Watchtower / “Make it in DUMBO.”

Look, I'm generally as loath as you to put pitch work in a portfolio, but the Huge team here kicked some major ass on this one — and I was proud to be part of the team.

So, for a little backstory, the Watchtower—a DUMBO landmark and home to The Jehovah's Witnesses for a zillion years—was sold to developers for like 350M. The idea was to turn this absolutely massive property into part retail, mostly office space. But with the proliferation of places to work in NYC, why should one choose to work in DUMBO (Brooklyn) rather than the usual Downtown or Midtown Manhattan (or, to a lesser extent, Williamsburg BK) haunts? Simple. Because DUMBO is an amazing place to work. And that's why we decided to, when creating marketing work to help realtors sell the soon-to-be-created office space, we led with the 'hood and followed with the unbelievably insane accommodations closely behind.

The idea: no matter what it is you want to make—from a new home to friends to bikes to websites to history to artisanal pickles—DUMBO is the place in NYC, and frankly the world, to make it. Hence Make It In DUMBO.

At the end of the day, we won the pitch on creative and strategy and then you know how shit goes from there. But This was a great project and process nevertheless and we at Huge are supremely proud of it.

Here’s the manifesto video — it’s a damn good one.

NOTE: some imagery and Eagles of Death Metal track used without permission as this was never intended to be consumer-facing and for internal use only. I will take any and all down if requested.