judson f. snell

“We move... at the speed of life...”

In today’s content-is-king, SEO-driven world of copywriting, it’s a rare exception when the ask is to write something... dare I say it... poetic?

“Intrigue behind every curve. Excitement around every corner. Your road awaits...” The ask from Lexus was to create more than just excitement about their redesigned 2022 ES220 Sedan. They wanted to create marvel. Wonderment.

The resulting :60 sparks imagination, affirming the true joy of the open road.

There’s a time for deals for low APR financing and incentives.

And there’s a time to engage audiences on a deeper, emotional level. That’s what Lexus set out to do with this trailer-length video,.

“Omotenashi” is the Japanese spirit of dedicated craftsmanship combined with a zeal for hospitality. That, inside of every Lexus, is the beating heart of providing the driver with an unparalleled zeal for leaving absolutely no finer detail unrealized.

We can always discuss the “Drive-Away Today Lexus Sales Event” later.

Over the past two decades, I’ve led advertising and strategy for some of the “bigs” of the spirits world. From tequila to scotch to rum to vodka and back again. Sometimes it feels like you could say there’s nothing left that’s new.

So it’s a bit ironic I’m leading all copy for nue Vodka. When you’ve got a brand literally called “nue”, you want to do something to stand out.

We wanted to have a little fun playing off “what’s new”, centered around an everyman bartender who might be just a little too forthcoming with what’s going on in his life. I’m only putting up a few, but check their YouTube channel (and the views - we’re doing great numbers). That’s “what’s nue”.

We shot a total of fifteen original spots from roughly sixty scripts. The morning of the actual shoot, I received a message that said, “We need to do one about gnomes.” 

Yes, gnomes. 

Ever the optimist, I whipped up three contenders on the spot, picked a winner, and had our crew and bartender ready to ponder why the ‘g’ is silent. 

So what’s ga-new with you?

I have done a lot of fifteen second spots in my career and have managed to get fairly decent at delivering a thirty in half the time. This one ticks every box: Opening hero shot. Tee up the joke. Deliver the joke. Return to hero shot. Run through features and benefits. And don’t forget the tagline. 

The earned media has been steadily climbing, as are TikTok / Instagram views and comments. The court of public opinion is the cheapest focus group there is - so long as they like it.

Okay, last one, I promise. It just happens to be my personal favorite. 

We wanted to portray our bartender in the classic "Sam Malone" of "Cheers" fame. A nice enough guy, to be sure, but not without his own offbeat, slackerish approach to life. 

Maybe that's because he just found out he's part pigeon?

I left out the one about why he's started doing yoga.

Like most Creative Directors, I've worked with many "niche within a niche"-type clients - where you discover an entire business subculture that would be terrific mockumentary fodder.

For California-based Digilock, their new 6G locker systems were a seismic shift in the world of what I coined as "remote secured storage locations" (doesn't 'locker' just sound so junior high?).

What do you do? You give it the same elegance and passion that Apple would for the newest i-whatever. 

Again, building excitement around what is (to most of us) “just a locker” often proves difficult. However, it was mission critical to present PackageHold as a pivotal leap for business owners, allowing them to solve the operational issues that arise with managing operations (especially in the age of COVID-19 and Monkeypox). 

And while it’s true, creating content who’s sole purpose is rattling off FAB’s and USP’s may not get you a trip to the podium at Cannes, we delivered smart, informative creative that cemented our newly-created DigiLock brand world. The views and likes were nice, but the sales were even better.

Part of our pitch to Long John Silver’s was that they’d been rebranding on an average of once per 18 months. “People don’t know what you stand for,” I said to a room full of c-suiters. “You need to find a rallying cry… you need your 'I'm Lovin' It.'"

The brand’s biggest affinity group was the 40+ crowd. We wanted to make them celebrate everything they loved about the brand and hope that adjoining demographics would notice. Borrowing a line from 1954's "Chantilly Lace", we paid far through the nose to deliver their position: "That's What I Like". 

Our campaign launched with eight :30 and :15 TVC's that portrayed their customers as lovable, if not just the slightest bit quirky. We kept retooling the scripts and casting until we'd come up with the perfect ensemble.

Complicating things more than slightly, the client decided ten days out that they wanted to shoot in one of their actual restaurants. "Good one, you almost got me," said my producer from our sound stage. "No, I'm serious," I replied.

That hot fish oil smell does not come out of clothing willingly.

We had taken it upon ourselves to convince the brand to think beyond putting the TVCs on YouTube or maintaining a Facebook page. 

My creative partner was doodling in the margins of a script we were recording - two cartoon avatars of the brand's most popular and enduring side item. Within days, we had fleshed out Long John Silver's online content. Something literally with legs.

Introducing Pip & Hobart, two animated avatars of the brand's most loved side item of all time. Voiced by myself (the small, angsty one) and my art director (the big, oafish galoot), we created four episodes over an eight month period.

Out of everything we created for Long John Silver's over several years, this was the most fun I've ever had creating a piece of advertising. To announce their new, improved hushpuppies, we put poor Pip and Hobart through a rigorous training regimen.

Not only did we executive produce this series - and do all the audio post from my laptop, but I wrote, performed, and recorded the 1980's "Karate Kid training montage" music from my own home studio. And yes, that's my best attempt singing the chest-beating lyrics, pumping you up to "Fry For the Gold".

Remember a few slides back when I said that, in our original client pitch, that we told them their brand perception had become damaged by too many new campaigns?

Yeah, well… at least "That's What I Like" made it two years. 

We were given a new strategy to activate. Position the seafood category as better for customers' health, as well as the environment. A new website and web / tv ad campaign told their customers to "Think Fish".

The trickiest part about this campaign was to keep the public from accusing us of building a bridge too far. I've certainly pushed the boundaries of moral relativism.

We took the high road this time around, even if the road was a bit twisty. The thrust was to simply focus on some ugly truths about consuming farm animals. And we never said "we're better." We just said "hey, fish comes from the ocean, cows don't." 

We steered a wide berth around coming right out and saying that battered and fried seafood was at all "healthy". That's how the crumblies crumble sometimes.

For decades Monstanto had been taking the same approach the exact same way, using tables, numbers, and testimonials to sell their venerable seed business, Dekalb. 

Outside of a second grade field trip, I'd never been on a farm. So we set up a few low-key catered get-togethers in places like Mason City, IA and Mankato, MN, inviting both current users as well as non-users. And we listened.

We chose to inject a little bit of attitude and grit to the mix, using a line we heard from lots of the people we met. "That's why I go with Dekalb." Tagline? Done.

With the big 1-0-0 upon us, we needed to come up with something that could actually stir something in the viewer. Bear in mind, we're talking about corn seed here. That's like trying to hit you in the feels for fifty years of Tang drink mix.  Despite the big birthday, budgets were tight. A trip to the Library of Congress archives netted us some decent transfers of old farm footage, and some of the farmers we'd worked with over the years gave us some 8mm home movies to transfer. I wrote the script, created a rough edit, then ducked into an empty office to read the voiceover. Voila, the perfect birthday cake was baked.

With legacy brands, recruitment is everything. Long regarded as the preferred drink of golfers and the well-heeled the world over, we created a 360º advertising and promotion campaign aimed squarely at the burgeoning “urban influencer”, the mental image you get when somebody says, “hipsters in Williamsburg”. 

It all started with the scotch-marinated wisdom of founder's son, Tommy Dewar, whose musings on life, work, politics, and the world. The “Dewarism” was born. 

Spirits were finally being allowed on the airwaves. So we started there.

Marketing to this crowd takes a deft hand, a client with an appetite for risk, and the ability to position yourself among your audience, not stand up on a soapbox and start selling your magic nerve tonic. 

Speaking to the reality of the average 28-year-old in Seattle or Boston invoked the classic adage of "two ears, one mouth." We did what any smart advertising professionals would do in this situation: We listened.

So whether it was your friend walking down that aisle or your casual disdain for middle management, we had a commercial that spoke to your soul. 

Dewar’s owns a significant place in the history of America’s Prohibition period. While the 21st Amendment was awaiting FDR’s signature, Dewar’s had several ships loaded with casks of their whisky waiting just off US shores. 

This was the perfect opportunity to become many Americans’ first legal sip of freedom. And, as the 75th anniversary of prohibition’s end, we created “Repeal Day” - giving our fans what I described as, “the thinking man’s ‘alcoholiday’.”

(* Fun Fact! I created this music track at my desk, starting with a ‘borrowed’ piece of period-appropriate ragtime. Just add breakbeats, bass, edit to :30, and voila!)