michael kadin

To celebrate the launch of the new Golf GTI we hijacked every goal of the World Cup with unique performance-driven video celebrations. The videos ran alongside live-streamed matches and were timed to run a moment after each team scores celebrating a "Gooooooooolf." Each participating country had nine video versions—with over 280 unique goal celebrations overall. Each video was simultaneously released on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. A reactionary :30 spot ran right after the Final match to celebrate its winner—which fortunately happened to be Germany.

"Gooooooooolf" is part of the "Ready. Set. Golf." campaign.

The Toyota Camry has dominated the mid-size car category for over a decade. And, unfortunately for VW, the best-selling car in the U.S. would be launching at the same time as the brand new Passat. We aimed to use the Super Bowl to make VW's fresh new model a part of the cultural narrative to create momentum for the launch.

We posted the spot on YouTube four days early--driving 12mm Web views before the spot even aired. And the behavior of pre-releasing ads before the Super Bowl was born. The Force would go on to become the most popular commercial from Super Bowl XLV and to this day still remains the most-watched Super Bowl ad of all time.

No-charge scheduled maintenance on VW cars is offered for two years or 24,000 miles. The obvious benefit: Volkswagen drivers can relax and just think about driving the car they love. "Feeling Carefree," which tapped into that feeling of freedom while recreating one of the most famous videos from MTV’s glory days.

DIRECTV delivers every NFL game, every Sunday. But what if you couldn't watch all the football you really want? We cast Tom Arnold as a semi-dysfunctional Self Help Counselor that leads displaced fans to the answer: NFL SUNDAY TICKET. Spots were joined by a contest inviting die-hard football viewers to submit videos expressing their team loyalties. The campaign was so successful, the client tried to create a spin-off for an original content series based on the character.

We wanted to tout the Golf’s speed and storage capacity in a new way. So to help launch the all-new Golf, we partnered with Funny or Die to create an online video shot in an actual Target store called "The Way Too Helpful Neighbor."

"Neighbor" is part of the "Ready. Set. Golf." campaign.

We released the new Beetle convertible in the dead of winter because “everyday is a top down day.”

At a time when smiles a hard to come by — election season — we launched a brand campaign, “It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them,” to remind people that the most important thing in life is to smile and enjoy every moment. Or, in this case, every mile.

With the success of “The Force” Super Bowl commercial, the client asked that we look at a "The Force: Part 2." We preferred a less obvious task: Creating a teaser that nodded to the two themes we were going to feature in our new commercial: dogs and Star Wars.

The result was a canine rendition of "The Imperial March," aka "Darth Vader's Theme." With 19mm views before the big game, the notion of the Super Bowl teaser was born.

After the release of "The Bark Side" teaser, it was time to focus on the actual big game commercial. "The Dog Strikes Back" starred an out-of-shape dog that can't muster up enough energy to chase down the new Volkswagen Beetle.

As the battle for subscriptions between cable and DIRECTV became more aggressive, we offered a behind-the-scenes look at Cable Corp., a fictitious cable company desperately trying to find the answers to all of DIRECTV's superior products and features.

They say your life flashes before your eyes in the end. The IIHS top safety pick Volkswagen Jetta will make sure that's still a long ways away.

Most compact SUVs have the perception that they're not very sturdy or safe. Not true for the Volkswagen Tiguan. We used a kid with serious anger management issues to show just how durable VW’s SUV was.

Through a partnership between Volkswagen and Google, we created another way to remind people, "It's not the miles, it's how you live them.” TheSmileDrive social app tracks aspects of every trip (from distance driven to weather) and awards the driver points. The app even lets you create a Smilecast video trip journal complete with photos and status updates to share with friends and family.

The durability of the Volkswagen Passat. It’s one thing you can be sure your children will be grateful for.

The “4th Wall” campaign positioned DIRECTV as the premium entertainment brand by connecting the brand with iconic moments in entertainment. We enlisted the original actors to recreate famous scenes from films or TV shows—and then to step out of that role to tell the viewer about DIRECTV's superiority over cable.

After yet another brutally negative election year, we wanted to deliver a simple message at the Super Bowl: "Get in. Get happy." A pre-game teaser campaign featured cameos from people who became YouTube sensations for their online freakouts. We introduced them to Jimmy Cliff and filmed their personalities slowly get transformed.

We offered a Super Bowl commercial featuring a supremely positive VW owner--a Minnesotan who has curiously adopted a Caribbean accent and amazingly positive attitude. Cliff's re-record of the classic Partridge Family theme, "C'mon, get happy" can be heard throughout the ad.

The single most important thing to young guys is their unyielding bond to each other. This truth lead to the creation of our "Brotherhood of Guy" campaign. A roving musical ambassador sings anthems glorifying that sacred "dude" bond twenty-somethings share.

Say your lovable dog has swallowed the keys to your car, what do you do? Obviously, you have to take it to the vet. But how do you drive to the vet? Thanks to the Jetta's "keyless access" feature, question answered.

Every client wants a way to go on and on about the nuts and bolts of why their cars are so great. Our solution was to create, "Inside the VW Academy" featured Bill Hader and a Volkswagen product expert “Danielle.” The long-form videos lived on VW's owned channels and helped people get to know the cars in a very Volkswagen way.

The security of driving an IIHS top safety pick Volkswagen Passat. Not what's generally in the thoughts of a teenager who just crashed his father's car.

For the launch of the all-new Golf GTI we created an interactive long form video campaign called "Turbocharge the Everyday" and partnered with Top Gear TV host and rally cross driver Tanner Foust. We gave away GoPro HERO3+ Black Edition cameras and mounts to new VW buyers so they could also film their own turbocharged experiences. All the user-generated videos could be found on readysetgolfgti.com (NON-INTERACTIVE VERSION)

"Turbocharge" is part of the "Ready. Set. Golf." campaign.

Print campaign for DIRECTV's sports packages which highlighted the benefit of watching any game or team regardless of where you live.

This spot for the all-new Beatle debuted on the SuperBowl -- bringing an unexpected focus on the car's performance.

Volkswagen and Discovery team up to take the greatest car on earth, underwater.

The surprisingly priced all-new Jetta. It’s an awesome car, but you’d never know it by the price.