I was a part of a large team tasked with global rebrand of International Business Machines. This months long dream gig at Ogilvy was formative in so many way.

I got to work under a bunch of killer creative leadership including Mike Hahn and Ryan Blank whose work years earlier on IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign completely realigned how I understood Advertising.

Hackathon at Ogilvy's Chocolate Factory
It started with a ”hackathon.” Imagine top agency brass in a room with junior account executives where the only rule is “You can't say NO." Foam core boards, breakout sessions, catered lunches, sharpie markers, and a TON of Post-It notes.

The exercise laid the groundwork for a series of sprints. Our team cycled through close to a dozen campaign platforms. We’d crank for a week, the bosses would present to the big wigs and we’d do it all over again. Building as we go.

Across creative, strategy and account, there must’ve been 30+ people on this. We’d go through these grueling weeklong sprints cranking in preparation for clients to helicopter down from Armonk and review work.

Proposing campaign after campaign trying crack it. The whole process was a master class on how to build, break down, and refine creative for a massive multi-national. The agency was totally dialed in, I learned so much.