rachel hutchison mcelrath

Freelance Creative Director. Copywriter.

Word enthusiast. Conceptual problem solver.

Wine drinker. Jet-setter. Mom.

Ex-New Yorker. Currently in Dallas.

Always on the lookout for new opportunities.

The brief:
Introduce the new line of Friskies Plus, which is the same Friskies loyal consumers love, plus an extra boost of vitamins and minerals.

The solution:
We leveraged the iconic magical world of Friskies, while elevating the brand to a more sophisticated level. We want to convey “plus” without polarizing our audience who feed Friskies to their cats for taste, not health. 

The brief:
Relaunch Olay Fresh Effects with the promise: 'instant beauty sleep, no sleep required'. 

The solution:
We dug down deep into our vault of late night stories and ended up with this sweet story of a girl who has overslept... of course, we edited out the frat parties, beer pong and one night stands.

The brief: 
After two unsuccessful attempts in the USA to launch a professional women’s soccer franchise, our challenge was to remind men and women (aged 15-35) that soccer will always be “the beautiful game.” Regardless of gender.

The solution:
Turn off the lights. Highlight what really is beautiful about soccer- the feet and the ball. These spots were featured as rich media banners, web videos and on television. We also created a video wall, where we asked for people to share their most extraordinary moments with us. This shoot was completed in 12 hours and with a budget of $500,000.

The result: 
In March 2009, WPS's inaugural game was played to a crowd of over 19,000 fans at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles. This year the league is moving into its fourth season with continued plans for future expansion.

The (global) assignment:
Reposition Olay in the global market as the beauty brand that stands for attainable beauty. We needed to dominate the space between unattainable beauty and natural beauty. 

The solution:
After months of yelling “Your Best Beautiful” up and down the halls, in every meeting, and by some miracle of God, our campaign line finally stuck and became the new global tagline for Olay. The campaign launched during this year’s Grammys. We took over the show with a ton of TV and super fun E! Red Carpet partnership. Not only did Olay dominate TV, we dominated in digital and social media. Our engagement rate with #Olay and #BestBeautiful was through the roof and our Twitter and Facebook posts achieved over 4x our average impression rates. We created real time social posts that were gossip-worthy. The campaign has gotten a ton of positive press and has overall boosted sales for Olay. Four thumbs up, in our opinion!