T3 Vice President/Group Creative Director Glen Sheehan mind-banks cool conceptual advertising ideas and loves to share examples of them. And when I am chatting with Glen, examples are helpful, because he’s usually talking so far over my head, I may as well be listening to a lecture on cold fusion.

Once, when I was working on a project with Glen, he urged the members of our creative team to consider all of the contexts in which a consumer might encounter our client’s message. Where do the target consumers go and what do they do, think and feel when they are there? How could we deliver our client’s message in those moments so as to form a deeper bond between consumer and brand?

Seeing the familiar blank look on my face, Glen showed me this Volkswagen negative space billboard. Notice how it’s completely dependent on environment. And while it obtrudes into the user’s world, it does so in a really playful, fun way.

Next, Glen pulled up this YouTube video of a McDonald’s promotion in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Users were actually clamoring to interact with it. And now the video and a photoset on Flickr have created thousands of more impressions.

Finally, he reminded me of an example created here at T3. Our client UPS wanted help creating an effective presence at a businesswomen’s trade show they were sponsoring. If you’ve ever worked at or attended a trade show, you know that sore feet are a part of the deal. So we provided UPS with dozens of brown fuzzy slippers embroidered with a brown and pink UPS logo. They were a hit. Not only did they fit the attendees’ tired feet, they perfectly fit their experience in the moment.

Just as I was finally starting to get it, Glen said, “We look at real-world user flows, and where customers may be. Then we create messaging that has relevance to them in their context, and allow them to take action on it.”

Why couldn’t he just say that in the first place?