Monterey Bay Aquarium - The Blue Whale
Traditionally, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s advertising was focused on visitation. However, their market research showed that they could shift from a visitation-focused advertising and marketing message to a focus on their conservation programs.
Our first conservation-focused campaign was a big one, literally and figuratively. The Aquarium asked us to come up with an idea that would stop people, get their attention, and make them think about the problem of plastic in the ocean. Our idea? A life-sized blue whale made out of locally-sourced plastic trash, set in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge on Crissy Field. The campaign included digital, a short film we wrote, shot, edited and produced, and social media managed by the Aquarium.
See more here: https://hubsanfrancisco.com/work/monterey-bay-aquarium/.
HUb was born in 2002, a time when flip phones were all the rage and the idea of a “dot-com” company was just starting to be a thing. As these nascent brands raced to be first to market with a well-built brand, the agency world was woefully unprepared to help. Every agency was specialized—they focused on advertising or design or strategy or direct response or production or whatever.
What was obvious to us back then was that emerging brands didn’t need help with just one thing. They needed an agency that could do everything—like a marketing Swiss Army knife (but less pointy).
So that’s why we built HUb. To help these challengers build powerful, strategic, well-loved brands at speed.
To make it happen, we blew up the traditional creative agency model. That meant building out a huge network of senior creative specialists across every discipline—basically our version of a dream team. In the office, our full-time staff of creative directors handpick the best talent for the job and then work with them to ensure strategic, visual and tonal consistency.
Since then, we’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the most amazing, important companies on the planet—all with one thing in common: Each and every one of them possesses the mindset of a challenger.
Today, we have a full-time staff of about 20 people. In addition to creative development, we have a serious strategy practice, we plan and buy media, and we’re a production company too—we write, direct and produce all of our video content. We do smart, strategically sound work that wins a lot of creative awards and, more importantly, sells a lot of stuff. Along the way, we never forget to have fun, and we tend to work with clients that like to do the same.
