Buck the Norm: We come from SPAAAACE!

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

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!

Third Degree Monster Mash

Never ones to shy away from drama, or costumes... or a theme, we Third Degree-ers had to come up with a dress-up theme that would meet the standard we set with our Mad Men Halloween from last year. So what to do? What to do?



When in doubt. Go classic Hollywood movie monsters.



Tara, Creative Director, Bride of Frankenstein (with $8 worth of hairspray holding up one hair-do)



Daniel, Senior Art Director, The Wolfman (during transformation)



Brett, Art Director, The Invisible Man



We didn't even see him coming.



Jared, Account Coordinator, Chef from Blood Feast (did we mention part of our Halloween tradition is a potluck lunch?)



Amanda, Director of Strategic Planning, (and Strategic Vamping) as Bride of Dracula



Amy, Director of Marketing, Cleopatra and her Mummies



Misty, Operations Coordinator and Mutant Spider



Bring on the atomic mutant bugs! Caroline, Admin Assistant, as an Atomic Ant



No wire hangers!!! Account Executive Natalie as everyone's favorite silver screen mom, Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest



Priceless. CEO Roy as Vincent Price. Squinty equals sexy, right?



The scream queen Janet Leigh as portrayed by Pam, our numbers queen and Director of Operations



Who let the birds out? Who else could play Tippi Hedren...



... but our own blonde with a dramatic streak to match, Accounts Director, Kande

Oh, there's more. You can see all our Halloween pics here.

Happy Haunting!

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.

80s Murder Mystery Party

So last Friday we had our internal Third Degree mid year planning meeting. We looked at where we've come, what the next six months might hold, and then we broke for lunch...



... and broke out the hairspray.



Because the afternoon team-building activity? A 1980's High School Reunion Murder Mystery party.



Meet the prom king and queen.



Note the matching corsage and boutineer. It's the little details which made Holly our media director the winner of the "Best Dressed" award, as Mallory Majesty the former prom queen.



Birds of a feather. The nosy school journalist and gossip columnist.



The class president and vice president. Now U.S. presidential and first lady hopefuls.



The band camp couple.



The math team captain and math team cheerleader. Check out his homemade paper calculator watch here.



The "real" cheer captain and her high school jock sweetheart.



And what 80's party would be complete without at least one punk rocker?



It was a cast John Hughes would be proud of.



With, of course, a custom Third Degree compilation soundtrack to match.

Totally.

Want to see more party pics, visit our Flickr page.
Want to hold your own murder mystery party? Go to NightOfMystery.com.