Concepting + Ideation
A strong concept lays the groundwork for an entire campaign and moves the messaging and creative execution forward. It’s well-defined. Relatable. Sometimes subversive. Always meant to address a specific problem or challenge. So, when you’re ready to tackle something new, something that’s going to drive measurable results, you’ll want to work with someone like me.
Client: Navy Federal Credit Union
Industry: Finance
Agency: MRM
Project: No Plate Left Behind multi-channel campaign
Role: Writer
Did you know 1 in 6 members of the U.S. military community struggle with food insecurity? Together with Navy Federal Credit Union, we launched No Plate Left Behind: a campaign leveraging AR technology that invited users to “fill a plate virtually and combat hunger for real.” Participants could choose from a range of virtual food items to fill a plate and once filled, choose how many plates they’d like to donate in partnership with Feeding America. The best part? 100% of donations raised went to food banks with large military populations in their service areas.
But how did we even get here? Because of some of our initial brainstorming, we knew 47% of post-9/11 Veterans said readjusting to civilian life was difficult. These Veterans were at higher risk for many struggles, including food insecurity, due to the overwhelming adjustment of coming home after service—but, they were ashamed to ask for help.
My AD partner and I came up with several concepts to address the military food insecurity issue, including the winning concept below.
Once we vetted our idea, we needed to figure out how to make it work. The images below show the typical user experience journey, from the initial QR code scan to the social share buttons at the end.
I wrote an email cadence targeting existing Navy Federal members, implementing best practices like actionable CTAs, compelling subject lines and personalization.
We also designed and put out several versions of in-branch posters, zeroing in on the data we collected about food insecurity in the military community. Each one featured a prominent QR code to scan and enter the AR experience.
Once people went to the website, they could choose to either donate money to Feeding America right away or to fill a tray of food in the AR experience on mobile and donate at the end.
The No Plate Left Behind campaign ran for two months. It was the first-ever AR experience for our company and the client, and has won several awards, including the Social Imapct award at the D Show. We launched with a goal of providing 500K meals. Instead, we nearly tripled our goal with over 1.3 million meals provided to help the military community.
If you’d like to see more of my concepting work, please reach out directly for examples.