New faces at the Third Degree Oklahoma City office!

We're super-busy these days, so it's nice when we can get some extra help in and out of the creative department. Next time you come around to the Third Degree Oklahoma City office, say hello to the new kids!


We met Jennifer at a recent AIGA portfolio review. Among a wide array of talented students and young professionals, Jennifer stood out for her strong type foundations, precise handcraft and clever concepting. That's a lot of jargon that only means something to design nerds. Which we so are.


Kyle comes to us from OU's journalism department. He actually first looked for an internship in the creative department, but his strength in research made him an obvious choice for the account service side. Above, he describes the stack of work we gave him on his first day.


Ah, and here's Kaylee. She interned for us over two years ago, but graduated and went off to the land of web startups. Now she's back from a three-month visit to Japan, full of stories about giant robots and questionable seafood. She's jumping into the creative department as a production artist.

Welcome to Third Degree! You're gonna be great.

Buck The Norm: We're Going To Need A Bigger Boat

Looking for our Buck the Norm parade float case study? Find it on our new site!

Scary Good: Buck The Norm Parade Part II

Well, after Kathleen and I tag-teamed applying makeup to 24 zombies in our agency parking lot (a mix of Third Degree and TFCU staff volunteers)...



...(yes, Will, you have to put on that green lipstick)...



... our corporate zombies for the Buck The Norm float entry in the Ghouls Gone Wild Parade turned out fantastic.



We even had enough time (just barely) to do our own makeup.



Everyone really got into character while waiting for the parade to start. (Growing even more popular this year, with 80 float entries and close to 50,000 attendees!).



So much into character that we had to divert them from eating their props...



...eating other parade participants...



...and even stopping them from eating the mimes (we were on the fence about letting Thurman go through with that one).



Kathleen represented for the indebted and undead by giving an interview.



We quickly brushed up on our zombie choreography.



And then we were off.



It wasn't all ugly, though. We had our brightly colored, multilayered, spirited and sassy Buck The Norm revelers as well.



Their task was to march in the wake of the zombie troop, waving huge speech bubble Buck The Norm signs, shouting out "Buck It!" and passing out glow sticks and candy to the crowd...



... and to just generally look fabulous.



We were all completely hypnotized by our media buyer, Jentry's, fake eyelashes. We told her she should wear them to work every day because everyone was crushing on her.



Especially these guys.

Thanks everybody for all the hard work! Can't wait 'til next year. Buck the norm!

Want to see more pictures from the parade? You can see more here of our Buck The Norm pics and here of the Ghouls Gone Wild parade in action (including us) on Flickr!

Creating Corporate Zombies: Buck The Norm Parade Part I

We're devilishly busy producing the second-year evolution of the Buck The Norm float for the Ghouls Gone Wild downtown parade this weekend. This year the float will be led by an undead horde of corporate zombies, who will represent "the norm."



So what does it take to create a ghoulish vision of the indebted and undead?

(My husband designed this year's Ghouls Gone Wild poster, tacked here in our Third Degree diner breakroom. He's lead art director at the Oklahoma Gazette who puts on the event.)



First: the perfect zombie hand. Lynn was quickly yanked out from behind his accounting desk, stuck under some dangerously exposed desk lamp bulbs, and forced to contort his hand into the perfect menacing claw.



We snapped the perfect shot.



And Lynn was a good sport.



And look at his hand (post Photoshop treatment, of course). It looks fake it looks so good!

These lightbox signs will be up on poles above the crowd, leading our zombies. This is Eaton Quade's warehouse, where get-it-done-Doug oversees all our float and large prop production.



Next step: creating costumes for our walking corpses.



These can't be just any old rag-tag, decomposing ghouls. These zombies are "the man." So matching corporate suits and ties for all, stuffed with money and complete with over sized coffee cups (also stuffed with bills.) Fake blood, green ooze, and all manners of clippings are now littering the back room of our agency. Yep, looks pretty much like any other day back there.



Last: the choreography. Teaching zombie steps like 1.) The Shuffle 2.) The Random Claw. How ironic that Kathleen is teaching TFCU volunteers how to walk like corporate zombies in their own boardroom. But, since it's a credit union boardroom, it's not quite so ironic.



Okay, that's not really the last step. There's so much more to do and share.

So wish us "buck!"

More to come after the parade. See last year's winning parade entry, here and here, awarded Beast In Show.

Buck The Norman Music Fest

So it's no secret we love the Buck The Norm program we developed with TFCU. You know, the one that reaches out to a younger generation of potential credit union members with a message of financial empowerment? But after the awards and the parades and the video contest and all the hoopla of the initial launch, the gang at Tinker Federal Credit Union are stickin' with it and still taking it to the streets.



The Norman Music Festival is where the TFCU mobile camped out this weekend. The ATM mobile is fully wrapped with TFCU brand messaging, and can be found on any given weekend at various events around the metro. For this live music, college town crowd they slapped Buck The Norm logos all over that thing. It works in a pinch. Actually, it looks sort of irreverant and spontaneous which is in keeping with the Buck The Norm concept. Could there possibly be a Buck The Norm-themed wrapped vehicle in the future? Maybe. But if not, they'll keep making the most of what they've got in true credit union spirit.



They actually did a really fantastic job creating a little oasis from the heat, creating a funky patio vibe with colored paper lanterns, cool lawn chairs and a mod shag rug.



Some of our Third Degree team stopped by to lounge a little – and to point out their personal cameos in the Buck The Norm video that was running throughout the day.



But the ones who were hard at work were the team from TFCU. Last year they were serving shrimp kabobs at the Arts Fest, but this week, with their aluminum "buck its" in hand, they passed out bracelets embossed with the Buck The Norm url to the crowd of nearly 25,000 attendees.

The business development reps at TFCU are a great example of how to commit to the life and success of a social media-driven Gen Y initiative like Buck The Norm. The outreach must be ongoing, and it must happen at all levels, so whether it's weekly online correspondence or out-in-the-crowd face time, it takes real people to make it happen.

School Days

So we have more than just interns to account for our school ties at Third Degree. We've actually done a lot of work for colleges and universities, including the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City University.


Universal Appeal

This is a set of collaterals that Kathleen and Kande just recently completed for OCU. I think they look really modern and competitive. OCU attracts students from around the world, so having a global appeal was a big deal.


Campus Collage

This is the theme that Phillip and I developed for the University of Oklahomas recruitment efforts a couple years back. This first redesign set the tone for the next couple years, which we helped them evolve. This campaign won a gold Addy for us that year as a mixed media campaign, which is cool, because most mixed media campaigns that win include "big" mediums like broadcast like TV or radio, but ours competed with just a mix of different types of well-crafted collaterals.


Doodles and Details

This was a seriously layered approach, tons of tidbits of information, handwritten notes, little objects and photos. It sort of had the feel of a scrapbook or common room bulletin board in a dorm.


Home Page

The gals and guys at OU web wanted us to help them create a new look for their web site, too. This is a huge project for them over there, and they are all about getting their site as cohesive and comprehensive as a major university's should be. So, as they continue to take that online presence to the next level, we're just glad to have had a part in influencing the look and feel.

Plus, I got to be featured on the web site as an alumn (not the brooding guy with the mysterious hair, the smiley girl with the not-so-mysterious hair.)

Smile and Say "Buck It!"

When we create a campaign we can get really, really involved.  That, and none of us can seem to stay away from the camera.  Well, Kathleen can't stay away from the camera (which is a whole separate post in itself).  The rest of my team can be persuaded with a little begging, which is what I did on a recent shoot for Buck The Norm (a Gen Y initiative for Tinker Federal Credit Union) to get some of our own Third Degree-ers to become Buck The Norm-ers.

Thumbs Up!

There's art director Daniel in his closeup. He's got his Bucky face drawn on his thumb. Bucky is sort of this irreverent character who shouts out this message of financial empowerment, and also happens to be a thumb.

Argh! Rargh!

Daniel is really bringing the intensity in this scene. So these monster finger puppets are so cool. They represent "the norm," like debt and overspending. We ordered hundreds of them and passed them out at the OKC Ghouls Gone Wild Halloween parade (more on that below). Almost everyone in the agency has one or two finger monsters that have taken up residence on their desk.

Dance Montage (Deleted Scene)

Yeah... so, this one didn't make the cut.  But we did lots of dancing that day.  We were shooting for a video that we created using a series of still shots (these photos by David McNeese) animated together in sequence to bring the action "to life."

Sweet Girl

Here's designer, Liz, all pretty and coy in blue.

Mean Girl

And there's account coordinator Hallie, all up-in-your-face in blue.  

Lending a Hand

Actually, Liz and Hallie and I had a blast on the set of this video shoot. Liz helped gather and make a lot of the hand-held props like these oversized fake bills on cardboard. That guy and girl drowning in distress are young local student-slash-actors. Those hands creeping into the shot are not. Those are (you guessed it) the sweet girl and mean girl hands of Liz and Hallie!

True Colors

Okay so Hallie's not that mean! She put on a smiley-face-yellow wig and joined bespectacled and bedazzling Third Degree account executive, Kande, to march in the OKC Ghouls Gone Wild parade as part of the Buck The Norm float.

She Wore Blue... (Synthetic Hair)

Miss account coordinator Felina, also donned a beautiful hairdo and along with Kathleen helped coordinate the Buck The Norm parade float and people and buckets (buck its!) and huge finger monsters and music and video.  She, like all the other Third Degree and TFCU brave participants went hoarse after shouting "Buck The Norm" over and over again at 30,000 crazy costumed spectators. Buck The Norm actually won "Beast In Show" from the parade sponsor the Oklahoma Gazette.

Buck The 76 Trombones, We've Got Giant Finger Puppet Monsters!

Here's a video of the Buck The Norm float and participants from the actual parade.  The Ghouls Gone Wild event, now in its second year, is part of an effort to foster the creative spirit in Oklahoma City.  It's an evening event geared towards adults (but whose going to keep the kiddos away from a giant Beetlejuice float? not me!) Wayne Coyne of the world famous independent group, The Flaming Lips, is a huge supporter of the parade and his march of 1,000 skeletons attracts participants from all over the country, eager to dress up as skeletons and carry flaming torches in a surreal procession as part of the parade finale.

So What Is The Norm?

Want MORE finger puppet monsters? Want MORE Daniel and Liz and Hallie?! Who doesn't? Watch the Buck The Norm video that started it all.