WTH is Guild?

Key results

The award-winning campaign was recognized as the top Social Media Activation by Team USA and the Most Effective and Measurable Campaign by Digiday. It drove lifts above benchmark across brand awareness, familiarity, and favorability, and moved the consideration metrics that matter further down the funnel: a 7.6-point lift in "Guild is for people like me," and a 7.3-point lift in likelihood to consider working for an employer that offers Guild.

It also delivered 33.2MM completed video views, 37 pieces of earned media reaching roughly 170MM readers, and a 4.5% engagement rate on organic social against a 3% average.

The strategy

Guild announced its partnership with Team USA just months before the start of the 2024 Paris Olympics — a relatively unknown brand standing next to sponsors with far deeper pockets. Rather than compete for share of voice, we leaned into the gap: nobody knew who we were, so we made the question itself the campaign.

The audience was frontline workers who also follow sport, and every channel was given a job. OOH, audio, and paid social drove cost-efficient reach. CTV and online video carried the message. Rich media did the heavy lifting on traffic. Aligning creative to the specific sports our audience already cared about — rather than buying broad Olympics coverage — drove 3.5× the awareness lift.

The answer to the question came from athletes and creators telling it in their own words, which is what kept a fundamentally explanatory message from feeling like an explainer.

What I did

As the Campaign Director, I worked closely with our media partner to refine a channel strategy that balanced our goals around reach, awareness, and engagement. We leveraged research around our target audience of frontline workers to deploy our spend strategically and minimize wasted impressions.

As the Creative & Storytelling Lead, I oversaw an internal team of designers, copywriters, social experts, and story producers to build a cohesive ecosystem of assets that grabbed attention and then paid it off in a meaningful way. I hand-picked and contracted three athletes who I knew had authentic stories that would resonate with our audience. With an abbreviated timeline to delivery, I hired Household to handle the visual side of the video productions, but traveled to all three cities to direct the shoots and conduct the interviews myself. In post, I wrote scripts for all the video assets and managed feedback and delivery timelines.

Our goal was to make the curiosity-driving question — "What the heck is Guild?" — impossible to ignore. Then to answer it with the real, authentic storytelling that is a hallmark of Guild's brand.