After Hours Projects

Every agency I’ve ever worked for, I’ve loved working 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. doing something special for clients or the agency. Like turning the agency’s boring conference room beverage coasters into amusing messages. Or spring cleaning posters featuring our real moms and their real-life scoldings (because they’re not in the office to pick up after us), or a March Madness office pool bracket challenge to raise money for the American Cancer Society, or survey posters that make fun of surveys and posters! Sometimes it’s bringing an extra idea to life and then selling it to a client, like the after hours work for Holiday Inn River Centre and the Breathe Right nasal strips ad for a women’s magazine. At Olson, the neighbor across the street was the Basilica of St. Mary. They asked the agency to create their centennial campaign and I gladly became their pro bono copywriter.