Category: Mobile
July 7th, 2015

Mortar partners with Thinknear to deliver a shiny new site!

It will come as no surprise that the world is going mobile. Desktops have been replaced by smartphones, smartphones by tablets and tablets now bested by the phablet.

Advertisers have noticed, and the effort to get in front of audiences has evolved. Thinknear is leading this evolution, but in a sea of same-y mobile adtech players, it’s difficult to get the recognition that their leadership deserves.

That was the challenge for Mortar. Create a brand positioning that conveys the unique, bold, smart and fun essence that’s at Thinknear’s core.

Led by insights, we delivered attitude and aptitude to latitude and longitude, so Thinknear can go on delivering mobile campaigns that enrich not interrupt.

Thinknear’s shiny new site and brand positioning launched July 1, and like proud parents, we couldn’t be happier to watch them fly–albeit, approaching terminal velocity as they hurtle themselves from a perfectly good plane.

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July 22nd, 2013

Packard Children’s Hospital Makes Babies Strong Like Bigfoot.

Whether they’re delivering healthy babies, or making sick children strong again, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford is darn good at what it does. Ironically, after becoming the go-to name in Silicon Valley for treating the most complex pediatric cases, people thought of delivering at Packard specifically for high-risk or special-needs pregnancies. But that’s cray-cray. First off, how your pregnancy goes is about as predictable as Colin Farrell in a singlet. So, isn’t it a good thing if your hospital is prepared for any circumstance – even if your pregnancy ends up going as smooth as Larry David’s head?

Second, while other hospitals make you comfortable and give you fuzzy slippers on The Big Day, Packard cares for you throughout your entire pregnancy, and beyond. They don’t just deliver your baby, they build a long-term partnership with you. After your little un’s out in the world, s/he can get spectacular pediatric care from Packard, too. And with Stanford University medical school being one of the top-ranked in the country, it’s awfully nice to know you’re in the hands of the best of the best.

What we mean is, delivering at Packard gives your lil’ one the strongest start possible. That became the anthem of our campaign, and we blanketed the San Francisco Peninsula with it.

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You know what’s cute? Baby fists making hand gestures. You know what’s not cute? Getting a baby to make those gestures in a photo shoot. 

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Who says infants can’t double-fist?

 

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Targeting pregnant or soon-to-be-preggers women presented an interesting challenge. (Hell, even some pregnant women don’t know they’re pregnant.) But thanks to our media team wrangling technology in the cleverest of ways, the ads are being served to Silicon Valley women visiting top pregnancy websites. Because if you live in Menlo Park and are reading about the Creighton Fertility System, you’re almost definitely our audience. (Or you’re a copywriter doing research who’s about to get bludgeoned over the head with retargeting ads. Le sigh.)

We’re talking thousands of websites, and 80 million impressions. Basically, if you’re in Silicon Valley and pregnant, or thinking about getting knocked up, there’s no way you’re not seeing these ads. We even did ads in Spanish. Top that, huevones.

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The campaign is running through August. High-five our little/alarmingly large guy if you see him around.

March 15th, 2013

Saving Limbs Through Science? There’s an App for That.

Sometimes, and only sometimes, we think it’d be nice to clone people.

Take, for example, Avinger CEO Dr. John B. Simpson. He invented a revolutionary tool called Ocelot that’s able to cut through plaque in patients with peripheral artery disease, which prevents doctors from having to amputate patients’ legs. Thanks to Doc Simpson, our client Avinger has saved 7,900 limbs and counting. Like Manfred Selenschik’s. He lives in Muenster, Germany, and can now walk pain-free.

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Click to hear Manfred’s story.

 

Ocelot relies on a real-time intravascular imaging technology called Optical Coherence Tomography. Basically, it uses a camera as thin as a strand of hair to give doctors a direct view inside the artery they’re working on.

If you’re feeling horribly confused, imagine being the doctor who’s about to use this thing. As you might guess, learning to use Ocelot is a tad bit trickier than tying Velcro shoes. In the past, Dr. Simpson would be present at every operation to ensure it went smoothly. Now if we could clone the man, we would in a heartbeat. (We would also clone Jon Hamm a couple times.) But these days, an app seems to fix everything. So we built one.

The iPad app, called Avinger Beam, is a series of tutorials that teach you how to interpret OCT images. Which is basically a giant video game and makes us feel like we’re submarine captains in WWI. Captains fighting arterial plaque, of course. Beam shows you how to identify where the plaque is; then you get quizzed and it tells you if you’re right. (Or wrong, hopeless slackers. You are so not getting recess today.)

The interface is Avinger-slick, black, bold, and extremely easy to navigate. Not bad, eh? In the meantime, we’ll work on 3D printing Dr. Simpson.

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