TraceElements

I'm an insight-loving writer, Creative Director and lateral-thinking Strategist. As a CD and ECD, I've built creative departments at several agencies, from boutiques to multi-nationals, including growing a successful digital practice at Y&R Canada of 50+ people, in less than 18 months. I don't just "talk digital". I have years of hands-on experience in the space as a successful creative director at pure-play interactive agencies, including Organic, Momentum OnX and Social Media Group. I’m well-regarded for rolling up my sleeves on the ground with my teams, guiding the ideation process and cracking new ideas, inspiring presentation acrobatics, business acumen, team leadership and grace under pressure. I’ve won awards over the years for mass advertising, design and interactive as a writer and with my teams as a Creative Director, in Canada, the US and the UK. I value, respect and learn every day from my colleagues and clients. I've been fortunate to get to share what I've learned as a guest teacher, speaker and columnist in the trades. In the past year and a half running TraceElements Strategy and Creative, I've worked every day to earn and grow my reputation as a skilled Creative Director and Strategist who sells winning ideas and knows how to get things done.

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Sugino Studios "Evolve or Die"

Those who have worked with renowned photographer Shun Sugino know SuginoStudios has a long history of pushing the boundaries of creativity and technology. These ads, created for Applied Arts, adopt a minimalistic approach to stand out in the publication and remind creatives that without risk, there is no shot.

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Need Some

From the bottle design to the ads vitaminwater has maintained an intelligent, cheeky tone that plays off the wide array of products. The challenge was to find a new way to keep the spirit of the campaign, but express it in a fresh new way. We designed this campaign to give people pause at the store and hopefully make them say "hey, maybe I could use some of this..."

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Creating a new agency brand.

Quadrant Marketing has been a leader in Canadian Shopper Marketing for over 25 years, working with clients like P&G and Kraft Foods. They are launching a new integrated agency - a small, nimble group with a broader focus on brand ideas and ROI driven execution. The name was decided "Q2" but the identity and storyline needed to be developed. I led the process of creating their new identity and crafting their storyline. The simple spin on the power button became the hook for their offering and the brand is being rolled out in Spring 2013.

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Nissan: Shift_pulse

Getting the attention of the hordes of visitors at the Toronto International Auto Show is no easy task. Our team at CapC decided to prove that Nissan Innovation could really _shift something important - your pulse. Led by our Creative Partner/Planner, our team of artists and technology partners created from scratch this first-ever blend of art, technology and life science, raising the pulse of thousands... now that's Innovation.

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Sun Life Financial: Three Generations

For 2012 Sun Life strategy we uncovered the insight that the "Sandwich Generation" - boomers who have the dual and taxing responsibility of raising university bound kids, while also needing to keep an eye out for their aging parents - are so stressed worrying about everyone else that perhaps they aren't keeping tabs on their own financial well being. Our Modern Family approach was well suited to delivering the message that a good plan can mean Money for Life.

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Visit Original Link

Tracy Jones \ Once Around

In Fall 2012, I released my first solo album. It's a collection of 10 chapters from my creative musical journey that I wrote and performed over the last few years. Reviews have been very positive, for which I am grateful. The song I've posted, "For You", was the one that got it all rolling for me a few years ago and has remained a favourite at my live shows. The album was produced and engineered it at a couple of secret locations in Toronto and it's now available on iTunes. This URL will get you to the full album.

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Redefine Retirement

60's the new 50? 50's the new 40? No matter how you look at it, retirement and our expectations have changed thanks to the Boomer generation. This print series was created for Zoomer Magazine to launch Sun Life's new retirement planning postion "redefine retirement with Money for Life". Honouring the inventive spirit that defined the Boomer generation connected Sun Life with their target with great success. 

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Unwraping Oh Henry!

I'm not sure what's more satisfying, eating an Oh Henry bar or getting their brand new site ohhenry.ca unwrapped and into market. The animations and other experiential elements flow seamlessly from the brand TV, print, in-store and cinema and allow the viewer to almost fly through the tasty elements of the bar, which form the basis of the site nav. It's tasty work for our amazing agency/client team, indeed. Dig in!

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Choosing a new TV gets personal

Plasma, LCD, LED, 3D... so many choices. LG needed a way to help customers figure out what set is right for them. But there was another issue, with so many manufacturers out there, LG needed to find a way to move up on the consideration list. We came to the insight that when it came right down to it, a lot of people just couldn't really see themselves buying LG vs the other big players in the space. We created this one of a kind TV advisor. You start by linking yourself through Facebook Connect. From here, the entire experience is around you, as images from your photo galleries populate the screens, walls and picture frames. The concept has been so well received by LG that we are now in the process of rolling it out globally, starting with Australia and the far East. 

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Interactive Explorers

We recently launched this really cool online experience for the redesigned Ford Explorer. The experience centres around the traction control device that allows you to adjust the driving dynamic of the vehicle based on the touraine. In the experience, the Explorer traverses a hyper-real world from the city to the country, from Spring rain to Summer sand, Winter chill and beyond. Within each scene viewers are invited to watch videos and view galleries of this amazing new vehicle. Kudos to the gang at 4stroke for taking our vision for this beyond what we thought was achievable. It's worth playing with in person so check it out: http://tinyurl.com/3lxnjww Just make sure you come on back before supper, y'hear?

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A Colossal Win

One of the proudest achievements we had in the three years I've spent building the digital team at Y&R was when we were shortlisted for the Hershey Canada digital AOR pitch. We were up against tier one web shops, brand agencies and promo shops. The assignment was to relaunch OhHenry! in the online space. We presented a comprehensive masterbrand strategy, a competitive overview and analysis and three completely unique creative approaches, all of which employed an arsenal of online tactics from advertising, mobile, social and more.  We knocked it out of the park and are now doing our first projects with our fantastic new client.

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Rebranding: points.com

In 2010, our interactive team at Y&R had a unique opportunity to participate in a two part pitch. Part one was to redefine the online user experience and creative approach to points.com. The second was to take on the entire redesign and redefinition of the brand from the ground up. Long story short, we took on some admirable competitors with strong track records in the space and we won. The first (bubble) logo image is where they were. Working in partnership with my long-time collegues at Compass360 and strategic genius Josh Greenhut, we redefined the brand and positioning around the creative idea “More Together”. We then applied the insight and brand positioning we created to the UX and IA of their new site, then we came up with a smart, simple design solution. It was fantastic working with a clean slate and a client eager to take their brand to the next level.

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Dell: Green Corporate Citizenry

For almost 2 years, while we were building Y&R Toronto's Interactive group, we were also running a team of writers, designers, developers and project managers on the digital Dell business, as part of the global team. In addition to running the day to day of the Canadian operation, I spent a fair amount of time in Austin, TX, working on special global projects. The Dell Greenprint Advisor was one of them. Our client was Michael Dell and our job was to create an interactive experience around a program they had developed to help companies assess their greenness and take steps to become more energy wise. After several discoveries and iterations, we simply named the program "greenprint"; we developed an identity and design system for all communications and created a construct for a user survey, moderated by an advisor. The construct was built around how close to the park your company was located and the rating was a good/better/best system. The initiative continues to run to this day as part of Dell's corporate responsibility initiative.

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Mail is getting out of hand

When Canada Post came to us to relaunch their epost brand, we soon realized that we were trying to sell people on a product they didn't understand and that they didn't really believe they needed... yet. Suspicion around electronic delivery of confidential information was high at this time and we needed to find a way to disarm the listener, mitigate their worry and open them up to the message. The rational benefits were clear - less time spent dealing with paper bills is good, e-billing is environmentally sensible etc., we just needed to find a way to cut through and deliver the message in a way they might not expect to see from Canada Post. This campaign was "delivered" digitally as email blasts and display advertising, by conventional direct mail, in poster and Zoom Media as well as on broadcast media. Fun stuff.

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The offer is NOT the idea

I'll never forget this brief. Probably because we've all seen so many like it. It was for the GM Canada Wide Clearance Event. The brief, in brief, was "with .9% purchase financing how could you not buy now?" Sigh. That kind of brief leads to one kind of creative. The bad kind. We worked to find an insight and came up with a notion. When there's a clearance, the customer should feel in control because that's the one time they really have to sell you something. The customer finally has the upper hand. This spot celebrated that spirit and took GM retail somewhere fresh and new.

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This is Now

The launch campaign for the new Ford Fiesta was a massive undertaking. While the broadcast components of the campaign we're imported from the UK, we had a blank page for the interactive work. We wanted to build on the incredible success of our pre-launch campaign (see the augmented reality piece a few entries below). The idea behind the work is that "now" is a moment to be lived to the max and Fiesta enables that. We created an immersive experience where viewers could literally stop a moment in time, explore it and learn how Fiesta helped make it amazing. We worked with Shin Sugino and built a Matrix like bullet cam rig, with a difference. Not only did we freeze moments, we added video components so that at any given time you could zoom in and see a sliver of the action play out. Very cool. The hotspots on the experience correlated to features of the vehicle - for instance, the girl wearing 7 pieces of safety gear while playing on her scooter matched up with the 7 standard airbags on the car... The campaign was written up internationally in the press and is seen as a state of the art piece of web innovation for Ford Canada. 

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A fresh look at fitness

You're 40something. The days of hockey twice a week, morning squash games and Sunday ultimate frisbee are a too distant memory. You're a hard working career driven mover and shaker. You probably have a gym membership coming off your credit card every month but you rarely if ever go. You need a new look at fitness because you are seeing a new looking you that might not be what you had in mind. Stride is a personal training service that caters specifically to Bay Street types who are chained to their desk. The ad campaign was placed in lobbies of office towers in the core, internal washrooms and elevators. The visual says it all. Apologies for the contrast in the thumbnail - the headline reads "Change Your Shape". Stride. Health at your pace. The campaign was highly successful for the company and this particular execution was awarded that year in the US design annuals.