Special group // 2023 - present

The amazing launch of the season long campaign, where we uncover and convince the NFL fans that the only reason that there is an NFL is to sell them food. Matthew McConaughey figured it out and it is his mission to convince Christian McCaffery and the fans the real story, so far he's not having any luck.

A part of the Uber Eats / NFL season long conspiracy campaign where we convince the fans that Football is for Food, this is the best performing social content for Uber Eats of All Time !    Not surprised as Matthew killed it. 

We are are totally happy that you are wearing giant blocks of cheese on your heads, we are just pointing out WHY you are wearing them. Even if you don't know it , Uber Eats does.

We sent Brian Cox "Back to College", as it turns out the discount that the students were getting by using Uber One for Students when they ordered their tacos were to good to pass up. Even though Brian doesn't want to answer 20 fucking questions, he needed these tacos.

Special Group has been making Uber Eats spots for the Super Bowl in the US for 3 years. They went all in with us on this one, from Rachel reuniting with Ross, the Beckhams fresh from their hit documentary, Jelly Roll being the hottest thing in country music, and even Usher forgetting that he just did the half time show. This was a massive effort, that ended up as #4 on the USA Today poll on the day with 1.7 billion impressions. 

Around 50% of the people that tune into the Super Bowl just to watch the Half Time Show. Usher crushed it and prior to our shoot he let us know that he was going to roller skate for a part of it.  This made a perfect set up for comedy, when for post game media, we made a spot of Usher forgetting how to skate, because he forgot that one thing for Uber Eats.

Almost every vignette we shot for the Super Bowl spot, we did the coverage to make its own single spot, for all media an social platforms. 'Pants' had us rolling from casting to the finish. The Canadian lawyers didn't like we showed his tights whiteys, so we did make a longer shirt for our friends up north.

Uber Eats asked how we could launch this Super Bowl campaign, we started by landing one of the most famous couples in the world.  Leaning into their hit documentary, we re-wrote one of the most iconic scenes to tease out the campaign that was coming. It worked,  went viral as more than 75M people re-posted the spot, Victoria Beckhams' fashion company sold out of "My Father Drives a Rolls Royce" t-shirt she wore in the spot. And multiple media outlets touted that we had already won the SB ad game before it started.

Fox Sports NFL Broadcast team knows that Terry Bradshaw was one of the best to ever call a game in the booth. His funny "country" examples and analogies needed to be replaced in the booth on game day. So we came to our clients with spots of Greg Olsen channeling the Terry's quirky deliveries, but Greg went maybe a step to far... and we are glad he did.

Greg shows up with gifts for the broadcast team, everyone is thrilled except for Kev. The whole team chimes in to help sell it to him but no dice. Unfortunately, Baby Kay Kay, the jacket has already been made.

The Fox team thinks that Kev needs a new catchphrase to help his popularity. He reluctantly asks to hear what they have come up with... ummm not good, funny, yes but not good. "sack-a-roni and cheese!?" 

Who knew that Dame Helen Mirren was a football fan and also a Cheese Balls fan. Apparently nothing makes the Dame more mad than running a Jet Sweep on 3rd and long. Don't piss off the Dame !

Idrs Elba doesn't have all the answers, thoug opening a beer on the corner of the table is something he knows how to do, mainly to keep the party rolling. Next time, check if its a twist off before you take a chunk of the the kitchen counter !

Idris Elba's Inner Voice is telling him that he is the king of the castle, even when it comes to the tiniest of things like the fruit flies that have started to emerge in his kitchen.  A quick order delivered by Uber Eats, gives him the tools to protect his castle, a red solo cup, saran wrap, some fruit and wine along with some long tooth picks. When he starts to get carried away with his success, his real life wife appears in the kitchen and asks what he is up too...

maybe Idris is not the alpha.

2000+ unique out of home boards across the world. 

We created one of the biggest OOH campaigns of the year, where we had to make static and digital executions that were shot, animated, adapted, translated and trafficked to thousands of versions to billboards, subway cars, buses, buses stop benches, airports, Times Square, virtually anywhere possible

in almost every major city across the globe. We also made 8 spots but it seems excessive to put them here...

The video above gives tiny snapshot of the campaign. 

This 2 minute extravaganza ran during half time on the big screen in Atlanta's Mercedes Stadium for 70,000 fans and simultaneously on the broadcast to 130M.  

Over 6 shoot days in 4 different cities 50 current and former NFL players made this unforgettable. Add in 12 teasers and a television show about the making of the spot to round out an incredible Branded Content campaign. Landed as the #1 spot on the game on the USA Today poll.

ESPN's College Football Programming is the most important event on their schedule. The ask was to make a spot to get their rabid fan base psyched about the coming season, no matter their allegiance.  "Who's In?" was the campaign with 4 spots with as many teams represented as possible, firing up the fans about the new season to come.

Frito Lay called and were going to roll the dice that the 2020 NFL season wasn't going to get cancelled because of Covid.  They assembled NFL's top tier players and got Marshawn Lynch to lead us through the story rewritten of course, to kick off the season.

Frito Lay then called back and decided to bookend the season with a "twas" sequel. This time a string of Hall of Fame players were brought it and Marshawn Lynch again lead us through the story, rewritten of course, this time about the all-time great super stars of the game.

Katie is the first woman to ever coach in a Super Bowl as the Offensive Assistant Coach for the SF 49ers. Her story needed to be shared and Microsoft wanted to do it on the biggest stage there is, during the historic game when she coached. 

William H. Macy tells us a story about how Woody Creek Distillers came to be in this Branded Content music video that launched a 8 spot campaign, that touted just like Macy does "To Live like a Bad-Ass". We got paid in Bourbon... Not bad.

Rivian came calling 4 months before their global reveal, to tell the world that they had a created the Best Electric SUV ever. That might have been true but to get to world to believe it they needed to prove it was. The CEO built a SUV for us to shoot and we took it to Oregon under his orders  "try to break it".  It ran beautifully as did the film, spots, content and the Story or Rivian, all in 3 short months, just in time for the reveal.

We shot 12 mini documentaries of the first responders that had save NFL players and cut an emotional :60 spot that the client loved so much they put it on the Super Bowl. The spot finished #9 on the USA Today poll and #1 most digitally shared spot measured by ACE Metrix.

Coach Lynn was hit by a car and survived because of the quick actions of the First Responders that came to his aid. Until this moment, that we captured on film, he had never met them. This spot ran on the Super Bowl as the final emotional piece to engage the audience and landed at #4 on 

the USA Today Admeter.

One of the most comprehensive branded content campaigns ever created, Verizon's Super Bowl campaign consisted of 12 mini documentary films, a dozen spots for the NFL playoff run, a spot to convince consumers to upload their own story, a Super Bowl spot and a half hour documentary that ran on CBS Networks, equally unprecedented was the length of consumer engagement with the brand.  Landing at #4 on USA Today SB poll, #1 digital share and multiple Cannes Lions.

VW was looking to re-launch the Jetta in a while a unique way, where the focus was the the young post college first time car buyers. The answer was Steelhead, the the directors, editors and amazing CG department, we created an entire new approach, highlighting all the features of the new design. 

This is a film that shows the whole process of creating the campaign.

Our Pandora clients started PodCast with Questlove as the host and engaged Steelhead to make a series of animated Instagram ads to promote the shows using the audio from the episode. 

The ad and music press went crazy when we launched a fake Pharma advertising campaign and website that was a misdirect filled with easter eggs for the release of Eminem's new album.  From the first social post from his manager, die hard fans tried to put the pieces together on reddit, it went bonkers from there. Steelhead's first Cannes Lions came from this work.

The Christmas Eve Santa legend with a twist, this time Santa is the bending the rules to have something go his way.

The Global Launch of the VW AllTrak, 100% handled by Steelhead. We were asked to go to the southern hemisphere to find winter conditions and put the AllTrak through it's paces on film for the campaign and auto show reveal.

One of a dozen short documentary stories we shot about the families that have been running the dairy farms of California. In most cases for generations, which show their on going dedication to their way of life.

The consensus #1 spot in the world in 2010, The most watched automotive commercial of all-time on YouTube.

#1 Spot on the Super Bowl USA Today AdMeter, Multiple Gold Lions and winner across award shows all over the world.

The story of how we got to this moment is just as good, but you have to ask.

How do you get the Taco Bell audience prepped for a Super Bowl spot that is about to show a bunch of geriatrics 'out on the town' for a night of debauchery? You put their leader on a modified Jazzy that can go 50mph and let him loose on a football field as the SB teaser.

Taco Bell reached out to Deutsch after the success of VW Mini Darth SB spot and literally said "Give us some of that. The results were this fantastic comedy spot that shows that fun while young is only in your mind. Many hours spent negotiating with the band as their song had just been on it's #1 Chart run as we wanted to "re-do it in Spanish"... mission accomplished.  

This 3:00 piece of content shook up the Fast Food Breakfast world as Taco Bell continued to turn up the heat and take McDonalds market share. Why eat the the same old thing every day when you could go to Taco Bell an spicy it up. Get out of your typical routine.

Does anybody really know the actual lyrics to Elton John's "Rocket Man"? Apparently not, but one couple gets more clarity in this spot about VW's sound system in the new Jetta.

Cubs fans waited over 100 years for their beloved Cubbies to win the World Series. When Playstation made MLB the Show with graphics so good that it felt like you were watching an actual game, not playing a video game, it answered the "so what would happen if they actually won? question... So, we took over Chicago and showed them how it would feel, 3 years before it really happened.

Mophie owned the majority of the market share when it came to back-up cell phone batteries without doing any traditional marketing. They came to Deutsch to slam the door shut by making a Super Bowl spot where the entire world spins into chaos when the most powerful entity there is, has his iPhone go dead. 

There were actually VW 2 spots on the 2010 Super Bowl,  they were launching the new Jetta but they also wanted to tease that the new Beetle was coming later that year. Black Betty was the spot that showed the new silhouette, It ended up #4 on the USA Today AdMeter and won multiple awards... but because of Mini Darth it almost got over shadowed.

Hard to believe but at one point Netflix had to advertise to tell people that it was a service that we couldn't live without. Bringing family around a favorite movie at the holidays was better when things just didn't seem to go as planned. The cherry on top was Lorraine Bracco did the voice over for us.

It took 4 years for Playstation to approve this spot to go into production. A character from every game on the platform needed to be seamlessly woven into the storyline and approved by all the game developers. At over 2 minutes in length was the perfect story to engage the PS fans around the world. It ended it's run with multiple Lions and discussed on stage at Cannes.

This idea was discussed for 6 months in the legal depts. for the obvious reasons. When we finally go the green light,  we cast 40 people across the country legally named Ronald McDonald brought them to LA and documented every moment to tell the story behind the campaign.

The first of many spots in the campaign where we used 40 real Ronald McDonald's to catapult Taco Bell's launch into breakfast. Directed by famed documentary Director Errol Morris, multiple Lion winner and proof that a challenger brand can find an angle that resonates with consumers.

The campaign and the Super Bowl spot that started the run at Deutsch. Bringing back the iconic game and putting VW back in the spotlight after they had lost there way as a brand in the US market. Final "punchline's" were being tossed around needing a big memorable moment for the audience to take-away, so we figured out how to get Stevie Wonder to throw a punch at Tracey Morgan as our finale.

When you made the best and Most watched automotive commercial of all time, the entire planet is wondering what the sequel would be.  This teaser for the follow up to Mini Darth, we threw this curveball a week before the Super Bowl. Thanks to John Williams who thought this idea was genius and let us use the song (again) in a slightly different adaptation.

After Mini Darth, following up with Star Wars seemed obvious, maybe too much, so the client asked for other ideas... Everybody loves dogs, so how about a dog in fat suit? Followed up by a critique in the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine? By the only person in the galaxy that doesn't like dogs? Got it. 

The new VW beetle convertible launch needed an idea that consumers would recall and show the unrelenting loyalty of the fans that love to drive the Beetle. That they would be willing to drive it even in winter, with the top down, the issue was the unforeseen circumstance is caused, brought to life with the direction of Noam Murro.

The 1st ever Instagram Scavenger hunt for an automotive brand, VW launched the new Tiguan campaign with a wonderful spot shoot in NYC with a rogue Thanksgiving.Day ballon the got loose and this Instagram story to chase him and the new Tiguan down all over the greater NYC area.

Selling a vehicle is really about showing the consumer the features, when VW talked about the new Tiquan, the main focus was to show how safety was the priority when designing the car. How'd we do that? By giving a kid a bat.

At one time or another, we all lose our keys... 

with VW key fob, no matter where they end up, you can still unlock and start the car if you get close enough for the Intelligent Keyless Access to work. 

Yes, we checked with the lawyers. Directed by Noam Murro, this was a favorite in the features campaign.

The first time anyone ever saw what a Tile could do it was attached to this little girls favorite stuffed animal. He was lost but thanks to the Tile he wandered through this magical journey back to the place where he was needed most.

JT's 20/20 album added 3 more songs only available through Target. So we reached out to 20 super fans that were chosen to sing Justin’s new songs, only to be surprised by the superstar on set.  Justin changed it up each take and solicited great reactions from the many surprised fans. It ended up being the best selling album of JT's career.

We built the set into a mysterious, forest-like setting, echoing the album’s focus on stories of love and magic told through a lens of mystery. We collaborated closely with Coldplay for the creative concept of the commercial, capturing the essence of the new single. In total, more than 500 paper stars—featuring lyrics to “Sky Full of Stars” handwritten by Chris Martin were hung on the set and then on the SNL set and then they traveled with the band on their tour. 

“Take Back the Night” was the second commercial shoot for Part 2 of the 20/20 album. Just thirty minutes before this performance, JT tweeted from the stage, that the first 150 people would get in, teasing his millions of followers to find their way to the famous Maxwell's in Hoboken, N.J., Well 1000's of fans showed up and JT did multiple shows to appease the crowd.

During the 57th GRAMMY Awards, we created a history-making event by featuring a live performance by Imagine Dragons. In the first live commercial in the history of the telecast, it took more than 22,000 man hours, 2,500 square feet of LED lights, 575 people, 15 semi-trucks and 2 days of rehearsals for the team and Imagine Dragons to pull off. The NYT said that best part of the Grammy's telecast was the commercial by Target.

It all started here, the relationship between Deutsch and Target was born from us doing a user generated spot cut at Steelhead, The brief was to show that Target had donated 1 Billion dollars to K through 12 public schools across the country and that helped the educators propel those kids to college. The way we showed that was the creatives discovered that a lot of kids and families will shoot video of themselves opening their college acceptance letters. The result one of the most emotional spots we've done, that open the door to the rest of the Target Marketing for the next 7 years.

I also oversaw the Experiential Production Department at Deutsch, This experience won the Grand Prix at the Experiential Award show in 2012. After the commute ended on a Friday Night in NYC, we assembled a 1800 sq ft Dollhouse over the weekend so when the commuters came back in work on Monday, this was there. Filled with products from the launch of there home goods business, Threshold, customers could scan the QR codes and add the products to their online carts. Covered by all the major networks on that Monday morning, it became the best experiential installation of the year.

40+ performers, a crew of more than 250 people, from lighting and makeup artists to backup dancers. Seven costume changes. The largest soundstage in North America, on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif and Grammy-winning artist Gwen Stefani, amped up and at the top of her game.   Those are just a few of the elements that we brought together to create the official music video for Gwen’s new single, “Make Me Like You,”  on live TV. Shot in a single take during a Grammys commercial break, the video came to life as millions of fans watched it unfold from 21 different camera angles.

We got on a amazing storytelling roll with our client Travelers, a phenomenal  group of clients that completely understood that making an emotional connection to the brand in this category was crucial. Wonderful scripts, huge production and perfect visual effects, where every frame is crafted made this fantastic story and it ended up with an EMMY nomination. 

This spot kicked off the 'your insurance needs to be in synch with your life'   campaign strategy. Beautifully directed and filmed in Prague, by Noam Murro the misdirects in this campaign always made us laugh. 

Once upon a time, before cars and phones had maps on them, we all needed a Garmin. The sector leader they wanted a campaign for the holidays to boost sales, The team "re-wrote" a Christmas classic and made a comedy campaign that we all laughed at, The hardest part was the amazing bus-affairs team getting us the clearance to use the original sheet music to the holiday classic.

If one were walking down one of the steep streets of San Francisco and tripped, would you be able to stop? This award winning spot, shows one potential outcome. Amazing VFX by WETA, won at  VES and was an Emmy Nominated spot. The perfectly score music track make this a favorite.

Chopper's concern over what might happen to his bone while he is asleep, is magnified by a perfect music cue  "Trouble" by Ray LaMontagne. The lyrics and edit are perfectly cut to draw the audience into Chopper headspace where solace is only found by Travelers.

This campaign has multiple amazing spots but this far and away was the best of the bunch. After we established Jerry as the lead character of these traveling business people, early in the campaign,  we were allow to go out the the edge of what was possible. Thanks Holiday Inn !

We talked to the best directors on earth about doing this and nobody could understand why we wanted to do 'match cuts' to get in and out of every scene.

 Answer, because it's never been tried in all of the amazing Nike brand spots that had been done over the years. 

The result, The #1 consensus spot in the world in 2001, multiple Gold Lions and winner across every award show it was entered in culminating in 

the EMMY for Outstanding Commercial of the Year. 

As we all saw it unfold in realtime, the momentum of the music video components were coming together, so Nike Marketing asked us to go to NYC to track down more Streetballers and NBA Pro's and legends to be in the spot. Then Luis appeared on a casting tape and the greatest handle on earth was discovered. Ira Glass even dedicated an entire episode of This American Life to Luis' story.

Here is the link to the American Life  segment about Luis  "The story of two amateurs meeting the pros. One is a teenager in New Jersey; the other, our reporter. Joel Lovell visits 19-year-old Luis Da Silva, one of the stars of a popular series of Nike commercials featuring professional and amateur basketball players doing dribbling tricks. And Luis didn't even start for his high school basketball team."

www.thisamericanlife.org/192/meet-the-pros/act-one-5 

The first ever legitimate piece of Branded Content, before we knew what the phrase meant. After combining one of the best music video directors in the country with legendary dancer/ choreographer Savion Glover and then add Africa Bambaatta's Planet Rock and finally mix in the best sound designer in the country, we created this 3:00 music video that debuted on MTV's TRL as content. 

At the time this was produced, the greatest cyclist the world had ever seen was in the middle of his run. Starting with Jerry Seinfeld, everyone that was asked to participate in this comedy spot said yes. We ran around the country shooting for 2 weeks and then to the Swiss Alps to shoot the punchline.

The 1st campaign I produced for Nike when I got to wieden + kennedy. It was an eye-opening first project that showed me the influence of this agency and this brand. 6 New York Yankees playing stickball in the streets of Harlem against 6 NY Mets, with 4 Hall of Famers sitting on a stoop providing commentary. 3rd Base ended up as one of the Adweek's top 10 best spots of the decade.

Viral before the advertising industry starting using the word to define sharable content that people actually shared. There is a way longer story that goes with this spot but I will say that; we did talk about it beforehand, it was not "discovered by the director and he turned the camera on" and yes every frame is real. I even sent the dailies of all 5 takes to ABC News for proof.

Before he had "issues" Michael Vick was the most exciting player in the NFL. So exciting in fact that the creatives at w+k thought this is like watching a player in a video game or an amusement park ride. So "The Michael Vick Experience" idea was hatched, the beauty of this was instead of doing it all in CG, we created the as much of it as could practically to get the real contact with the players and our hero in the same frame. 

SB Nation called it "The best NFL spot that Nike ever made and wanted it to be real."

At the height of the fame, everyone want to hit a like Tiger Woods. This spot imagined what it would be like to be a golfer at a range when Tiger walked up and started hitting balls right next to you. Cue the music, a Cannes Gold Lion winner and EMMY Nominated.

Lance Armstrong was the King of the World when we got the call from the Nike CMO to make "the greatest cycling spot the industry has ever seen".  Cut to a spot featuring geese from Winged Migration , a real live freight train, a herd of Bison, the kids from the cancer ward at Austin Children's hospital, and 125 cyclists chasing Lance through 12 square blocks that we shutdown in San Francisco.  

One of the 1st spots that unleashed more than a decade of stop-motion characters sucking down Lipton Brisk. Produced in London with puppets created by MacKinnon & Saunders, the best part was showing it to Stallone and him loving it, wanting to do his own voice, stating, "I see what you did there, that is the Rocky 1 voice."   Yes that is correct, Mr Stallone, it is the original Rocky 1 voice.

AMD is the computer engine behind the creation of most major video games and has been since the beginning when we made this spot in 1998. Gondrey at the height of his powers, shot every scene on film and his CG partner company BUF in Paris, made all of the characters and world 2-D, except our hero, who of course saves the world. It then won VES Grand Prix best CG spot in the world 1999. 

Remember "Bizarro Jerry"  from Seinfeld? Well he was the perfect actor to cast in this Budget Rent a Car spot, promoting their luxury line of cars.  Acting as an international playboy driving around during on a beautiful night in Los Angeles, until he has to return the car and get back to work and reality.