IBM needed a Christmas card. Oh, wait... they needed a non-religious and non-Santa-related "holiday card." No problem.
They contacted the Townsend Agency (which no longer exists, but it was quite large and reputable at the time).
The catch? They needed it in 3 days and it had to be animated.
The super catch? This was during the early days of viral marketing, when Internet plug-ins were new and people still used 28.8K modems to download e-cards. So this little piece had to get done fast and be very tiny.
Conceived in a room full of panicky employees, this was written by Chris LeSueur and then handed off to me. The president of the agency hated it. The creative director hated it. It ultimately won Best of Show at Chicago's CADM Awards, among a slew of other awards, and made the agency 100 grand in 3 days. Needless to say, I didn't get very much of that.
