Michael Kraabel - Creative Director

Best Buy: Big Rewards Sweepstakes

kraabel — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:53:39 +0000

Best Buy was converting all of their reward customers from paper statements and communications to digital. They challenged us to come up with a concept to drive people from a direct mail and in-store campaign to encourage members to fill out their digital profile and opt in to become paperless. We developed an interactive experience designed to show members what they could buy with a $25,000 shopping spree at Best Buy. It turns out … you can buy a lot of serious electronics.

Role:

Creative Director / Writer

Team:

Ben Dupont – Designer

Ecolab: Global Films – “Epic” :60

kraabel — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:48:12 +0000

Ecolab had recently purchased Nalco for $6.5b and needed to tell the story of why the companies made sense together. We brought them an audacious idea to travel around the world and capture people, places and things that Ecolab protects. In 6 weeks, we traveled from Minneapolis to LA, from LA to Alaska, Alaska to Brazil/Venezuela, Brazil to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to China, China to Scotland and then back home.

Role:

Creative Director / Writer

Ecolab: Purpose & Values

kraabel — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:28:20 +0000

Ecolab was struggling to rally their employees behind the company’s new Purpose and Values (P&V) statement. They came to us to help bring the P&V to life and to create a plan for national and international distribution.

We produced a kinetic type video, scored to a piece of original music, designed to bring the P&V to life and make it part of the Ecolab culture. We used a simple illustration and type style, which could be easily translated for use in any of the 160 countries they had business operations. What was initially designed as a piece to educate and excite the employees, suddenly became a new sales tool — helping to inspire corporate clients, as well. The P&V video has currently been translated into 14 different languages and the design system has now been translated to many of the diverse business units.

Target: Target.com Web site

kraabel — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:06:18 +0000

In the midst of a major platform overhaul, the team at Target challenged us to experiment with various elements of the target.com homepage. Rather than tweak their existing design, we went for a complete redesign and rebuild of the homepage – focused on increased performance (both financially and server performance).

We started with a dozen concepts before we narrowed them down to a handful we took into formal usability testing. Our tests helped to inform future refinements and to select the concepts that would go forward into development.

Over a period of several months, we tested several re-design options, including different ways to display products and offer guests promotional offers. We ran two concepts developed by my team at Schematic against the target.com homepage control design. Our concepts exceeded performance in every category. Rough estimates indicated our designs would increase annual sales, based on performance data, by a magnitude of high millions. Actual data not able to be shared publicly.

In the end, our concept work would help inform future design releases and help organize the internal team at target.com around regular content updates and product placement.

Role(s):

Creative Director / Strategists / Copywriter

Team:

Daniele Lanza – Art Director/Designer
Aaron Purmort – Design Support
Sean Whipps – Design Support
Schematic LA – Concept Design/IA

D-Link: MyDlink.com Launch Campaign

kraabel — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:42:02 +0000

We were asked to develop a campaign to bring a new line of products from D-Link to market. Most home security and surveillance cameras in the past required a direct connection to your personal computer. This new line of products relies on wifi connections, allowing the devices to be placed anywhere you can pick up a signal. With this new development, the market moved from high-tech geeks to home owners, business owners, pet owners and parents. Using the mydlink.com portal and an internet enabled device, users can check-in on their camera 24/7, with a direct audio and video feed.

Our first test market was to target business travelers who wanted to stay connected to home. We developed a series of ads for various in-flight magazines, aimed at showing these travelers everything they can keep an eye on. With new in-flight wifi capabilities, you can now connect with home, even when at 30,000 feet.

We developed the doodles campaign, having been inspired by may long trips of our own where we ran out of reading material or our laptops ran out of power. We turned to the next best thing to keep us busy: in-flight magazines and copies of Skymall. 9 times out of 10, the crossword is already filled out, but what if the ads served as a canvas for your doodle artwork? Allow the reader to dream and add their own icons to the dream mix.

Our media strategy extended to the places where people had downtime and were forced to keep busy. In-flight, taxi cabs, bus stops and more.

Role(s):

Creative Director / Strategist

Team:

Jason Craig – Design/Illustration
Amy Covington – Copy