MARK NICHOLAS
RECENT WORK - TV, SOCIAL, GAMING, VR
It's always exciting to get to work on something that ties in to pop culture. Even more exciting when that thing is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - for a Christmas ad that would kick off during Saturday Night Live. Of course, doing it all start-to-finish in just 3 weeks, during the height of COVID, made it a -little- more challenging, but there's always a way! This is video is just one of many social shorts from the campaign. Directed by Brian Billow. Production support from Broadway Video.
In the last couple of years, Ford has taken a huge leap into gaming. I've had the honor of leading gaming productions for that effort, and the content we produced for the launch of the game Riders Republic was an exciting chapter. In a possible first, as gamers played on virtual trails, they triggered a donation by Ford to support real world trail construction and preservation. VFX/Design by Alma Mater.
When the creative team first approached me about doing this series of fully CGI social media videos to launch the new Bronco Wild Fund, I was excited about the excellent concepts. When they then mentioned they needed to do the entire series, from design to execution, in multiple lengths and formats, at a budget of less than $10K for everything all-in, I can't say I didn't blink. But then I got right to work finding an ideal solution, and artist Jon Jovich at Dragonfly FX proved to be exactly that.
Ford's Summer Olympics campaign focused on TV and social - particularly Snapchat. The creative called for specific Snapchat videos to populate the TV spot - too specific to find and license - so we cast and filmed everything from scratch to look authentic w/ ex-skateboard-pro-turned-director Greg Hunt. It worked. Press write-ups assumed it was all found footage.
"Guardian Of Your Galaxy" was a television and theatrical promotion of Ford's sponsorship of the second Guardians of the Galaxy film, and served as a teaser for the upcoming Ford EcoSport launch. I hired director Peyton Reed (Ant-Man) at Bullitt, Method Studios for VFX, and worked directly with Marvel Studios. Approvals came directly from Kevin Feige himself.
Virtually no funding or available assets to create an eye-catching social post? We made it work. Bragging about the all-electric Mustang Mach-E never looked so good.
April Fools! There may not really be an F-150 Hidden Valley Ranch Edition, but after seeing this April Fools' post, I now kinda think there should be.
After the largest wildfire in California history, Ford wanted to do something to help. Our team came up with the plan to document and tell the story of the brave firefighters from Paradise, CA who were at the absolute front lines of the fire, and lost their own homes to the fire as they did their work. We partnered with Denis Leary's Firefighters Foundation to amplify the story and the donation.
Ford needed to demonstrate their suite of Co-Pilot 360 features on Ford.com in an easy-to-understand and quickly digestible way that wouldn't require any audio. After identifying the perfect partner in Sibling Rivalry, we came up with the "White World" approach. At an extremely low cost, hundreds of these videos have been, and continue to be, created to show off Ford's advanced technology.
Full Virtual Reality experiences for the new F-150 on Ford.com? Can do. Bipolar Studios created 4 different full VR experiences for 4 different models. If you have a VR headset, you can use it to view this video. Otherwise, though it's definitely not the same, feel free to use the arrow keys as you watch this video to simulate the ability to "look around".
This meter was adjusted in real time on Ford's social media pages during the Super Bowl, actively indicating the current level of online enthusiasm for each team on signs "powered" by the F-150's Pro Power Onboard. Partnered with Makerhouse for the production, and JPI for live data collection and execution, this low budget, high visibility production went off without a hitch.
Ford was a sponsor of the College Football Playoff exclusively on ESPN. We needed to drive traffic to the contest through online teasers (and a :30 for some ESPN games.) Only a modest budget was given, but we needed viewers to connect, so we negotiated tight deals ESPN's John Anderson and Anchorman's David Koechner. Writers at our agency were in short supply at the time, so I handled that as well. Dir: Jay Karas
Product demonstration videos are a necessary and helpful tool in any marketer's arsenal, but crafting them in a way that is anything-but-dull isn't always easy (especially given the very limited budgets typically provided for such projects). In "Demos With Drones", we found a low-cost way to make product demonstrations a bit more fun and dynamic. Dir: Louis Koerner
Ford wanted to promote Take Your Kids To Work day on their social media accounts. We thought it would be fun to let the kids actually take over Ford's social media accounts while they were there. They'd decide on the tweets, and they'd answer any questions people sent in. To seed the event, we created a series of 7 low budget "The Office"-style videos, and countless GIFs and teasers. Director/Editor: Derek Swanson