red hat brand activation
This is what happens when you have $40,000 to spend, a fun brief, and two damn good creatives.
Not that $40K can get you a ton these days, we knew one thing from the very beginning: We did not want to spend the money on social media. (After creating thousands of paid social assets across nine languages and six tech topics, we were … good.) Now, it was time to do something we wanted to do from the very beginning of this creative platform:
Scare leadership.
… and sell it without a doubt.
the brief
THE DIRECTION
Is the concept:
emotional?
an experience?
entertaining?
novel and memorable?
authentic to our audience?
aligned to “Keep your options open”?
Does it scare us?
THE PROBLEM
We need our audience to notice and remember our new brand message. How do we use our $40K budget to create a moment so compelling that people will want to talk about it on their own?
THE GOAL
To elicit a positive, emotional impact with our audience that helps increase high-level brand memorability and associates between Red Hat and cloud solutions.
THE DELIVERABLES
3 on-concept experiential activation ideas that are executable within budget and timeframe, and include recommendations on timing, location, and promotion.
The project was led by myself and my art CD partner, the supervisors of the lead CW and AD respectively. We crafted the brief, assembled the team, kicked them off, and guided them along the way. We purposefully chose to keep the team small (2 ADs, 2 CWs) and cleared their schedules completely as the timeline was swift and the opportunity was big, so autonomy and focus was vital.
The team worked tirelessly, through many pivots, to land on an idea that was strategic in every way: location, time, creative, concept, copy, everything. With our existing brand campaign focused on challenging the status quo in the tech industry, wheatpasting just simply made a lot of sense—particularly in the city of Seattle during Microsoft Ignite.
THE IDEADuring Microsoft Ignite in Seattle, we’ll create guerilla marketing-style placements that call attention to the unwritten rules of the tech industry—and rewrite them to show our audience that any rule that says you can only do things one way is worth challenging.
We quickly sold the idea, and we were off to figure out the specifics. The team found an agency, onboarded them, scouted placements, and everything in between. (Pro tip: Hire capricorns, y’all.) But as the copy CD on the project, my work had only begun. What exactly were we going to say—and how?
As the project became 100% OOH placements, we needed to be strategic and purposeful. So I chose 4 core messaging buckets (working in tech, hybrid cloud, location-specific, attending events); provided voice, tone, and style guidance; and kicked off our entire copywriting team to contribute. The purpose of this exercise was to quickly find what is and isn’t working—using all of our internal strategies, POVs, messaging, research, and insights. We also talked to real practitioners and scoured the corners of the internet for authentic perspectives and IRL moments.
That led us to understand a few things about what our story should be and how we should approach it:
Say something substantial and loud. We’re not here to simply take up space.
Stick to one storyline. We don’t have 100% control of where the copy shows up, so we went all-in on hybrid cloud.
Flex when the time is right. That comes in form of coffee sleeves and drink coasters.
We landed on 8 unique wheat creatives, across 13 strategically chosen locations around Seattle’s convention center. We also created 4 coffee cup sleeves and 5 coasters that were distributed to local restaurants, bars, and coffee shops.
