The Art of Comedy is alive and well in Barrington Illinois. Aldi stores are quirky, edgy and kickass and these clients want the same out of their advertising.

“Oh can Rick lead social?” you may ask? On Aldi we produce hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds) of social every year. It’s often the most fun we have.

For years, Kellogg’s lived and died by the fifteen second commercial. With out help, they pushed into exciting places like Roblox, Twitch and even got a shout out from John Oliver.

As the Chief Creative Officer of Onion Inc., I didn't write the jokes. But I helped the people who wrote the jokes write the jokes. I also ran Onion Labs, the branded content division of The Onion. Oh, and I ran our TV Development group. 

When you want creative in the voice of Onion Inc. brands, they call it Native Advertising. Convincing our writers to actually do it was the most challenging part of my job (psst. they hate advertising.).

Listen, I could sit here and write about the marketing problem we solved for Intel. Or I could answer the more pressing question of is Kenan Thompson nice or a jerk? He’s totally nice.

Rather than just show beautiful people clinking bottles, we decided to show beautiful people experiencing the emotion of being pulled to a magical place. See if you can guess which actor my wife has a massive crush on (hint: it’s all of them).

Lenovo wanted to tout their shiny NFL sponsorship. But rather than just stick a steroid monster smiling in front of a computer, they asked us to make something funny. "Tough Season" was our parody of HBO's "Hard Knocks." It ran for 26 episodes and was seen by millions.

Honda asked us to advertise their entry level motorcycles. They're for anyone who isn't quite ready to cover their body in tattoos and grow a ZZ Top Beard. "Wolf Rider" was our series that turned a mild mannered office drone into a semi-tough guy.

Buy Or Beware was Onion Labs' parody of Consumer Reports. Please note, no puppies were harmed in the making of these videos. But plenty of interns were maimed. 

Here's just a sampling of the hundreds (no joke) of videos we created in my tenure overseeing Onion Labs. Looking at these now, they're pretty dark. In a great and hilarious way. 

Our friends at Bud Light asked us to bring to life their "Whatever USA" town/event. They wanted to make their beer paradise town feel as real as possible, so we created a series of 30+ news broadcasts in less than 5 weeks. Sheesh.

I spent an awful lot of time working on these amazing sports cars. If I had a million dollars I'd set up a charity for homeless Goldendoodle dogs. But if I had two million dollars I'd buy a Porsche for sure. 

Another fun gum thing! This was one of those, “Hey we have a gigantic international campaign that we STRONGLY suggest you adapt for your market.” Rather than hold our noses, we decided to make the most NSFW gum spot ever.

If you are thinking about working with the former CCO of Onion Inc., you may wonder "Can he only do yucks?" I've done a fair share of emotional work. This Extra spot is one of my favs. 

The good people at Quaker asked us if it was possible to make oats entertaining. Yes, we said. But only if you shoot in New Zealand. And feature a whale.

These spots ran during the Superbowl. If you want to lead a stress-free life, I do not recommend making Superbowl commercials. But I shot them with some of my favorite people of all time.

How do you make an aging public radio brand relevant to twenty-somethings? Oh, I don't know. Ask them to have sex in the name of a membership drive? Imagine presenting this idea to a room full of the largely geriatric WBEZ board of directors.