Michael Lander

CLIENT: Equitable
ROLE: Writer / CD
SCOPE: Brand platform and integrated campaign
RESULTS: 5× higher wholesaler lead generation.

Ambition has plenty of cheerleaders. It needs a plan.

We gave each audience a distinct look and feel, adapting the imagery, design and messaging while keeping “Let’s Plan How” at the heart of every execution.

Financial Advisors

Educators & Plan Sponsors

Wealth Managers

Born Hot. Raised Right.
A franchise brand that found its voice.

CLIENT: Haven Hot Chicken
ROLE: Fractional CMO / Creative Director: brand strategy, creative direction, writing
SCOPE: Brand platform, founder advisory, franchise marketing, campaigns and loyalty communications
RESULTS: 8 new locations opened · 24 in the pipeline · 68,000 loyalty members · 0.1% unsubscribe rate · 5x Benchmark CTR

The problem. Haven’s pitch was the best chicken sandwich you ever had. So was everyone else’s.

The idea. Haven had great chicken. We gave people more to talk about. “Born Hot. Raised Right.” became the platform for a confident, funny brand with a voice of its own, from billboards to the inbox.

The work. I advised the founders, helped shape the franchise story, and used guest insights from Bikky to make communications more relevant.

The result. As Haven expanded, the brand kept one personality across every new location, and guests got a reason to keep coming back.

CLIENT: Box
ROLE: Writer / CD
SCOPE: Video series, campaign website and supporting materials
RESULTS: 5 years running · 1.2M views · Engagement above category benchmark · 22 pieces of content

Content Is Your Business.
Making enterprise software worth watching.

Enterprise software rarely gets the spotlight. Neither do the people responsible for it. We gave both a starring role, building a series around a recognizable cast, workplace absurdities and the very real value of Box. Across video, a campaign website and supporting content, we made a technical offering human and funny. Five years later, it’s still running and remains one of Box’s best-performing content series.

Your idea of what a card should be.
Cardholders had ideas. Visa put them to work.

CLIENT: Visa Signature
ROLE: Writer / CD
SCOPE: Digital platform, benefit discovery and cardholder participation
RESULTS: Effie Award winner · 23,000 ideas submitted · 28 adopted as real benefits

The problem. Visa Signature offered a hundred great benefits, but few cardholders ever found them.

The idea. Make the benefits simple to explore, then invite cardholders to decide what came next.

The work. We built a digital platform that made the benefits visually easy to browse and let cardholders submit and vote on their own ideas for new ones.

The result. Cardholders sent in 23,000 ideas, and 28 became real benefits, the foundation of Visa’s first member-sourced card benefit program. Participation gave cardholders a say in the product itself.

CLIENT: HP
ROLE: Writer / CD
SCOPE: Product concept, app experience, prototyping and launch
LAUNCH: Idea to App Store in 6 months
BUSINESS TARGETS: 1M printers in year one · Estimated revenue opportunity of $50M

Inkable: the first social printing network.
A little less feed. A little more fridge.

Social gives a photo a few seconds of attention before it disappears down the feed. Inkable gave friends a way to send something worth keeping. Take a photo or choose one from Instagram, add a filter or drawing, then print it directly to a friend’s printer. HP’s cloud connected the hardware. We made the experience feel like sending a message, taking it from idea to App Store in six months.

CLIENT: Johns Hopkins Advantage MD
ROLE: Writer / CD
SCOPE: Integrated Medicare Advantage campaign
RESULTS: 3,446 enrollments against a goal of 2,500. 38% above target.

A serious decision. An unexpected sense of humor.

Medicare advertising has a habit of looking alike. We gave people a reason to notice Johns Hopkins, using questionable everyday choices to make one important choice clearer. “When it matters most, you want Johns Hopkins” connected humor with the confidence behind the name. The idea extended across the campaign, supported by coordinated media, email and direct mail.

CLIENT: HP
ROLE: Writer / CD
SCOPE: Instagram concept development and video production
RESULTS: 900K video views · 5% engagement rate
PRODUCTION: 6 six-second loops · Shot in one day on an iPhone

World’s Fastest Printer.
Faster than a New York minute.

HP wanted to experiment with Instagram. We took its fastest inkjet printer onto the streets of a city that hates waiting. Seven six-second loops measured its speed against familiar New York moments, from hailing a cab to grabbing a slice. We brought a client along and shot everything in one day on an iPhone, keeping the look deliberately rough and native to the feed. It became HP CEO Meg Whitman’s favorite campaign of the year.

CLIENT: Visa
ROLE: Writer / CD
SCOPE: Global social platform, athlete content and fan participation
RESULTS: 81 countries · 60M cheers

Visa Olympics: Go World.
The world’s biggest sporting event. Everybody gets a part.

Visa gave fans a way to connect with its Olympic athletes through one simple act: cheer. From a personalized click to a photo, message or full user-generated video, everyone could participate on their own terms. Exclusive athlete content and personal shout-outs brought fans closer to the people they were cheering for. Across Facebook and other social platforms in 81 countries, the campaign generated 60 million cheers.

CLIENT: PNC

ROLE: Creative Director

A PNC account comes with a money management application called Virtual Wallet. It helps you track your spending, automate your savings goals and visualize what your money is doing so you can keep things in check. Our video demos put a human face on your expenses.

CLIENT: IBM
ROLE: Copywriter

This was a finalist in the B2B category at Cannes and was part of an effective campaign I created for IBM that extended into print as well. Digital security is critical for any industry so IBM was letting their business partners know, we’ve got your back. This piece was sent inside an “evidence” bag and claimed to be info about cracking IBM security. Inside was a book that was blank. We included book jacket reviews by hackers who were crushed that their livelihood was now threatened.

CLIENT: Dos Equis
ROLE: Copywriter

The successful Most Interesting Man in the World campaign wanted to bring to life the man behind the beard. So while I was working at Mirrorball we enlisted Jim Rose to host a traveling show that would embody the personality of the MISW himself.

CLIENT: Kit’s Underground
ROLE: Writer
SCOPE: Out-of-home campaign amplified through social sharing
RESULTS: More than 30M people reached worldwide

A neighborhood wine shop. A worldwide audience.
We only meant to reach six blocks.

Kit’s Underground needed the people living and working nearby to know a new wine shop had opened. We covered the neighborhood with hundreds of posters featuring strange requests, unlikely stories and reasons to stop and read. Passersby photographed them and shared them on Facebook and Instagram. A campaign built for a six-block radius ultimately reached more than 30 million people around the world.