Kill 2 Birds' Jonathan Ouellette on Severance DOOH and Shared Attention

Jonathan Ouellette, executive creative director of the studio Kill 2 Birds, helped take the Apple TV+ series Severance from a niche show to screens across Times Square, the London Underground and flagship store takeovers — and he believes the future of attention lives in big public spaces, not personalized feeds.

In the studio's Coworking series interview with Marketing Brew, Ouellette described his job in plain terms: "When a brand has something to say, we help give it weight, shape, and presence. When it hits a screen, it pulls you in and makes you stay a beat longer." The goal, he said, is to create "that 'Wait, what was that?' moment" — then build around it so the message sticks.

His approach centers on intent rather than format. Work must hold up whether it appears on a television, a Times Square billboard, a transit station or a phone screen. "Whatever the format, the goal is the same: make it matter," he said.

What made the Severance campaign stand out?

Ouellette named the Severance Season 2 digital out-of-home campaign as his favorite project. The brief focused on elevating Severance from a niche series into a cultural phenomenon, then placing it on screens that reach into people's everyday lives.

The campaign included:

• 3D anamorphic billboards in Times Square
• Placements in the London Underground
• Takeovers of the T-Mobile and Apple flagship stores

"Pretty much everyone at Kill 2 Birds loves the show, so the bar was high and nobody wanted to whiff," Ouellette said. He credited the Apple team as "incredibly talented and great to collaborate with," calling it "the kind of partnership where everyone genuinely made the work better."

Which campaign does he admire now?

Ouellette pointed to Spotify Wrapped. "It's such a smart way to turn user data into identity and build an entire campaign around it," he said. "And no media buy beats millions of people voluntarily posting their own results."

What does he want more of — and less of?

Most optimistic: big screens taking over big spaces. Brands owning entire environments, he argued, act as "a strong counterweight to fighting for scraps of attention across feeds and traditional channels." He added: "There's something powerful about creating a shared experience in the real world."

Least optimistic: hyper-personalization. "I think if everything is tailored 'just for you,' eventually none of it sticks," Ouellette said. "You lose the shared cultural moment, which is usually the stuff people actually remember and talk about."

Beyond the portfolio

Ouellette is an avid hiker whose recent vacations have centered on long-distance walks in the 100- to 200-mile range. He has walked Hadrian's Wall and Alfred Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk route.

His media diet leans toward science podcasts such as StarTalk and The Infinite Monkey Cage. Pressed for one marketing recommendation, he named The Fabulist.

For practitioners, the through-line is clear: Ouellette is betting that shared, large-format experiences will outperform individually targeted content — and the Severance takeover suggests brands are already following that bet.