tend
2022 • Brand Campaign • Art Direction • Campaign Design • Motion • Production
tend was preparing to expand into several new markets, where brand awareness was low. as privacy changes reshaped digital advertising, the team needed a national campaign that could introduce tend to new audiences and scale across everything from billboards to connected tv.
I partnered closely with marketing, creative leadership, and product teams to help develop the campaign concept, build the visual system, art direct production, and adapt the work across dozens of campaign assets.
my role
the challenge
one of tend’s founding insights was simple: people avoid the dentist. the creative challenge was to turn that anxiety into a campaign idea that could shift perception, feel locally relevant, and remain flexible across markets and placements.
We explored a range of creative territories around a central tension: people avoid the dentist, even when they know they need to go. each direction was designed as a flexible campaign platform that could adapt across markets, messaging and channels.
initial concepts
concept 1: from the mouths of our members
concept 2: we fixed it
concept 3: dental confessions
The strongest concepts moved into a second round of development, where we tested how each could flex across formats, markets and messaging. dental confessions proved to be the most versatile platform, turning a universal anxiety around dental care into something funny, human and highly adaptable.
refining the direction
With the concept in place, we built Dental Confessions into a campaign system spanning OOH, social, digital and video, pairing hyper-local humor with Tend's bold visual identity.
from concept to campaign
erica mccarthy, creative director
tj difrancisco, copy
natalie nardello, jr. designer