Work created at MOD Pizza, as an art director on the creative team.
MOD Pizza was heading into the 2023 holiday season facing real headwinds: traffic was down roughly 7% YOY — worse than projected — driven primarily by lower-income households feeling the squeeze of inflation. The business needed a campaign that could drive visit frequency and gift card sales across a six-week promotional window stretching from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, without relying on the Rewards program that had limited reach the prior year. The creative had to work hard: it needed to feel warm and generous, not desperate, at a moment when consumers were anxious about spending.
I led the creative concept and full execution. The “Give Thanks” headline was mine — a deliberate double meaning that tied the campaign to the season while anchoring it to MOD’s brand values of generosity and community. The delivery mechanism was also my concept: rather than a standard digital coupon flow, I proposed a custom-designed, physically printed holiday coupon booklet with a gift card holder that could be bundled with a $30 gift card purchase and given as a gift. This required developing an original dieline template and coordinating with our print production team and vendor to create test blanks before design even began.
The booklet housed three offers across the promotional period, each with its own distinct color palette and typographic personality. Woven between the coupons were “Random Acts of MODness” prompts — small acts of kindness customers could share on social — a concept I co-developed with our brand copywriter, reviving a phrase MOD had used in earlier charitable activations and giving it fresh, participatory life. Every illustration, every color story, every typographic choice was original work, created entirely by me.
The campaign ran fully omnichannel: in-store POS (entry greeters, counter mats, door clings), the coupon books themselves, email, paid social, app placements, and web. The booklets sold out completely.
Client: MOD Pizza Art Director / Designer / Illustrator: Dianne Vallier
