We’ve been living on Tulsa time a lot recently, which works nicely because we’re in the same time zone. Anyway, the ladies and gentlemen of Red Square Agency are ready to share the fruits of our labor with the rest of the class. Ta da! The most comprehensive campaign Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa has ever launched.

“There’s Only One” is based on a simple truth. There indeed is only one Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa, and you can pretty much live there if you need (want!) to. They’ve got it all. So we just had to articulate this, in a way that cannot be disputed and that takes the ultimate leadership position in the market.

The campaign employs vast tactical executions, from traditional to non-traditional, from TV spots all the way down to the room keys. And it tells the full story of what the brand offers, with personality and style.

We launched this past Memorial Day Weekend. In case you missed that earlier link, here’s our first TV spot: “Hotel.” Enjoy! Thanks to our great clients and production partners, and we promise to share more soon.

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A couple of months have passed without a post. Sorry about that. Let’s catch up. Here are some of the things we’ve noticed, bookmarked and talked about since we last wrote:

1. Keith Richards authored a book called “Life.” This fact alone should be interesting enough, but there are some real lessons for creativity in Richards’ story. The guy is a student of his craft, studying ceaselessly. Everything is a potential source of influence and inspiration. He also goes into great detail regarding his creative process. Grab a copy.

2. The writer behind the Letters from a Nut series of books has been revealed. I’m kind of upset it’s not Jerry Seinfeld. Regardless, this writing has been as influential on my advertising copy as anything from our industry.

3. We’ve just launched a holiday outdoor campaign for Dixie Lily. We’re excited to be working on this resurgent brand, and there promises to be more including some pretty awesome packaging work from our design arm.

4. Red Square #2 just opened. The office, which is a bit of a mess presently, houses our creative department (now numbering 24). We’ll post proper photos and more details soon.

5. “Big” announcements from Apple and NASA disappoint. Really, Apple, adding The Beatles to iTunes was something “I will never forget?” Really? And NASA, next time you tease an announcement regarding extraterrestrial life, you’d better have found E.T.

There’s plenty more, but no need to get wordy. We do have some great news coming this week. Be warned: none of it will change your world like having The Beatles on iTunes or the discovery of an arsenic-based bacteria. Nevertheless, we’re excited.

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Yankees/Red Sox. Cats/Dogs. Paper/Plastic. We could go on. There are many great rivalries out there, but perhaps none greater than Alabama v. Auburn.

As part of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama’s “Be You” campaign, we’re giving fans a chance to win tickets to the biggest football contest in the land. All you have to do is hit bcbsal.com/BEYOU and share your favorite fan story and photo. We’ll choose a winning story at random on November 15, 2010, and send the lucky storyteller to the game. So let’s hear what you’ve got.

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Our first campaign for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama launches today. Hey hey! It’s their first new branding campaign in over twenty years, and to prepare for it, we studied closely how they’ve advertised most recently. Campaigns have focused on specific customer stories told through well produced, documentary-style television. For instance, spots have featured a middle-aged man whose daughter was diagnosed with cancer, a young man who contracted malaria while traveling abroad and the HR manager of a mid-sized company. The implicit audience take away: because these people have Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, they are able to be a father, to be adventurous and to be competitive, respectively.

Sound strategy. We just needed to execute against it in a fresh way. So we began the distillation process:  BCBS exists to help its customers live life to the fullest -> BCBS provides peace of mind that allows you to be whatever you need or want to be (a father, adventurous, competitive and so on) -> when your health is protected, you can focus on being you -> BE YOU.

Be You. This articulates the key consumer benefit BCBS delivers, but does so in a very open manner, such that anyone at any stage of life can identify and relate with the brand. And though the campaign utilizes traditional media (TV, print, newspaper, outdoor, radio), we’ve added digital and social media to the mix to allow a new kind of emphasis on storytelling. We want you to tell the stories.

First, have a look at a couple of thirty-second television spots for the campaign here and here.

We also produced a series of fifteen-second television spots with the message tailored to the programming in which the spot is placed; for example, we will have spots airing in Dancing with the Stars and American Idol that play off the content in those shows. And it’s football season in Alabama, so we absolutely had to produce a spot for the Crimson Tide and one for the Auburn Tigers.

Customer storytelling has been at the epicenter of BCBS’s advertising for many years, so we built a social sharing site that allows the public to share their own “Be” stories. The site is promoted on all of the traditional media (tagged with bcbsal.com/BEYOU) and through digital media placement on sites such as Facebook, Pandora, YouTube, Weather.com and al.com.

At the site, visitors can browse stories and/or share their own. The stories are rated, are searchable and can be shared via Twitter, Facebook or e-mail. Content is moderated and monitored for appropriateness.

The “Be You” campaign is unlike anything else in the healthcare insurance industry: in its tone, in its breadth and in its thoughtful utilization of digital media. Needless to say, we’re excited about the launch. Hope you like it. And be sure to share your story with us.

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We’d be complete jerks if we didn’t thank a few people who helped get this campaign birthed in a compressed period of time. First, our amazingly trusting clients at BCBS of Alabama. Just awesome. Second, our incredible production partners: Sam Crawford and Crossroads Films, Miller Mobley, Tim Vece and Jason Dettmer at Outback Editorial, Chris Bodie, Artifact Design, Struck/Axiom, New Uniform Design and Dennis Gould at Soundworks. Thank you.

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Great American designer and filmmaker Saul Bass once said “design is thinking made visual.” We added, “yeah, what he said.”

So when it came to our first campaign for MAX Credit Union, we took inspiration from Bass and created a series of television spots that marry kinetic type and animation. And (drumroll please) here they are: Service, Spotlight, Mattress, Loan and Climate.

Long distance high fives to our friends at Shiny Object for helping us birth these bad boys.

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