HAMILTON
RPM, in charge of the phenomenon Hamilton, came to us looking for ideas to make a very un-Broadway Broadway commercial.
RPM were adamant: they wanted a commercial that spoke to young audiences, in a way that was anthemic, fresh and original. They didn’t want it to feel like a retail spot, but rather something that took the central themes of Hamilton and expanded them into a message that was modern and new.
I poured everything I had into the concepts, telling myself the sky is the limit. I even provided a second run of concepts as ambitious and varied as the first, just because I knew this was the sort of client ready to take big swings. No throwing away their shot, as it were.
Click to see the deck presented at that formative boardroom moment
In the end the folks at RPM combined two of their favourite ideas into one, kicking off a months long collaborative process that resulted in one of the defining moments of my career: pitching in a boardroom to Broadway megaproducer Jeffry Seller and his suite of staff, and ending the pitch with Seller and his team talking Super Bowl.
The shoot, unsurprsingly, turned out to be one of the highlights of my career: working with top tier talent, diverse and brilliant. And a crew as equally diverse and brilliant. It stands as the best shoot I’ve ever had for this exact reason, not to mention the joy of working with one of my favourite composers of all time Sly 5th Ave,
Ultimately the project never saw the official light of day, but the folks at RPM were kind enough to encourage us to make a director’s cut. With a voiceover inspired by a renowned expert in the next generation of leadership, I was able to cut the 2+ minute original into a 60sec call to arms for the next generation of world shapers, framed under the CTA I’d always envisioned: the announcement of the Hamilton Scholarship Program.