This is one of those difficult pieces to put in my own portfolio because, truthfully, I didn’t really make it.

I didn’t come up with the idea. I didn’t write it. I didn’t design it. My team did.

I helped shape the brief, gave feedback along the way, approved the work and, I like to think, have helped create an environment over time where ideas like this have room to happen. But the brilliance here belongs to them. So this work is on my site less because I want credit for it and more because I’m incredibly proud of the people who made it — and because more people should know just how good they are. (And cause when you’e CCO, you don’t make a lot anymore, but you are part of the work in some way, right?)

This masterpiece of a campaign concept came from Rebellion Group Creative Directors Justin Girard and Kevin MacPhee.

Justin and Kevin lead the conceptual creative work at Rebellion, and watching the two of them think is one of the stranger privileges of my job. I’ve spent most of my career around creative people, and there are still times when I listen to them crack a problem and wonder if they’re aliens. They see connections other people don’t. They find the idea hiding inside the problem. And somehow they make the biggest, boldest concepts feel inevitable once they’ve said them out loud.

I’ll happily say it: I think Justin Girard and Kevin MacPhee are the best creative director duo in Connecticut, and probably at least 40-something other states as well, and I’d put them up against anyone, anywhere.

They win awards with alarming regularity. They generate enormous ideas without making the process feel enormous. More importantly, they make everyone around them better. They mentor designers, writers and younger creatives. They push the work without crushing the people doing it. And the creative team beneath them continues to get sharper, braver, and better because of the standard they set every day.

There are plenty of talented creative directors who are better known than Justin and Kevin. That’s partly why I’m writing this. Recognition and ability aren’t the same thing.

These two are exceptional at what they do. The work proves it. I’m just fortunate enough to have a front-row seat.