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2019 · Creative Director (Social & Experiential) · BBDO New York × Bleacher Report
Substandard performance might be fine in some areas of life, but when it comes to your wireless network, "just OK" is definitely not OK. This highly successful, culturally resonant campaign used dry humor and awkward scenarios to illustrate a simple truth: you wouldn't settle for "just OK" from a surgeon, a pilot, or a tax advisor. So why settle for it from your network?
As part of this campaign, we partnered with Bleacher Report for an experiential, social-first execution. We brought in a hilariously sub-par, "just OK" personal trainer to prank NBA star Dennis Smith Jr. (DSJ) during a training session, capturing his genuine, bewildered reactions to a series of spectacularly mediocre exercises.
The setup. We rigged a basketball court with hidden cameras and introduced DSJ to his "new trainer" for the day. A guy who was, at best, incredibly unqualified. What followed was a masterclass in awkward silence, half-hearted stretches, and confidently wrong advice, all landing the campaign's central truth in a format built for social.
Character Comedy · Film · Social
AT&T's "Just OK is not OK" platform argued a simple point: nobody accepts mediocrity from a surgeon, a pilot or a tax adviser, so nobody should accept it from a wireless network. Toby Brewer was Creative Director for social and experiential at BBDO New York, and the brief was to take a broadcast comedy platform and make it work natively in social, in partnership with Bleacher Report.
Scripted comedy is funny. Genuine, unscripted bewilderment is funnier. If "just OK" is uncomfortable to experience, the most persuasive version of the idea is not an actor performing discomfort but a real person living through it on camera, in a world where competence is easy to judge: elite sport.
A basketball court was rigged with hidden cameras and NBA guard Dennis Smith Jr. was introduced to his "new trainer" for the day, a man who was, at best, spectacularly unqualified. What followed was a masterclass in awkward silence, half-hearted stretches and confidently wrong advice, edited for social feeds and distributed through Bleacher Report. The result kept the platform's central truth intact while trading polish for the kind of real reaction that people share.