Freelance Work
After 12 years of full-time work I decided to try my hand at freelancing. One client—Sophos cybersecurity—turned into a ten-year job. As creative director, writer, video director, and quasi-producer, I assembled a growing team of art directors, designers, animators, and fellow writers to produce 40+ campaigns. Here’s some highlights.
Question: “How can we let small businesses know they shouldn’t overthink cybersecurity?” Answer: “Dave Malarky, an idiotic CEO who always overthinks things.” I wrote and directed 25 of these. Here’s a few favorites.
Sophos’s # 1 Target: Overworked, under appreciated I.T. workers. We let them know we feel their pain.
Station domination. 4 weeks. 4 cities (Boston, SF, London, Birmingham). $5M. I led the creation of Sophos’s largest branding initiative to date. The result: 49% increase in brand awareness.
Kids dressed as adults. And I.T. Managers treated like gods. Cybersecurity is serious stuff, but I always tried to remember this timeless quote on advertising: “You cannot bore people into buying your product.” (David Ogilvy)
Another way of showing how cutting-edge Sophos tech is: Comparing it to the lame (and fake) ideas from bygone eras. Tell me you’re not a little curious about chicken-chunk beer and hairspray that can help you lose weight.
Over the years I directed a series of videos using abstract visuals and metaphors to elevate the feel of the Sophos brand. Some serious. Some fun.
How else can we show appreciation for our I.T. brothers and sisters? Puppets, of course. I wrote and directed a dozen of these.
The 40+ campaigns I spearheaded for Sophos included a handful of stunts that helped them break out of the bland persona that dooms most tech companies. I had a blast creating custom socks, T-Shirts, laptop stickers, and more – all focused on the myriad inside jokes of life as an in I.T. worker. We even started an online store where people could buy them — the Sophos Store — and buy them they did.
What began as a bit of a lark ended up being a yearly tradition that the cybersecurity crowd clamored for: Annual calendars that kept raising the stakes.
NON-SOPHOS FREELANCE WORK
A few ads I wrote for Honda (Quantasy, LA) and Kohl’s (PMH, Minneapolis)
