In the waning days of the age of print, when periodicals still ruled the marketing world, you had to punch through the clutter to make an impact.

Role: Copywriter

Industry: Government

Objective: Today we would call it a DEI initiative, but back then we simply called it diversity hiring.

Challenge: The National Security Agency needed diverse perspectives to gain an advantage in foreign intelligence and cyber security so they asked us to develop a campaign targeting hiring more ethnic minorities.

A primary channel used at the time was print periodicals. Unfortunately, all diversity hiring ads tended to blend together. Page after page after page, they all predictably featured a headshot of a minority model with a message of inclusivity. I wanted to punch through the clutter.

Approach: This idea came to me as I was looking at a typical Equal Opportunity Employer statement. You know, “We do not discriminate on the basis of …”. And it dawned on me … hiring in all its forms is a naturally discriminatory act. So, what do employers discriminate on the basis of? And in a flash, for the NSA, whose big thing is how smart they are, I had “we discriminate on the basis of intelligence.” After workshopping it a little, the team arrived at the language on the image.

Results: Even though the NSA loved it, they deemed it too risky. But what we came to discover was that it elevated their opinion of us quite a bit. They had been questioning our ability to break free of convention and this ad showed them that we could get a little edgy if they needed us to.