The Home Depot Organic Social Custom Content
Trade School work for The Home Depot | 2022-2025
Celebrate and foster inclusion.
The Home Depot and DEI
I had the privilege of working with Lindsey Cirmotich on several projects including The Home Depot’s TikTok channel launch and the PPG campaign where she oversaw everything for Glidden. She is an amazing illustrator in addition to being one of the most talented hybrid Creatives I know.
We were also both on Trade School’s Inclusion Council, so we became “the team” who got tapped for all-things-DEI-content for The Home Depot’s Organic Social team beginning in 2023.
Starting with a sketch Lindsey did for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month in 2023, we’d been slowly introducing batches of The Home Depot Associates illustrated for each heritage month along with a graphics package of corresponding color bars and frames that could be used on social media.
We worked very closely with both Trade School’s / Guided by Good’s and The Home Depot’s DEI teams to make sure the Associates we showed and the activities they were doing were celebratory of a cultural heritage and not demeaning or degrading in any way.
Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month
Published May 1, 2023
The one that started it all…
In 2022, Lindsey and Jennifer Barclay came up with the idea of using the national flowers from every Asian / Pacific Island country as a nod to The Home Depot’s Garden Center, one of the most-photographed spots in any The Home Depot store. It was colorful and celebratory and made sense for The Home Depot to do something like celebrating culture through gardening.
In 2023, we were asked how to kick that up another notch; and I suggested we do a similar execution of national flowers, but with cut paper.
More specifically: paint swatches.
Lindsey did a sketch of the overall idea, and I had a chance to pull out my Maker skills to execute it.
Everything was hand-cut from Behr and PPG paint swatches except for the background; that was a single sheet of peach-colored paper from Sam Flax. I shot two different versions: one with the Associates included and one with just the florals in case anyone felt the Associates were too “cute.”
The paper photographed much more pink than peach, so I had to do a small amount of color adjusting on the background for the final.
NOTE: I do not recommend using paint swatches for finely-detailed paper craft unless you have stock in X-Acto. I went through almost two dozen blades on this project alone.
The Team
Some in-progress behind-the-scenes shots while I was translating Lindsey’s drawing into cut paper
An alternate version I shot during the construction process just in case the clients didn’t want to use the Associate illustrations
LGBTQIA+ Pride Month
Published June 1, 2023
We were asked to execute two different pieces for LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in 2023; a 1:1 in-feed video unit and a graphics package that could be used across social and internal communications that included a 1:1 in-feed static post.
The in-feed video was executed mimicking the viral trend of paint-pouring / dripping. We added a Paint Stirrer to get a little branding into the video.
The final video was a combination of the actual paint-pulling video I shot and some clean-up animation done in After Effects where I also added the “Happy Pride Month” box graphic.
Turns out the Associates Lindsey illustrated for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month were a hit… so we were asked to do more of them.
Using the theme of “Building Community with Pride,” Lindsey had this set of Associates working to assemble the words, “HAPPY PRIDE MONTH.”
She then took the colored pattern from each of the letters and created frames and other graphic elements that could be layered on top of photos with the individual Associates to create Organic social content throughout the month.
I should point out that at the time I had cyan-colored hair, so I take it as a huge compliment that Lindsey found a way to get me into the set.
The Team
Hispanic American Heritage Month
September 15-October 15, 2023
Lindsey did SO MUCH RESEARCH guided by Trade School’s Communications Strategy team to make sure there is a good cross-section of every group we were asked to make Associate graphics for.
She studied the skin tones, hair styles, body types, jewelry—you name it.
This was also the first set to include an autistic Associate – he’s the one wearing noise-cancelling headphones at work to aid with sensory overload.
This month’s graphics package again included a set of Associate illustrations and frames / color bars corresponding with the heritage month’s core colors.
The Team
Black History Month
February 2024
Lindsey and I were again brought on to make even more Associate graphics the internal Comms team at The Home Depot could use. Rather than making a full set of each Associate performing two different tasks, this was the first time we were asked to only make each doing just one thing.
This month’s graphics package again included a set of Associate illustrations and frames / color bars corresponding with the heritage month’s core colors.
The Team
Women’s History Month
March 2024
It’s time for the REMIX!
Rather than have us create a totally new set of Associate graphics, for Women’s History Month we were asked to recolor EVERY female Associate Lindsey had previously drawn to match the Women’s History Month palette the internal Comms team was using. This is a selection of the Associates that got new outfits.
In the case of the Pride Associates, Lindsey also re-drew them because the overall style she was using had evolved and she wanted all of them to match.
Halloween 2022
Published October 28, 2022
In late Spring 2022, The Home Depot’s Organic Social Team approached Trade School about making two pieces of content to highlight the launch of their Halloween assortment:
Lance Allen is the “Decorative Holiday Merchant” at The Home Depot… and it’s obvious from first meeting him that he LOVES Halloween.
We knew Lance could talk for days about every piece in the Halloween product assortment, so I chose to do his video as a live interview rather than write a script and have Lance memorize a bunch of lines. I’d ask him some fairly standard questions and we could do several takes to allow him to give us very short answers or extremely long ones. I would then take the transcript of the interview and build the video based on the sound bites we got from him.
And that’s exactly what we did.
We ran this shoot with what Trade School refers to as a “Small Gear” team: me as Interviewer, Roger Okamoto as DP and Brandon Jones as Producer. We also managed to bring two of our Apprentices (Interns) to assist Roger moving the gear in and out and our Program Director, Christina Cilento. The clients from the Organic Social Team on set outnumbered the Trade School team almost two to one!
I think Kris had the most fun with this video… when the clients gave him free rein to add as much animation as he wanted on top of the scenic footage provided by Alderman, he had a blast.
The final video was cut to a 16:9 for YouTube, a 1:1 for Facebook and Instagram in-feed, and a 9:16 for IGTV (now Instagram Reels).
Skelly is a big part of The Home Depot’s success at Halloween.
“Big” as in a 12-foot-tall part of it.
So big, in fact, that many people who own a Skelly leave him up year-round versus trying to find somewhere to store him. There are several Facebook groups dedicated to the owners of 12-foot Skeletons and what they do with them outside of Halloween.
Our clients contacted several people who had posted and tagged The Home Depot across Facebook and Instagram; and with their permission, we were asked to make a “slideshow” video. Allison did much better than that.
The only hitch in our storyboards was not having a good photo of Skelly’s hand to start it off, so I took one on my iPhone the day we filmed Lance’s interview.
The final video was cut to both a 16:9 for Facebook and Instagram in-feed and a 9:16 for IGTV (now Instagram Reels).
The Team
GRWS
(Get Ready with Skelly)
Published October 31, 2024
What’s more Halloween than watching a 12-foot skeleton get ready for the big night?
Getting to puppeteer it.
Because this video was only going to be seen on Reels and TikTok, we definitely played up the, “what’s in frame is all you need to care about” aspect and had the monitors taped off to show a 9:16 crop.
The music was added in-platform later at activation using the brand-safe music libraries on META and TikTok, so the version I have included here only has the sound effects.
Although you’d never guess I was enjoying it by the look on my face. I was… very intense… looking at the monitors.
The Team
Christmas Day 2024
Published December 25, 2024
I had the opportunity to bring out my Maker skills yet again. This time, the request was to take one of The Home Depot’s shipping boxes and make it into a cute light-up storefront like a gingerbread house. I went to The Home Depot’s Kennesaw location and photographed it to use as the model because I liked its entrance with the orange pipe pattern above the door.
We only had one day in the Studio to shoot the process video, so I built a LOT ahead at home and faked many of the shots—something I’ve gotten very good at knowing how little is actually going to be seen in the final edit. NOBODY wants to sit through 20+ hours of me making something, even if it’s sped up.
I think I confused both Dan and Ryan by <how> out-of-order we shot everything – they literally turned on the camera and let me run with all the shots.
Side note: We filmed this on November 6, 2024… the day after the 2024 U. S. Presidential Election. Let’s just say it was a very good thing there were no clients present on set because I was in a VERY foul mood and not at all full of the “Christmas spirit” that day.
The Team
4th of July 2025
Published July 4, 2025
Organic holiday posts are always a good way to give a “real” project to our summer interns (called “Apprentices” at Trade School) for their portfolios. That was the intent, at least.
When we joined the kickoff meeting, ALL of the Apprentices were on the call – not just the Creatives. There were a lot of <very> enthusiastic opinions. It was a bit of cat wrangling on both mine and Sara’s parts to rein them in so our two Art Apprentices, Kanchan and Fang, could have a direction to work in.
The music was added in-platform later at activation using the brand-safe music libraries on META and TikTok, so the version I have included here only has the sound effects.
The Team
Halloween 2025
Coming Soon!
(And this image of Skelly is not a spoiler in any way)