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Throughout Black History Month, we’re partnering with agency owner Derek Walker on a series that highlights the ideas, perspectives and successes of Black advertising professionals.
Today we’re spotlighting creative director Monty Browne and a campaign he recently worked on for AT&T. The “Selfless Selfie” encouraged people to post a photo of themselves in one of AT&T’s holiday-themed masks. For each post, the brand made a donation to Feeding America.
Below, in his own words, find out why this campaign was particularly meaningful for Browne.
Derek Walker: Why are you proud of this work?
Monty Browne: Some of my favorite work I’ve seen over the years are ideas that consist of several dots connecting to bring the idea home. It’s those ideas where someone might have just a thought, and someone else says, “Hey that’s interesting, what if we did this with it?” And from across the room another voice is chiming in and building on it even further. There were some really young people that came onto my team that had seen work where several dots needed to connect but had yet to be a part of something like that themselves up to this point.
Another reason why I’m proud of this work is because it addressed several problems brought on by Covid-19 in the same idea. Covid has had a domino effect on people’s lives. Obviously, it’s hit business hard, both big and small, and that trickles down to everyday people’s ability to provide for their families due to job loss. And because of Covid we knew the holidays this year were going to be like no other in recent history for everyone. So as the idea grew and the dots started to connect, we found ways to address more than just a shopping problem this holiday season.
How did you get here with this idea?
This was going to be the second year of AT&T’s “ThanksGifting” promotion that carries the namesake of their loyalty program called “AT&T Thanks.” While keeping that intact, we wanted to give something different to AT&T for the holidays this past year. Something that would still lean into the holiday shopping season but carry a bigger message from them to their customers. So we just started with the basics of the holiday season. What are things people might still do this year regardless of Covid-19? It needed to be something simple yet familiar to people while keeping in mind everyone’s emotional state this holiday season.
One of the several things we were throwing out there was the fact that people always break out their ugly holiday sweaters this time of year, and we figured there was no reason why Covid would put an end to that this year. But we needed a way to do this pop culture piece of clothing different. In this super connected era we all live in, we knew another thing Covid wasn’t going to stop were people’s digital behaviors in social, and this included posting selfies. What Covid did change was what was in the selfies. We realized people posting selfies in Covid masks was a trending thing. So we simply brought the timeless ugly holiday sweater into the timely world of Covid protective masks to help AT&T promote safety during what we knew would probably be the time of year where people might consider going out and being around more friends and family than usual.
So, we designed a couple different ones and gave them out to customers. AT&T was working with Feeding America during the holidays, so we simply went all in on the selfie culture and used that social behavior to get people to post selfies in their AT&T ugly holiday masks. In return, AT&T would make a donation to Feeding America for every selfie posted. AT&T wound up promoting Covid safety and helping people affected by Covid keep food on their shelves this holiday season. An extra win for us was the funny nature of an ugly holiday sweater bringing some much needed levity to people during the pandemic.
Would you change anything about this work? Why?
I don’t think it would be as much about changing the work as there were some things I wish we would have had time to build even more into the idea. AT&T owns WarnerMedia, which means there’s a lot of Warner IP and stars. I would have liked to have had time to get through all hurdles of getting these masks into some of their hands. I also would love to keep some part of this going even beyond the holiday season as Covid-19 is still here, and it’s still affecting everyone.
Learn more about Monty Browne on LinkedIn.
