Apple, the ‘Cha-Cha-Slide’ and ‘The Millennial’s Guide to Making It’: The Work That Made Rick Wayne
Rick Wayne is an awarded filmmaker turned executive creative director at Brand Imagination Group.
He stepped into creative leadership to make cinematic craft accountable to performance. With a director’s instinct for what people will watch, and a strategist’s discipline for why it works, he leads global campaigns across film, social, experiential, and branded entertainment.
Rick sat down with LBB to discuss everything from Nike’s ‘Find Your Greatness’, to AI slop, and even his ‘Judge Judy’ appearance…
The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Rick> It’s Apple’s ‘Think Different’. It was the first time I realised an ad could feel like poetry. I remember watching those black-and-white portraits of misfits and rebels and thinking, ‘this isn’t selling a product, it’s selling a point of view’. It wasn’t polished – it was human. That spot taught me that emotion wins every time.
I still have the original ‘Think Different’ ‘90s posters hanging in my office to remind me that imagination and emotion are at the core of every great ad.
The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Rick> MTV in the early 2000s was an ecosystem oozing creativity. Music videos and zany bumpers…everything was storytelling in motion. It blurred art and commerce in a way that made me think, ‘wait, this is a job?’. That’s when I fell in love with directing; the idea that moving images could make people feel something and through that build a career.
Even though MTV as we knew it is gone, I’ve been able to tap into that nostalgia for my own work, most recently creating an energy-blasted campaign for Elmer’s slime. A brand I grew up playing with, inspired by the content I consumed in the 2000s.
The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Rick> Cinema has always been my classroom. In the ever-changing landscape of media, movies still hold space for deep human stories. They tend to be less commercialised, more immersive, and more willing to sit in the quiet, messy, beautiful moments of life. I revisit certain films not just for inspiration, but for recalibration. They remind me why I started creating in the first place.
My first professional project…
Rick> I was 16 and iFilm/Viacom (we’re talking pre-YouTube) held an online video contest. I went around town getting construction workers, grandmas from the retirement home, and my entire high school to do the ‘Cha-Cha-Slide’ with me. Alannis Morissete was the judge, and picked my video as the winner.
It was my first big payday, and it later went on to be one of the first videos on YouTube to get over a million views (take that MrBeast).
The piece of work that made me so angry I vowed never to make anything like that…
Rick> AI slop. Political attack ads. Copycat work. Unnecessary sequels. Unnecessary prequel reboots to launch a new toy franchise. Or work void of creative risk that winds up irrefutably rational or harmful.
The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Rick> Nike’s ‘Find Your Greatness’. It’s a masterclass in distilling your message down to the key human emotion. Every frame says something about resilience, humanity, and emotion. I admire how it’s both cinematic and deeply human. It reminds me that story-based advertising can transcend the category and have mass cultural impact.
The creative project that changed my career…
Rick> I was hired as a part-time video creator for LiveLab in Chicago. We were experimenting with social media content before it even had a name, and producing more YouTube content than anyone else at the time.
That period and finally getting to work on Nike taught me how to create at breakneck speed without sacrificing story. It’s what ultimately led to my CEO and I partnering back up to launch BIG (Brand Imagination Group) in Brooklyn, New York. Sure, the speed is faster than ever, but the future of creativity has always been about delivering humanity in real time.
The work that I’m proudest of…
Rick> Our recent launch of BIG itself. It’s not just a new agency, it’s a culmination of everything I’ve learned about storytelling, technology, and empathy.
I’ve never been a traditional creative director in a big box agency, and I believe that allows us to explore this landscape in a unique way. We built BIG to be an orchestra, not an assembly line, where strategists, filmmakers, designers, and technologists create in harmony.
I’m proud because it feels like the right answer to where the industry is headed. Sure, we embrace technology, AI, and trends, but at the heart of what we do is cultivating human love for brands.
I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Rick> My friends and I filmed our entire move to Los Angeles to chase our dreams of being a successful production company. We edited it into a digital series, ‘The Millennial’s Guide to Making It’, and it got picked up by the creators of HBO’s ‘Project Greenlight’.
It was an absolutely incredible opportunity to receive upon landing in LA, but all my failures are well documented in 4K floating about… including me nearly dropping dead on the set of a project I was directing.
Also I was on an episode of ‘Judge Judy’, but you’ll never find it!
The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Rick> I’m very excited about our recent work on Sharpie at BIG. It’s a trusted legacy brand, and we’re giving it a modern voice by watering its roots in sports, celebrity and pop culture.
In a world so heavily influenced by AI and technology, there’s something so pure and trusted about a Sharpie permanent marker. It’s the kind of work that makes me believe in imagination and creativity moving markets.
