Chris Bluma

I always wanted to work on a campaign with a gigantic budget. And, hey, fake it till you make it, right?

You have a hot assignment to create a campaign for Toro lawnmowers. But there’s a catch: the budget is less-than stellar. Oh, and the timeline is abbreviated. What do you do?

Well, my partner, Nicole Meyer and I made cartoons.

With top notch experts and cutting edge treatments, Children’s Health is one of the premier pediatric hospitals in Texas. I worked on the brand for the better part of a year, creating countless print, ooh, social and banner ads. The following is a small selection of work from that time.

Sadly, the agency relationship ended before I could get a crack at TV. But, on the bright side, I learned a whole lot about pediatric care and healthcare in general.

The retail giant had been running a startup accelerator for years. It was successful but it lacked the kind of distinctive branding Target was and is famous for. We developed a look and voice that spoke to the program’s core mission: to Shape the Future of Retail. And we legged it out with a new website and marketing materials

To Vikes' fans, football isn't a game, it's a battle. And they dress appropriately in horned helmets, shields and sometimes even full-body armor. So when the lottery released a Vikings-themed scratch game, we invited real fans to kick off the game in a high-energy commercial. They brought their passion for the team. And their battle-ready, game day attire. 

Fun fact: The game ended up breaking sales records to become the most successful scratch game of all time. Which is very cool. Almost as cool as full-body armor. 

As the social agency for B-Dubs, it was our job to monitor online chatter about the NFL playoffs. We noticed something interesting: Football fans tweet about every freakin' thing that happens during a game. Every touchdown. Every fumble. Every halftime show dance move. 

We took these tweets and turned them into post-game, ESPN-style analysis. The resulting videos were viewed about a million times. 

Brach's had a new collection of treats to introduce. Our first thought was free samples. Our second thought was to throw away our first thought. Then, after a few dozen ideas, we went back to our first one, with a little twist. What we ended up with was a free sample for the digital age: The Brach's Virtual Taste Test.  

With floating ingredients like chocolate and caramel, the site is a treat for the eyes. And with mood music to match each snack, there's something for the ears as well. 

And every user who completed the taste test got a coupon so they could try the snack in the real world. 

Few things get fans on their feet like a T-shirt cannon. So we brought the excitement of those iconic cannons to Twitter with the world’s first Tweet-Shirt Cannon. A teaser video kicked off the campaign. Then, on select game days, we launched dozens of shirts to fans who used #TweetShirtCannon. The intro video was viewed 100,000 times. And after six games thousands of people used the hashtag. 

The lottery is about more than just champagne wishes and caviar dreams. It's about saying "I'm in" to good times. This campaign focuses on those who opt in for excitement. 

 

Trolli's tagline is "Weirdly Awesome," and they've got the Tumblr page to match. These are just some of the many things I've contributed to their page. 

NOTE: The gummi worm tripping a runway model was one of the most popular GIFs on Tumblr in 2014. Which I think is pretty funny. But then, I have kind of a weird sense of humor. 

PHH Home Loans are a fairly big player in the mortgage game. Problem is, nobody's heard of them. This print and outdoor campaign was a small step in correcting that. It was all about living your "Life, happily ever after." Because who doesn't want that? 

I worked on Polaris for the better part of a year. In that time I made countless promotional videos, a couple brochures, and a bunch of print ads. (And I learned a lot about off-road vehicles in the process.) I can’t share the brochures right now because the vehicles they covered haven’t been released yet. But here are some of my favorites ads from that time.

B-Dubs' fans have a huge appetite for fantasy football. So when we asked them to share their fantasy team names with us on Facebook and Twitter, they did. By the thousands. To reward them, we quickly created logos for some of our favorites. And the fans ate ‘em up. Once word spread about what we were doing, requests started pouring in. Of course, we couldn’t make logos for everyone. In the end, 24 lucky fantasy team managers scored custom avatars. And the logos made for some tasty content on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Scroll down to see the entire collection. 

UV Vodka is known for its brightly-colored bottles and dessert-flavored spirits. In other words, it isn't for snobby, pretentious types. We created the "Be UV" campaign with that same free-spirited attitude in mind. Each ad is like a little permission slip to just be yourself. And enjoy some tasty vodka while you're at it. 

Is there anything funnier than a branded April Fools Day joke? Yes. Many things, actually. 

Still, I can't help but like this Fools day post for B-Dubs. Mostly because this jacket was actually made of real napkins. And, after the day of fools was done, we gifted it to a lucky B-Dubs fan on Facebook.