Our newest out-of-home ad campaign: More than 1,000 hand-written Post-it Notes make up each poster covering the streets of San Francisco letting people know they will soon “Never remember a password again” thanks to Stytch, secure, passwordless login technology.

Hatred of passwords is universal.

No matter what color state you live in or what language you speak, you speak ill of passwords. From the technophile to the Luddite, Gen Z to Gen X, Forever Trumpers and Never Trumpers, one of the few things the internet can actually agree on is our collective hatred of passwords.

That universal truth, that thing we can all agree on, that’s what we look for in advertising to create campaigns that make an emotional connection with people. Find that little piece of truth and make it big. That’s all great advertising does. It makes people feel something they already feel and then promotes something related to it.

Don’t you hate it when there’s just a drop of milk in the carton? Why yes, I should get off my fat ass and just do it. Finding that universal truth is what ad people do. And the truth is, passwords make the internet a frustrating, incongruous collection of sputtering starts and stops - Login, reset, verify your account, enter this code, re-login, incorrect password, ping customer service, scream profanity, wake your sleeping spouse. You know the drill because we’ve all been there. And we all hate passwords.

Hundreds of Post-it Note pads all hand-written.

A billboard from Stytch, Go Passwordless campaign by Division of Labor.

Enter Stytch, a San Francisco startup that just closed series B funding, with a billion-dollar valuation. Stytch founders Julianna Lamb and Reed McGinley-Stempel come from Plaid, so they know the sector, have the product, and are confident in their vision of a passwordless future. Their brief to us was a simple blog post with the title #KillThePassword. And that title is the strategic underpinning for our latest campaign.

One of the ways people try to remember all the passwords they have crammed into their brains is by writing them down on Post-it Notes and sticking them to computer screens, bulletin boards and cubicle walls. And we thought it would be pretty amazing to take all those sticky notes and cover billboards with them. A brilliantly colorful hodgepodge of notes, reminders, and passwords. An analog announcement that the world was going to be changing. Not a picture of Post-its or a computer-generated recreation, mind you, thousands of handwritten Post-its stuck onto billboards around the city.

A reminder from Stytch and Division of Labor: Your dog’s name123 is not a password.

When we presented it they were like, “Yes! We love that idea!” And we were like, “Yes! Of course, you do because you’re amazing and smart and you have a billion-dollar startup as proof!”

So then we had to make it happen.

To do that you need a media guy like Kasper Koczab. Kasper arranged custom-built glass enclosures to house the hand-made boards. He arranged execution tests to ensure the backlighting would be right and got a local artist to assemble each board by hand. Then we ordered 10,000 Post-it Extremes and Post-it Super Stickies and got to work writing.

We brought in about 25 production assistants to create the notes during three marathon sessions with more multicolored Sharpies than I’d seen since high school art class. But by the deadline, we were still short by over a thousand notes. So we arranged one final Friday night Shabbat charity session, invited friends and donated $400 per finished Post-it Note pad to the relief efforts in Ukraine. Thirteen pads amounted to over $5000 raised and pushed us over the number of Post-its needed.

Ron Lester at Iron Maverick is a San Francisco artist and metal worker who took on the task of arranging each board and layering the thousands of notes so people could just barely read the headline “Never remember a password again.”

There are also buses covered in cryptic, password-style headlines like, d0nTUh8pA55w0rD5L1kETh15? And K1LLpA55W0rD5oNcE&4aLL! Plus about a billion other billboards, bus shelters and bulletins with reminders like “Your dog’s name123 is not a password.” And “The average person resets passwords more than they have sex.” The whole thing starts launching early April to tell the world they will soon be able to forget their passwords, permanently.

Trying to remember passwords does trigger a lot of profanity. But you can’t actually cuss on a billboard.

We’re so proud of this ad campaign. Huge thank you to everyone involved:

Julianna Lamb, Reed McGinley-Stempel, Ali Pulver, Aiden Forest

Rebecca Reid, Faruk Sagcan, Dom Haury, Vassil Vassilev, Dawn Margolis

Kasper Koczab, Ron Lester

All our Post-it Note creators:

Anita Avila, Maia Sullivan, Henry Denberg, Raney Wolfers, Hennessy Boyarski, Lincoln Brown, Gabriel Aal, Jordyn Okumura, Shivani Amin, Sachie Ohara, Dani Steinberg, Bella Hann, Dahlia Zail, Gabriel Lobet, Sophie Letts, Brit Norris, Julia Sigel, Masina Tufa, Julia Dearing, Colton Kitan, David Wong, Mary Friedman, Vanessa Friedman, Deb Toizer and Eric Toizer, Ellie and Lydia Reid, Nils Krueger, Nikita Sriram, Lauren and Cora Arebalo, Emma and Katelyn Daniel, Emma, Eva and Elissa Holyoke, Alessandra and Guiliana Mancini.

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; a top San Francisco ad agency and digital marketing firm that’s been named Small Agency of the Year twice by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services clients on a retainer or project basis. They also offer brand consulting services and hourly engagements for startups and smaller brands. Click here for a free consultation.

One of the many executions in a new campaign seeking foster families in San Francisco.

San Francisco’s housing crisis impacts everyone in the city, including long-time residents who can no longer afford rents and young families forced to move away to buy homes. But one of the under-reported tragedies: It’s also having a devastating effect on foster children.

Right now there are hundreds of kids waiting to be placed into homes in the city. And without a steady stream of volunteers, those kids will be forced into homes far from the only city they’ve ever known.

So how does a government agency get fresh recruits? They team up with one of San Francisco’s top ad agencies, Division of Labor.

The creative brief set forth by the San Francisco Human Services Agency was simple: Create an attention-grabbing ad campaign that recruits 100 new foster families to join the cause.

The ask is huge. It’s not like getting people to try a new laundry detergent or switch to a low-fat peanut butter. Becoming a foster parent is a life-changing decision. To that end, we needed an emotional hook that would get people to pay attention.

Inspiration hit while someone on our creative team was walking through a parking lot. He saw a huge SUV taking up two compact spaces. Not surprisingly, his first thought was: “What a jerk.” But his next thought was “Unless that jerk happens to be a foster parent. In that case, they can park wherever the heck they want!”

That idea really rang true with everyone on the project. It resulted in an edgier, more humorous campaign that changed people’s perspective on fostering and got them to think about it in a new way.

There are over 40 different executions across billboards, bus shelters, digital banners and social media platforms and they’re all based on the horrible, but not-so-horrible things we all do that can be made up for by being a foster parent. Things like, you might be a serial re-gifter or you might only tip 10% or you might eat all the m&m’s out of the trail mix, but at least you’re a foster parent. The tagline across the campaign: Fostering. It makes up for a lot.

The San Francisco Chronicle did a piece on the campaign launch, along with the perspective of a family who has fostered multiple kids over the years, including a medically-fragile baby they’ve since adopted.

And while ad agencies love free press, in this case, we’re hoping the free press attracts new families, not new clients.

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Post-it Notes, Passwords and the Future of the Internet.

Hatred of passwords is universal.

How to get more foster parents in San Francisco