Laurie Ahrens

Commerce Bank is one of the sponsors of the Sophie Cunningham Classic, a tournament hosted by professional basketball star Sophie Cunningham as a premier showcase for high school girls basketball.

As part of the support provided to young women athletes, Commerce Bank developed a financial education booklet with practical resources designed specifically for high school-age athletes, covering topics from building budgets and reading bank statements to saving for college and buying their first car.

Drive Up Pups is a highlight of the summer for our bankers, customers, and their pups! We developed the campaign as a way to support local nonprofit organzations committed to improving the safety and well-being of animals, and make stronger connections with our communities.

Customers who visit a Commerce drive-thru in the summer months receive a special treat, and are then encouraged to take a photo of their four-legged friend to share on Instagram. For each photo posted and tagged, Commerce donates $10 to charity partners across Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Illinois, up to $10,000. We’re proud to help make a real difference in the lives of pets and their families.

The Ideas & Tips blog is the content hub that provides financial education and brand content on commercebank.com as well as Commerce social media. We reorganized the chronological feed into content clusters to make it easier to navigate to the type of content you’re interested in, deliver multiple forms of content, and enable better organic search.

Our assignment was to promote the Public Radio Nerd line of merchandise within the NPR online shop to NPR fans that we knew had already opted in to receive communications from the shop. This target is inherently curious, loves facts and the unexpected, so we proposed a unique longer-copy approach intended to draw them in.

Whether it was with unique stories about the products and how they’re sourced, new ideas on how to use them, or interesting facts related to NPR Shop offerings, we wanted to engage our curious Super Fan with exactly what they come to NPR for—great storytelling. Putting our unique perspective on each item helps engagement, and ultimately purchase.

We continued our three-year messaging strategy arc showing another step on the journey to financial confidence—putting a plan into action.

By starting with a relatable step customers can take with a SunTrust product “today,” this concept then shows the possible result of taking that action: a rewarding financial confidence moment in their future. By defining these moments, we define financial confidence and make that a more ownable brand characteristic for SunTrust.

Monsanto wanted to launch a new Customer Centricity initiative, focused on emphasizing how everyone in the company, regardless of whether they had direct customer contact or not, could make an impact on how those customers felt they were treated.

We developed a campaign called “Be The Face of the Future,” whose launch materials prominently featured real Monsanto employees from all segments of the company and told the story of the different roles they could play. We developed different personas they could embody—the Shield, the Bridge, the Spark, the Engine, and the Amp—and shared real-life examples of some of their coworkers who embodied these traits.

The launch initiative included a video to be shown at an internal rally, a long-form brochure, posters, t-shirts, mirror clings, and cafeteria signage.

This was a proactive initiative designed to showcase our event savvy and solve a known problem for the client. SunTrust had purchased a premium retail space for an interactive Braves activation that was getting little to no traffic when the Braves were away or during baseball’s offseason.

The idea was simple. Cross-promote interests such as gardening, wedding planning, home brewing, etc., with SunTrust’s focus of moving people toward financial confidence. The execution needed to transform the space for each themed activation at minimal expense. We developed a year-long calendar of activities as well as suggested guest speakers and programming to showcase how it might come to life. One more surprise: for them to truly understand the space, we decided to flaunt our technical savvy by presenting the whole experience using Oculus VR headsets!

UPS partnered with the Kentucky Organ Donor Associates to develop a custom, white-glove delivery service designed to help cut down the time it takes for donated organs to reach the people who need them--saving lives in the process.

This video was designed to be featured on the UPS site. I did some preliminary interviews with the people of KODA to get the story, then followed up with on-camera interviews of both UPS and KODA representatives that were able to capture the passion and dedication everyone associated with this project has for what the UPS/KODA partnership is able to do.

UPS activates their NCAA college football sponsorship by hosting B2B customer events at marquee football games throughout the season. They are well-attended, providing UPS programming in their Logistics Lounge, meet & greets with UPS and college football VIPs, and of course, game tickets.

The 2018 Rose Bowl provided a special challenge. The weekend was shortened due to holiday scheduling, and the venue was an hour+ away from the game. How would we have time to deliver the high-quality experience our customers expect, and still have time to get down to business?

Solution: we turned the transportation to the game into a mobile Logistics Lounge, all under the Rose-themed umbrella of “Passion” for our customers’ business. We provided refreshments, videos, celebrity guests and more as we cruised down the highway to Pasadena. No time wasted—we delivered an excellent experience, on-time to the game, and everyone left happy.

SunTrust Dealer Financial Services wanted to reach out to top tier automobile dealer principals, general managers and dealership owners in an eye-catching way to give them reasons to use SunTrust as the primary lending solution they offer to buyers.

This video mailer was designed to serve as an introduction to both the SunTrust brand and purpose as well as the Dealer Financial Services division in order to pave the way for face-to-face conversations with dealer principals.

Follow-up emails directed dealers to a custom landing page that highlighted different ways SunTrust Dealer Financial Services and SunTrust Bank support their financial well-being, both for their business and personal life.

SunTrust Mortgage wanted to put a focus on recruitment, particularly of younger loan officers, to support their growing mortgage business. We knew that being part of something larger and feeling like they can actually make an impact is important to this demographic. So we let the loan officers speak for themselves about what they love about their jobs.

These videos were designed to be shown at recruitment fairs in colleges and placed on social media.

Busch Gardens Williamsburg, part of SeaWord Parks & Entertainment, was getting ready to replace one of their most beloved coasters in the Old World German section of the park, The Big Bad Wolf, with one named Verbolten, billed as "a terrifyingly twisted ride through the Black Forest" in a classic sports car.

Anticipation and interest was high, but details were under tight wraps for much of the summer as construction progressed. Our job? To keep excitement building for the launch without showing TOO much of what's to come, throughout not only the summer but also the Christmas season when the park reopened for the holidays.

We used park signage, social media postings, and even the construction fence itself to let you get a peek under the hood (but just a peek!) of what Verbolten could be.

To unveil the HP TouchSmart PC in New York City, we launched a takeover of Times Square with an integrated marketing blitz, including promotional stunts, street team demos and larger-than-life retail installations. The program won a 2010 Gold Ex Award for Best Single Venue Consumer Event.