With an increasing number of gamers picking up new release titles online as digital-only, Walmart wanted capture a greater share of those buying physical copies. And since they were also trying to level up their gift-with-purchase game, we knew we had to do something special for the release of the latest Call of Duty franchise.

We also knew that Walmart was investing in the testing of drone delivery, and from there a simple idea was born: what if we could take an essential part of the CoD play mechanic — the loadout drop — and turn that into the launch day game delivery experience?

With less than two months until the release, the team set to work finding strategic brand partners, creating the loadout case to work with the drones, getting the sku listed online and gaining stakeholder alignment and approvals — from marketing to the FAA.

As a judge on Project Runway and red carpet host for the Oscars, Brandon Maxwell is a genuine fashion icon - so when he was named Creative Director for two of Walmart’s private label brands, it made a huge impact to the retailer’s apparel business. Being that Brandon is a big proponent of making fashion as accessible as possible, we invited in store to do just that - show ordinary shoppers how to style themselves affordably.

Setting up at a store in his hometown of Austin, Texas, we took over the entire apparel pad and created a stage custom designed to help bring the Free Assembly summer collection to life. From there he conducted series of live-styling and Q&A sessions, working with local fashion influencers and volunteer “models” from the crowd. Attendees were also given an exclusive limited-edition tote bag, designed by Brandon himself.

When Walmart approached us wanting a way to build credibility with gamers while also driving shoppers in store, and highlighting a product mix that went beyond that of specialty retailers, we knew that above all else we’d need to be authentic to gamer culture. So we created a real-life loot box program, rewarding customers with a hyper-focused sampling event that helped to highlight the latest games, hardware, accessories and other related products while also giving gamers some exclusive collectibles.

Activating in stores across the country, these one-day drops feature a category specific catalog, custom brand pages on walmart.com, extended media pushes, and of course - the in store loot box giveaway. Featuring exclusive items, branded swag, and high value giveaways, these customer favorites have become collectors items in their own right, with previous years boxes regularly fetching 50-60 on eBay.

Now entering it’s fourth year, the Gamer Drop program continues to drive year-over-year growth in both sales and engagement, and building earned media mentions and coverage across several video game-specific publications, as well as local news media in activation markets.

As the post pandemic return to public gatherings picked up speed, Walmart was keen to offer up some family friendly experiences at stores across the country. Thanks to a fresh Netflix partnership and a focus on building grocery, an experience centered around Waffles + Mochi seemed a perfect solution. As a surprise-hit children’s show focused on nutrition and culinary adventure, Walmart was an ideal partner. Making matters even better, they had had already done a lot with in-store signage, location specific AR games, and recipe tie-ins — so a live event was a natural next step.

Centered around a mobile stage unit built out to be an exact copy of Mrs O’s rooftop garden stand, the program would have surprise celebrity hosts for each event who performed a short scripted show —interacting with both onsite puppets and prerecorded video footage featuring the stars of the show.

Beyond just the stage show, event attendees would get the chance to take a culinary adventure of their own. After receiving their very own apron - just like the ones worn on the show - kids would get the chance to visit various learning kitchen and gardening stations, and earning the same patches as the characters on the show along the way.

Having a variety licensed products all over the store, Walmart and Netflix approached us wanting to do something special for the premiere of Stranger Things season 4. As big fans of the show, the team dove into the challenge in a way that would make any dungeon master proud, and created an RPG of our own.

Signage around the store invited shoppers to help the Stranger Things gang save Walmart by navigating from item to item and completing the 4 interactive missions in order to close the Rifts opening across the store. Shoppers rolled dice to battle an AR Demigorgon, used their mind powers to keep vines at bay in a reactive face filter game, decoded messages on a virtual Lite-Brite, and navigating the upside-down through an AR exploration game - each tied to specific item throughout the store. Once they’d completed each mission and closed all the rifts throughout the store, fans were rewarded with exclusive content and digital downloads.

Sam’s Club is obsessed with making their member experience better, so when they approached us looking for ideas to celebrate Valentine’s Day at the Club in way that would not only resonate with their shopper, but would also highlight seasonally relevant offerings — we knew we’d need to look at member favorites like floral and photo services.

So we set to work designing a pop up photo experience themed to capture the romance of the season. In select Clubs across the country, our full-experience footprint featured four immersive, Instagrammable photo ops that would allow members to make memories, and capture the love. Upon entering the experience, members would be served a special complimentary Valentine’s Day mocktail along with a recipe card featuring ingredients available inside.

A Sam’s Club branded microsite would members find experiences near them, or try out virtual versions of the photo ops. Those who attended the event would receive a code redeemable for a free 4x6 custom photo book from Sam’s photo center — complete with a themed template. And since we didn’t want anyone to be left out, we made sure Members picking up online orders would also get a special Valentine’s Day treat, in the form of a flower delivered with every order, along with a card containing a link to our online hub, and shareable digital Valentine’s cards.

Walmart’s bi-annual baby sales event has been a retail marketing staple for years, but shoppers still weren’t aware of the breadth of items carried both in-store and online, so we worked with Connect - Walmart’s retail media network - to reinvent the program from the ground up. Built around heavy category discounts & a scaled in-store giveaway program, this month long event sees pop-ups in hundreds of stores every weekend for a month, twice every year.

Supported by a robust omni-channel media package, the program has extended in recent years to include a variety of strategic partnerships aimed at helping improve access to infant and maternal healthcare. Working with both national and local organizations, events have expanded to include educational sessions with pediatricians, certified doulas, and early childhood development experts. The program consistently delivers high NPS results, and has achieved double digit year over year sales lifts.

In Wendy’s quest to compete with higher-end fast-casual restaurants they test a lot of products, and official product names and themes can change rapidly, depending on ingredient availability, food costs, and consumer testing.

But Wendy’s still needed to be able to market those products on a small scale, with mass-market standards. So we created a visual system that offered distinct visual styles for products while maintaining a consistent overall brand look.

As much entertainment property as it is toy line, Rainbow High has a unique place in the world of fashion dolls. In order to help celebrate the launch of their latest season - which centered around a music and fashion competition between Rainbow High and its rival school - Shadow High, we created an IRL version of the event.

After getting their VIP photo IDs, fans could enter a festival-size tent where larger-than-life character performances took place on a giant video screen. After getting glammed up at hair and nail stations, a variety of photo ops were available for attendees to grab a new profile pic. For the true fans we even went so far as to create custom swag, and a special print edition of The Scene - Rainbow High’s student magazine.

To create Walmart’s top rated toy list each year, the retailer relies on the opinions that matter most - those of the kids who will ultimately hope to find them under the Christmas tree - by bringing them together in a centralized location and letting them play.

Challenged with replicating that experience in 1500 stores simultaneously, our team created pop-up experiences that put the season’s hottest items within reach. The Toy Lab platform was centered around carving out an area in store for hands-on play, as well as providing a reason to explore the entire category.

Through the introduction of the WonderPack (Walmart’s answer to the happy meal toy), we gave shoppers a red lens anaglyph decoder glass & a clue book and then sent them to investigate each aisle in the toy department. Upon finding all the clues (located at each participating item) shoppers were directed to a digital activation where they could see even more toys, and given a collectible Toy Lab enamel pin.

The Mars Agency has always made community service a priority, so when Bentoville Public School’s Ignite program approached us the opportunity to partner on a park beautification project, we leapt at the chance. By mentoring and directing young designers, we were able to shepherd the project through the various approval processes and execution.

Advertising for TVs on TVs is an odd proposition to begin with. Bring that into a warehouse setting where attention spans are fleeting, sound is unreliable and display settings are less than ideal, and you’ve got a pretty good recipe for ineffective marketing dollars.

We knew that in order to be effective in that kind of environment, we’d have to really strip down key benefits into tiny, digestible nuggets - essentially using the space as moving billboards. We also knew that featuring content the shopper could picture watching in their own home was far more effective than the typical TV attract reel faire. That meant that staying fresh and relevant to current popular entertainment properties was going to be the most effective course of action, but licensing agreements are fleeting - and sometimes downright tenuous. So, we had to develop a system that would work with a wide range of properties and cover a variety of different selling propositions, but keep the option of switching out messaging or visual equity without missing a beat.

Since Samsung TVs typically came in at considerably higher price point than their competition, and technical specs were often deliberately obtuse, and unhelpful in indicating superiority that would justify a sometimes 2X consumer cost, we decided to create a template for ourselves starting with a simple question: Why is Samsung worth more? To which we answered: because you get more. More color. More definition. More reliability. More of basically whatever you’re into. From there, we just chose to when focus on which single key benefit and supporting RTBs - and swap relevant content or TV models in and out according to whichever Blu-Ray or game release was a retailer big bet, or matched current sale inventory.

The Walmart TV purchaser differs from TV purchasers at just about any other retailer. At most of them - BestBuy, Fry's, Sam's or Costco, etc. - the TV purchaser is a man. He does his research, he really digs into the tech and the specs. He decides what it is exactly he wants and then spends his time looking online and in-store for the best deal before purchasing.

At Walmart though, the purchaser is more often than not a woman. And not just any woman, she's a busy mom, she's the controller of family finances, and she couldn't care less about the technical details. What she does care about is her family’s experience. And the opinions of those people she trusts - her friends, her Social Network, and the influencers she follows.

So we partnered with the Slyfox Family (popular YouTubers with a following of over 1.5MM people) to create a series of videos that explained some of the finer details of Samsung’s offerings in a friendly, easy-to-understand manner.

With a huge arsenal of different retailers, branded storefronts, and location-specific marketing promotions - the sheer volume of T-Mobile work can become difficult to grasp, especially across 5 offices in 4 different time zones.

In order to keep ourselves grounded and tied to common themes, we created a yearbook system that would not only become a guidebook as people transitioned on and off the team — but also serve as a way to showcase our work to new and existing clients.

With StraightTalk gaining share against Walmart’s self-branded cell carrier, we were asked to take a step back and re-evaluate the entire brand — from key claims and in-store fixturing to the way that new customers were incentivized to trade up on devices.

We started by doing and in-depth analysis of what our customers valued in our brand and what what was enticing them to go elsewhere. By taking the results of our research and looking at a fresh messaging platform, we were able to make a compelling argument for a complete overhaul in the way we approached potential new customers.

To kick off the Summer holiday, Duracell and Super Soaker teamed up to create the biggest water gun challenge of all time.

So we built a giant pirate themed water cannon game right on the boardwalk in Myrtle Beach during the fourth of July weekend.

Then we put the whole thing online, along with exclusive deals and coupons, and invited people to play using Facebook and Twitter.

We managed to squeeze through over 2,500 players from around the world and delivered almost 80 million impressions, while engaging our shopper in an enjoyable way.

Procter & Gamble and Walmart teamed up withe USO to make the holidays a little brighter for our service men and women.

With a program called “Operation Family Connect” they provided prepaid phone calls to deployed soldiers across the globe so they could connect with their families over the holidays.

In order to let people know, we created a national TV spot explaining the program and directing viewers to a web site where they could donate to the USO, and learn more about deployed soldiers and their families.

With the launch of the newest ProGlide razor, Gillette really wanted to reach out to a younger audience and create a shareable experience. So we teamed up Dude Perfect, a group of YouTube influencers who we knew resonated with our audience, and has over 3 million subscribers.

We took over Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA for two days and filmed some of the biggest, craziest tricks shots imaginable. By utilizing the stadium’s large displays, and product and retailer related targets, we were able to create shareable branded content that remains authentic to the v character and audience.

When Gillette launched the newest ProGlide razor, they made a huge departure from their traditional advertising. We wanted to capitalize on this with our online shopper by disrupting the experience with arresting imagery, and category and site location specific messaging, which directed users to both desktop and mobile brand stores, where they could read reviews, watch videos and get product details before purchasing the razor.

Walmart Family Mobile is a retailer branded T-Mobile cellular service, and is one heck of a bargain, but no one knows it exists - and even if they do - for most people the mere idea of signing up for phone service in a Walmart is a non-starter. However, when they teamed up with VUDU to give their top-tier customers a free streamable movie every month, right as the highly anticipated Ghostbusters reboot hit the service, we knew we’d be able to grab shopper’s attention.

Partnering with Sony Pictures, we leveraged recognizable film assets to initially catch the attention of shoppers, both in-store and online. We utilized our Event Rep system to show off the program with branded photo-ops, a take-home holographic experience, and offered an exclusive VR experience to new subscribers. We then took the celebration online with social watch events and twitter parties, complete with prizes.

When NBTY decided to re-introduce their Sundown Naturals brand to the shelves at Walmart, they needed a way to convince serious health shoppers that Walmart was a legitimate source for premium heath supplements. By creating a fully integrated campaign with a heavy emphasis on social sharing, we were able to show that we could disrupt shopper’s rountines and make a case for the retailer as a source for total health solutions.

As a higher price point item, Braun’s electric trimmers and shavers have always struggled a bit at Walmart. But during the Holidays, gift buyers are more likely to spend big. Our problem was that buyers would see the items in store, and then go home to do research online – where we were likely to lose the sale to another online retailer.

To solve for his, we brought ratings and reviews to life in store on large displays. For shoppers who wanted extra information, we included a QR code call to action. Upon scanning, shoppers were directed to custom built mobile site where they could read more reviews, check out product videos and information, and compare the products side by side.

Metamucil has been long known as an ‘old person’s’ product, in order to combat that image, the brand has undergone a complete re-imagining and is working with a new spokesperson, Michael Strahan, to tout their new product offerings.

We combined national messaging with a shopper specific communication idea to bring the product to our shoppers. In store, we dressed up the entire aisle with custom backer paper and a dimensional header, as well as an endcap dress up kit to catch shoppers out of category. Online, we created a custom brandstore, where shoppers could browse products while getting health tips and healthy Meta inspired recipes.

Wine sales at Walmart were down due to a perception that the retailer only carried sub par selections. So my team was tasked with creating a permanent display that would look premium while still holding at least 12 cases of wine and being able to stand up to the rigors of action alley. By incorporating a modern industrial framework, we were able to add a 13th case which also served as an added premium display space.

Always has been a trusted brand in feminine care since, well, always. So it’s a natural move that they break into the incontinence category. To announce the launch of new Always Discreet for bladder protection, we wanted to team up with a group of influencers who would have no qualms about endorsing a product with embarrassing connotations and helping to help spread the word.

Enter the Red Hat Society - a playgroup for women over 50 who weren’t afraid to take on the world, “old lady” stigma and all. They were a natural fit and excitedly agreed to unveil the product at their international convention.

As presenting sponsors, we were able to deliver our message to the audience we want. We took over rest rooms, video screens and the convention floor with displays and product ambassadors, and even got a little help with the announcement from entertainers Gladys Knight and Dana Carvey.

During one of their ‘project clean store’ initiatives Walmart tasked Rayovac with creating a permanent battery center display. It had to conform to both full and half pallet configurations but maintain a premium non branded feel.

By utilizing a variety of rotating platforms and gravity fed slots, we were able to maintain maximum capacity and still provide for large product messaging and education space.

When I was in college, I lived with a couple of other guys and together, we discovered that we shared a great love of beer. Naturally this ended up - like most college places - dictating our decorating style. Beer signs pilfered from bars we worked at, neon light advertisements, and of course, the bottle cap and resin coffee table. It was during the construction of said table that I realized I could use the bottle caps as the basis to make a pattern, or with a bit more patience an honest-to-goodness picture. But as the years went by, and I got more serious about actually studying these plans were left by the wayside.

I never stopped saving my bottle caps though, so fifteen years later when I had boxes and boxes of them, I decided it was either time to do something with them, or get rid of them all together, and so the Pour One Out collection was born.

Iconic portraits of the late musicians who’ve inspired me. Created with nothing but bottle caps, hot glue, color theory and patience.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to work with wood. To bend it to my will, & create beautiful items of form and function that would outlast me. But I didn’t go to a highschool that had a woodshop class, and my Dad was much more suit and tie than he was sawdust and apron, so short of meeting some mythical old man who wanted to take me under his wing - I didn’t feel like it would ever happen.

But I’ve never really been one to give up, so in late 2017 I bought a cheap set of tools, started watching YouTube videos and dove in head first. I accepted my first commissioned project (a set of nightstands) two months later and haven’t looked back since.