolio. Last, it informed a remodel of the Purina Animal Nutrition Center done by a well-known architecture firm.

From Fortune 100s to startups to nonprofits.
I’d love to talk further about any of the featured work or other examples, such as:
3M Ace™ Brand
AccuWeather
Betty Crocker
Bisquick
Bite Squad
Cameron’s Coffee
CHS, Inc.
Famous Footwear
Farm Credit Mid-America
General Mills Big G Cereal Innovation
Hennepin County
MN Department of Revenue
MN OHE, North Star Promise
Nature Valley
Nexxus
Target Obvious Foods Startup
The ALS Association
TRESemmé
Zoetis Global