How often do ideas from a pitch deck end up becoming a reality? Well, in my experience literally never, with the exception of this single one. Back in 2018 Visible, Verizon’s new, entirely app-based phone service, came to us to pitch for their social media creative. Like most pitches, there were lots of late, sleepless nights, vivid work-related nightmares, sweating, tears, you know—the works. We had 10 pages to show our work in the pitch. Yes, 10. Of course we did our due diligence to make sure every single page was strategic, brilliant, and social media genius…except this one. We had this idea of the phone non-store, and even though it wasn’t a social idea, we were attached to it. So we framed it by saying, “hey do this in real life, and it will go viral on social.” (Fingers crossed, of course.)

Well, thankfully, we won the pitch. And along with winning the social media aspect of the account, we eventually took over everything and that’s how this baby finally came to life (and ended up on the Cannes Shortlist).

So how’d it work? So happy you asked.

Since Visible is an all-app phone service, we used what we didn’t have to differentiate ourselves in the market: brick and mortar stores. We did pop up non-stores all around the country, painted them this extremely subtle blue, and named them “404 Store Not Found.” When people took a closer look, they also found copy directing them to the Visible website where they could learn more about the entirely app-based service.

So yeah, along with making it on the Cannes Shortlist, we also created some fun stuff for Visible’s Instagram. Here are just a few of my favorites.