There's nothing more exciting than when you find out your creative team is going to get the chance to do some new creative -- especially when it's new and different from anything that's been done before for your client -- let alone the agency.

The Lavidge Company has been privileged to work on the McDonald's Phoenix Co-op account for just about seven years now. Because of this long-standing relationship, the Co-op trusts us. Though we may not get to do a lot of original creative, when we do, we are given the opportunity to come up with great new concepts -- that fit the budget they give us, of course!

Now being an Account Supervisor, I take opportunities like this one to another level. Of course I'm excited that we get to do some cool creative. But I'm even more excited to share our work with other markets who run similar promotions for McDonald's -- for two reasons. 1) it showcases what great work we do here at Lavidge to those who may not be familiar with our agency, and 2) it gives us the opportunity to help offset the Co-op's production budget by seeing if these other markets want to broker our creative for their own use for a small fee. What can I say, I love the dollars and cents of it all as much as I love the creative aspect.

The "Smiles" TV spot ended up being brokered out to seven markets from Pittsburgh to Seattle in both English and Spanish. As it stands today, the Co-op ended up paying for only about 10 percent of the production costs. The Co-op is happy, we are happy and so are the brokering Co-ops.

Our Creative Director, Bob Case, may have been a little scared to take on producing the spot, but he never showed it to me. And I never had any doubts that the spots would be as great as it is!

Thanks to McDonald's for continuing to let us do great work for them and special thanks to Bob and our creative team for pushing their fears aside to create an amazing piece of animation!