Indie Work Showcase: A 100-Year-Old Brand’s First Campaign
March 17 @ 9:30 am – 10:00 am PDT
The American College of Financial Services has been training financial professionals since 1927. For nearly 100 years, they never ran a national advertising campaign. In October 2025, that changed with Specialists Need Specialists, Too — a campaign built on the insight that people who specialize in one thing instinctively seek out specialists for everything else. The creative uses humor (sourdough obsessives, pottery fanatics, competitive barbecuers) to make the case that financial planning deserves the same kind of expertise. Early results showed 67% consumer preference — and it was made by an indie agency in Birmingham, Alabama.
Shannon Harris is the Executive Creative Director at Big Com — the first woman to hold the role in the agency’s 28-year history. Shannon and her team developed the campaign from brief to national launch, finding the strategic thread that turned nearly a century of institutional credibility into a consumer-facing story. On this show, Shannon walks through how the brief came together, how the strategy evolved, how the work got made and what surprised her along the way. She closes with advice on how to sell ambitious creative work to clients.
Who Should Watch:
– Creative directors leading national campaigns for legacy brands
– Agency strategists turning institutional credibility into consumer storytelling
– Brand and client-side marketers who want to hear the agency-client story told together
– New business leaders looking for case study inspiration from indie agencies
– Anyone curious about what it takes to launch a brand’s first-ever campaign
