Grant Thomas

I like to make things that use technology in unexpected ways to surprise people and effect culture. Stuff like a cellphone in Minecraft that makes real calls, a VR experience you use in the bathroom to eliminate "toilet boredom", and a machine-intelligence mascot for a highly logical food brand.

I'm a creative technology lead with The Lodge at Wieden + Kennedy. I come up with big ideas, and lead the team of engineers and designers that makes the work. I've made stuff for brands like Verizon, Soylent, Samsung, Nike, Old Spice, KFC and Coca-Cola.

I know how to program, I like to write copy, and I'm a totally decent trombonist.

Selected Work

H.A.R.L.A.N.D.

What: What if the person taking your drive-thru order sounded like Colonel Sanders no matter who they actually were? To find out, we built a real animatronic robot that integrates with a drive-thru system and changes the operator's voice to the Colonel's. Then we made some films about it.
Client: KFC
Role: concept, tech direction, code
Links: press video video

Soy Route

What: We needed a cool way to introduce our spokescharacter Trish to Soylent's core audience of early-adopters. So we built a market on the dark web where you can use Bitcoin to buy the rarest and most special Soylent products from her.
Client: Soylent
Role: concept, copy, tech direction
Links: press website

Pee World VR

What: As you know, peeing is boring and bathrooms are boring. So we set out to solve this problem by making a VR experience where you can pee anywhere while actually peeing in the safety of a real bathroom.
Role: everything in collaboration w/Pablo Rochat
Links: press video app website
Awards: 2016 Product Hunt Golden Kitty for WTF Product Of The Year

Verizon in Minecraft

What: We extended Verizon's network into Minecraft because video games are one of the few places they don't already cover. To make it work, we created software to build video and websites out of Minecraft blocks in real-time. YouTubers like CaptainSparklez and SethBling made video calls, browsed the web, sent selfies, and ordered pizza without leaving the game.
Client: Verizon
Role: concept, tech direction, copy
Links: video press code
Awards: Gold Cyber Lion, 2 X Gold Andys, Gold Clio, Silver Clio

Hands on Ron Burgundy

What: We made an online endurance game for Dodge where you could touch Ron Burgundy. A real-time system tracked the gameplay and the winner touched Ron for 41 hours. We created a custom CAPTCHA, Ron Burgundy's Human Verification System For Websites, to prevent cheating.
Client: Dodge
Role: creative (game concepts), tech lead, engineer
Links: video press
Awards: 2 X Webby, 2 X One Show Silver, Shorty

Kobe Counter

What: We built a counter for Nike that counted the number of times somebody counted on Kobe in real time.
Client: Nike
Role: lead developer

Coke Chase

What: People watching the Super Bowl could use our system to vote via social media on the ending of Coca-Cola's spot. We built a real-time system for capturing their votes.
Client: Coca-Cola
Role: engineering
Links: video press

Comment Haiku

What: We built a thing that used natural language processing tools to turn YouTube comments into semi-topical haikus.
Role: creative, engineering
Links: video

Ahh

What: We built 61 websites for Coca-Cola's ahh campaign along with a tool that helped us manage the deployment of 61 websites.
Client: Coca-Cola
Role: tech lead, engineering
Links: press

Dark Horse Digital

What: We built a system for authoring, selling, and reading digital comics on mobile devices and the Internet.
Role: android lead, full-stack developer
Links: Dark Horse Digital

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