Terminix

Pest control advertising has a problem: it's either gross or boring. Show the bug, show the product, list the guarantee, repeat. For Terminix's "Most Wanted" campaign, the ask was to break that pattern — find a way to make the category feel fresh, memorable, and shareable without leaning on shock or fear. The challenge was making people laugh about something they typically find horrifying.

The idea: treat every pest like a wanted criminal. Not a cartoon villain — a real fugitive. Each piece in the campaign is a mock wanted poster, complete with a mug shot, a crime, an alias, and a deadpan police-blotter description. Palmetto Pete is wanted for Crimes Against Sanity. Maurice the Mouthy is wanted for operating an illegal watering hole and blood bank. Trashcan Sam for petty theft and larceny. Eight-Eyed Sid for vandalism — spreading webs all over town.

The format borrowed the visual language of old Western wanted posters — distressed textures, bold typography, muted paper tones — and applied it straight-faced to cockroaches, mosquitoes, raccoons, and spiders. The humor lands because it's played completely seriously. These are criminals. Terminix will bring them to justice.

Concept and art direction for the full four-piece campaign. Each poster was designed to work as a standalone unit while reading as part of a series — same visual system, different pest, different crime. The copy had to match the tone of the design: authoritative, absurd, and completely committed to the bit. The campaign drove to trustterminix.com and was built to extend across print, digital, and social.