Eric Arnold • copywriter • creative director

I’ve been a baseball fan since I was a kid. So getting the chance to promote some pretty special MLB games was a dream assignment.

With all due respect to beer, the most interesting man in the world is a coffee guy. He’s a former refugee named Jack Karuletwa who escaped the horrific genocide in Rwanda, moved to America, played for the Harlem Globetrotters and then returned decades later to help Rwandan villagers recover through coffee farming.

It’s an awesome story. One I was fortunate enough to help tell with Dennis Lee, Karine Grigorian and the team at The Sidecar Collective.

https://silverbackcoffee.com

Fox Sports is giving away Terry Bradshaw’s money. And he ain’t happy about it.

2024 wasn’t the greatest year for a lot of freelancers. Myself included. But even though it wasn’t a banner year for big-brand work, I got the chance to collaborate with old friends and take on some smaller projects that were way more fun than any 10-round big-brand grindfest.

Mt. Rose was one of them.

Mark Naparstek and the team at Good Giant needed some work for their ski resort client. The brief was simple. “Mt. Rose is turning 60. Make some cool posters and OOH to plaster all over Reno in the Fall.”

Um… Yes, please.

When you’re the biggest video game in the world, there’s only one problem. It’s hard to get bigger. It’s hard to entice new gamers to come into a community of 150 million players when literally all of them are better than you.

We had to somehow make being a noob cool. So we created a bunch of videos encouraging gamers to embrace the stage when they totally suck. Because new experiences are fun. Even when they involve getting obliterated.

The videos got a ton of views. Which could be because they're super brilliant. But it could also be because League of Legends fans will watch anything from League of Legends. I prefer the first explanation.

Credits: This was a huge team effort lead by Tim Richards, Susan Alinsangan and myself. But the entire marketing team at Riot was invaluable in getting this thing off the ground.

A few years back, I was lucky enough to be a creative director on Lexus. During that time, we were highlighted on TBS’s Funniest Commercials of the Year. Which is no easy task on a luxury vehicle account. I assure you.

We also got the opportunity to launch the F Series. The first true performance line in the history of the company.

And we made a single ad that was also 1000 ads.

Among a few other things.

Cisco’s mission is to bring the power of their network to all corners of the planet. Because when everyone has access to technology, everyone has access to education and health care and ideas and other cultures. And that, hopefully, will be a big step toward putting us all on a more equal playing field.

Credits:

Agency: The Sidecar Collective

ECD: Dennis Lee

CD/AD: Karine Grigorian

The glory days when everyone wanted to Be Like Mike were long gone. So to return Gatorade to its rightful place in the hearts and minds of athletes, we created a sports anthem chant and built outward from there.

Creative Team Credits: Made this with my partner Javier Castillo (AD/CD) and Lori McMichael (AD) under the awesome creative leadership of Jayanta Jenkins, Donna Lamar and Jimmy Smith.

The conversation on Twitter explodes during the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. What are they talking about? Predictions. So we harnessed that energy. Asked the Twitterverse to make their craziest predictions. And turned the roof of SoFi Stadium into the world’s biggest Twitter feed.

A few lucky tweeters with the best/funniest/most-off-the-wall predictions got to spend the Super Bowl in the Twitter luxury box meeting and hanging with some of NFL Twitter’s biggest influencers.

Credits:

Dustin Levine: Producer

Mattio Olivotti: Creative Lead

Patrick Hodges: AD

Working on this campaign was a career highlight. We got to meet and work with some of the most incredible talent in the music industry. And I even got to sit on Stevie Wonder’s knee in the recording studio. (True and funny story.)

Credits: Steve Yee (AD) did the bulk of the work here, creating all the portraits himself. But the project would have never happened without Patrick Condo & Bob Rayburn (GCDs) pushing this thing through when it came so close to dying countless times.

“Look, mom! There’s a Jaguar on the loose.” Everybody loves a good visual pun. Or is it a play on words? I can never keep them straight.

Credits:

Agency: Spark44

Peter Buck & Matthew Page (ECDs)

Scott Clark (CD/AD)

The League of Legends Championship Series is the most popular Esports league in the world. The Cisco network, known as “The Realm” inside the gaming community, was chosen to protect the League of Legends champions from ping, lag, glitches and all other evil gremlins.

The University of Arizona asked Riester Advertising to put a new spin on their long-running “Wonder” OOH, print and social campaign. Riester — and CCO Peter Buck — asked Karine Grigorian and I to help them do it.

The state of Arizona lost most of their production budget at the last minute. But hey… words and nice art direction don’t cost much.

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is iconic for some. Semi-respectable smut for others. So creating an idea for the center spread definitely had some unique challenges. We wanted to appeal to the core readers of the magazine. But also do something worthy of a respected luxury brand that everyone could have fun with. (No bikini car washes or strategically placed mud allowed.)

The plan... Celebrate the history and appeal of the issue. While at the same time, poke a little fun at the pageantry and over-the-top ridiculousness of the whole “bikinis and cars” culture.

So we recruited SI swimsuit model, Tori Praver, built a track inspired from her photoshoot in the magazine, promoted a real-live race between two world-class drivers and then created a mobile video game so gamers could test their own skills. The result: The Tori 500.

Made with David DeRoma (CD/AD), Scott Ivener (CW) and Andrew McGuire (AD). Under the protective watch of Craig Crawford (ECD) and Alistair Green (ECD).

Just because the assignment isn't glamorous doesn't mean you can't have a little fun with it, right? In this case, Twitter superstar Melissa Barnes was inducted into the Canadian Advertising Hall of Fame. We needed to honor and celebrate her achievement.

So we turned the brief and the conversation between the creative director and account person into a surprise congratulatory message at the show.

* Any similarities between the creative director here and a real person you might know is entirely coincidental. Maybe.

I love all thing sports. I love playing them. And I love watching them. So to get the chance to talk about sports every day, work with famous, world-class athletes and get paid for it was a lot of fun. The fact that we got some cool work out of it was a bonus.

Heal the Bay does some great work taking care of California's beaches. Among many other things. So if you live in CA and wanna help out, check them out.

Credits: David DeRoma (CD/AD)

The Quest for G was a Gatorade original series. I served as writer for a season and a half.

The idea was to find and help create the next great American Olympic champion. We started with a nationwide search and found our eight raw athletes. Eight diamonds-in-the-rough armed with nothing more than a world of potential and a dream to finally reach the ultimate goal. Then we gave them the opportunity to be world class – to work with the best trainers, nutritionists and scientists in the country. The athletes took it from there.

Mark Twain is a better writer than I am. So we stole his words and then used them to sell cars.

When you do something good for nature, nature will thank you for it.

Infiniti was the first major account I worked on in my career. Still got a few pieces from those days I look back on and smile.

Remember waaaaaaaay back when we wrote headlines? And put them in things called magazines? Ahh… The good old days.

I picked up some photography skills over the years. I learned things like, stand in front of something or someone interesting to look at. And then press the button.