How does a brand engage with new customers during a global pandemic? For the Firstleaf wine club, it took a combination of self-reflexive humor and almost prophetic timing. Firstleaf had done almost no social media creative prior to 2020, so I decided that it needed to have a voice that came from a place of trust and honesty. From there, the campaign almost built itself.
Originally written because it was shaping up to be a pivotal and stressful election year (COVID-19 had not arrived in the United States yet), I proposed the headline, "We're going to need a lot of wine to get through this year." in February of 2020, which preceded the ad by four months. Who could have imagined how true it would be?
The responses on Twitter were validating, and this was was reflected in the metrics.
The success of this creative inspired a direct response TV spot featuring the same headline as the introductory voiceover.
In September 2020, the New York Times took note of precisely how effective this message was.
During the same time period, the team I directed developed numerous other topical and seasonally-contextual social media campaigns for the brand.
