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The origins of HR Peep Show

What's the difference between a turkey and a chicken?



Chickens celebrate Thanksgiving. 


Thanksgiving is the day we gather together to celebrate poultry and friendship. 

It's an excellent day to tell a behind-the-scenes story about HR Peep Show.


In the potluck of professional collaborations, we all bring our own side dishes of skill. 


Krista Lane came up with the brilliant name. 

We wanted something fun, to show that we weren’t dry, sanctimonious blowhards who thought we had all the answers. The cheeky double entendre of “peep” for “people” and “peep” for sneaking a peek at something private stuck just the right tone. 


AnnE Diemer came up with the bit about a “peek behind the curtain.” 

My suggestions used less delicate metaphors. I remember suggesting “opening the kimono” and something about “how the sausage gets made.” 

I’m glad I was overruled. That’s what friends are for. 


At first, I wasn’t sure what creative skills I could bring. 

I’m no good at audio editing. 

Or talking.

Or promotion.


But I do have one talent:  I’m a so-so graphic designer. 

I’ve been honing my skills for decades, ever since the era MS Paint. 

So when it was time to come up with the logo, I fired up my $1.99/month photo editing app and sprang into action. 


We wanted the logo to look like a Peep™️, but not too much like a Peep (for legal reasons). So I asked AI to do what it did best: Help me maintain plausible deniability as I ripped off someone else's IP. 



I laughed so hard at the AI-generated images that my dog checked to make sure I was okay. 

Alas, the AI images proved too hard to edit and I wound up using standard Canva clip art in the final version.


But there was another version that I liked better. A gif of a marshmallow-realistic Peep peeking round the curtain while a bunch of fotton-tailed rabbits shook their bunny-booties suggestively behind her.

It wasn’t as slick, but it used both kinds of peeps: chicks and rabbits. 

(Rabbits would have introduced a whole separate line of puns and double entendres) 



The cotton-tailed chorus line didn’t make the cut, but this Thanksgiving I thought it would be fun to share it and some of the other outtakes.



👋 I’m Claire. Other masterpieces in my portfolio include:


→ Replacing all of the PII in the screenshots for a payroll SOP with characters from the Mary Tyler Moore show

→ Uploading Pinterest baking fails to expense reports instead of receipts for months before anyone noticed

→ An advertising campaign concept of Carole Baskin doing a celebrity brand partnership with my managed payroll service

→ Creating a short film about a crow falling in love with my dog



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