JESSE FRIEDMAN

Creativity

Way of a Warrant

Most users don’t know that Google often pushes back against court orders for private user information, while government agents are frustrated that they don’t always get what they ask for. I worked closely with Legal, Policy, and our creative agency to tell our perspective clearly and memorably, using a completely unconventional but wildly successful approach. At 2 million views and counting, “Way of a Warrant” is surely the most popular stop-animation video about legal process in the history of the world.

vision

Santa Tracker

Santa Tracker is full of whimsy and joy, but it serves a real purpose as a driver of brand love for Google. As marketer, strategist and program manager,  I guided engineers, a design agency, and several Google products to keep the focus. From drafting pun-packed blog posts to shepherding a major design overhaul, I ensured we hit overarching brand themes as well as a sensitivity to regional needs for a highly global product. I also once had to settle a debate over whether "artisan candy-cane moulding" made a gingerbread house sound unapproachably bougey, so, yeah, it was pretty fun, too.

Precision

Google Translate restaurant

For Google Translate’s 10th anniversary and 100-language milestone, our creative team assembled a head-turning pop-up restaurant with Michelin-starred chefs, where you had to use the apps to read the menu and order your food. As a linguist and the app’s lead marketer, I made it clear from the very start that every single word had to be manually vetted by native speakers, and that nothing in the experience was faked — we even changed some of the dishes to ones with names that translated properly with the product as it was.

distillation

Business for a Better Portland

I help Portland's fledgling progressive business organization refine complex topics into clear and persuasive speech. I pay attention to what people say with too many words, and find the thread connecting them. I helped the board articulate the value of membership in one-sentence nuggets, and drafted a member's four-minute testimony to a state legislative committee on the complex topic of minority business owners' limited access to funding. As the ED put it, "Jesse, you're not only good at listening, but you also hear."

Gumption

Crisis Response

Hurricanes and earthquakes don’t follow working hours, and the needs often don’t follow the playbook. As a member of Google's Crisis Response team, I supported and often managed components of the communication and product efforts across continents and time zones. My before-and-after screenshots were seen by millions on TV (that's Haiti at left), the translations I hunted down greatly expanded our reach, and I even brokered an arrangement to enable one-cent calling to Nepal. With tenacity and execution, I gained a reputation as an effective communicator and trustworthy decision-maker under pressure.

INSIGHT

Scam Spotter

One of Google’s Legal teams wanted to meaningfully help seniors by highlighting how to avoid scams, a multi-billion-dollar scourge. I brought in my friends at Sandy Russell Creative, took on the role as senior strategist, and we researched the heck out of how scams operate, what info is already out there, and how seniors consume media and use websites. We found existing info to generally be patronizing and hard to follow. So with huge text and retro-inspired graphics, we used three golden rules to convey a simple yet empowering framework for seniors to preserve their money and their self-image in the face of pesky scammers.