Cleversafe Expandable Display Ads

Cleversafe was a start-up with a revolutionary approach to storing vast quantities of data – so revolutionary that the company was acquired by IBM and folded into their cloud object storage offerings. But before that happened and the Cleversafe brand disappeared, my partner and I were tasked with creating some display ads. We aimed for something eye-catching that would stand out in a sea of uninspired enterprise technology ads.

To that end, we created a series of expandable display ads that used forces of nature – glaciers, volcanoes, tornadoes, etc. – as a metaphor for the challenges of dealing with massive quantities of data. Leading with a question and an unexpected visual piqued the viewer’s curiosity and encouraged them to expand the full ad. I thought it was pretty neat, as B2B banner ads go.