SmileDirectClub straightens teeth with clear aligners.
I worked full-time for them from 2018-2023.
Experience
At SDC, I was part of a tight in-house creative team. We built ads for new product launches, international openings, competitor attacks, and master brand campaigns. I started as a production designer and elevated to senior art director. A few summarized strengths are below.
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My focus at SDC was in paid social media. We found the types of assets and ads that drove performance, then worked to perfect the formula. I art directed many concepts to disrupt “the feed” or to capitalize on a new learning.
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I had the opportunity to follow many campaigns from start to finish. I thrive in the conceptual stage. Starting in a production role, I brought fresh concepts forward and made it known that I’m hungry.
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Motion designers at SDC are challenged with high volume iterative requests for performance testing and international marketing. I automated tasks and coded templates with After Effects expressions to maximize time efficiency.
2022
Performance asset shoot
Summary
I lead and art directed a video shoot to collect assets for our paid social media channels. SmileDirectClub uses giant amounts of UGC videos and our library was growing stale. Also, our library had it’s quality problems, being user generated and usually self-shot on a smartphone.
Goals
Capture video content to refresh our UGC-style asset library.
Improve quality of assets:
shooting for common aspect ratios
hiring diverse talent to better represent international markets
working with director (directed talent)
consistent lighting
Style
Natural, UGC-feel.
Shot in a large home. We utilized the space to avoid repeating backgrounds with different actors.
Results
Shortly after the shoot, these assets were used in evergreen ads and campaigns including: SmileMakers app launch, New Years, and holidays promotions.
2023
SmileMaker App Launch
Summary
SmileMaker is the new SDC mobile app that uses your phone’s sensors and cameras to perform a preliminary scan of your teeth. The business strategy behind this technology is to move up the point-of-purchase. Users can download the app, qualify for aligner treatment, and purchase immediately.
Challenge
Building the plane while it’s taking off. Months before we started building the app creative, I shot basic actions with iPhones on the UGC-style shoot. At the time, the look and experience of the app was far from finalized. Initially, this was a bonus grab, knowing we were planning a SmileMaker commercial shoot. The commercial shoot was postponed, and we used the assets I shot for launch.
Results
In spite of the chaotic process, we had everything we needed for launch. We launched the SmileMaker app supported by a landing page, social posts, CRM, paid social ads, and a broadcast spot. All of the creative featured the assets I shot.
2021-2022
Black Friday
& Cyber Monday
Summary
In 2021, I worked with a small team of designers to create a visual concept for Black Friday. We decided Black Friday doesn’t require a complicated or cleverly layered concept. It just needs to scream “our biggest sale of the year”. I worked this project start to finish, producing video templates for each paid digital channel.
Style
Deviating from our traditional brand rules with all-caps text. Absolute minimal copy. You know what it is and what we’re offering.
Challenge
As an international brand, we required ads with many dynamic components to be swapped out: language, price, offer, and ethnicity of model.
Results
These ads broke our sales records in 2021, and broke them again in 2022, refreshed with my UGC-style assets.
2019-2021
Out of home campaigns
IPO announcement in Time Square
I designed motion graphics on various Time Square boards for SmileDirectClub’s IPO announcement. Later, I built new designs for our Choose Smile campaign.
SmileShop and international openings
San Francisco, NYC, Chicago, United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong. I was lucky to be a part of a booming young brand, and have the chance to make work seen all over the world.
Bridgestone Arena
I designed motion graphics for the Nashville Predators’ home arena several times. Animating the big screens, ribbons, and “fangs” to take over the arena and flow in unison was satisfying.
2021
Direct Campaign
Vs. Invisalign
As SmileDirectClub’s brand awareness rose, we transitioned from a disruptor to a challenger brand in aligner treatment. There are many smaller D2C teeth-straightening companies in the shadow of SmileDirectClub, but Invisalign still holds majority of the clear aligner market.
Let’s be DIRECT
We selected a spokesperson (DeeDee) to deliver our message. The concept was that DeeDee is always direct and always says what she’s feeling. We used her to spin our “attack campaign” into something light and playful, while staying on message.
Social strategy
DeeDee recorded a multitude of copy lines for sound-on social platforms. The primary message was cost savings vs. Invisalign, but we also targeted the beauty, health, and teen markets. The broadcast commercial was filmed on a branded set, but we felt that would look stale on social media. To make DeeDee feel more candid, we shot her in a behind-the-scenes setting.
2018-2023
& More
Feel free to discuss any of this work with me if you’d like to learn more about it.