I had been sick as a dog when the call came in that Apple wanted to meet. It was one of those spring colds which just messes you up and makes it tough to sleep, so I was trying to rest up. Besides, the Tumblr team had been out to Chiat a bunch of times so that they could kick the tires on the platform, but it hadn’t resulted in anything yet - not that we were expecting much, since at that point Apple had never run an ad campaign on any social media platform. But the seller talked me into going, even offered to drive over from Venice to pick me up (!!!), so off I went.
And when we walked in, they immediately started showing us these animations of…dots. (It was a design cue from a series of cases they were trying to make for the 5C line.) They were abstract, but also instantly recognizable. It was like peeking behind the curtain. And in an instant, my sickness subsided; I started inventing ways they could exploit these on Tumblr, advising them on how to cut them down into GIFs and the order in which they should be rolled out. That night I slept like the dead.
Services: Creative strategy, social strategy, research