Before doors opened on the first morning of the expo at the NCSL Legislative Summit, the main ballroom at McCormick Place held about 3,000 empty seats. Almost empty. On seat after seat, row after row, stood a small plush dog in an NCSL bandana: 2,500 of them, ears up, waiting for the room to arrive. For about twenty minutes, it was the best audience I've ever seen.
A digital dog, brought to life
Nora is NCSL's new AI assistant: trusted, nonpartisan, vetted, in exactly those words. She's built to answer the questions legislators and legislative staff actually have, like who at NCSL to talk to about Medicaid, where to find the 2026 state legislative session calendar, or what NCSL's resources say about AI and privacy. On screen, she's a friendly illustrated dog with glasses.
The brief was to take that digital character and make her physical. Not a logo on a stress ball. Nora herself, as a custom plush true to the illustration, so the assistant people were about to hear about was already sitting in their hands. When the keynote kicked off the expo, Nora was on the big screens, Nora the mascot was on stage, and everyone in the room was holding one. The same character at three sizes, all saying the same thing: this is approachable. Go ahead and ask.
"Ooh, cute" is a launch strategy
Introducing new software to a room of busy policy people is a hard brief. The week's AI programming was serious, with sessions on regulation, innovation, and where legislatures should steer all of it, including a keynote conversation with Geoffrey Hinton. NCSL's answer to that gravity was to make its own AI the friendliest thing in the building.
It worked in the first ten seconds. People walked in, spotted the seats, and you heard it ripple through the room: oh, a dog. Ooh, cute. The dogs disappeared almost as fast as the seats filled, and the chatter kept going. I watched attendees introduce each other to the assistant by way of the plush: did you know about NCSL's AI? Plenty didn't, and then they did. More than a few people went back for a second Nora, one per kid at home. That's the part I love. This dog now lives on desks and in bedrooms with NCSL's name on it, a long way from Chicago.
NCSL played it smart with the numbers, too. With about 7,500 people at the Summit and a ballroom that holds around 3,000, they held a reserve of plush back for their booth in the expo hall, where a Nora was waiting after a live demo of the assistant. The dog earned the demo, and the demo earned the dog.
Why we were in the room
This is what our custom and creative work looks like when the brief is genuinely new: no catalog has your AI assistant in plush form. It was designed and produced to match a character that only existed on screens, delivered on a conference deadline, and staged as part of the event activation itself rather than handed out at a table. The launch didn't need swag that decorated it. It needed swag that did the explaining.
Congratulations to the NCSL team on the launch. Somewhere out there, 2,500 Noras are doing their job.
Launching something of your own? Tell us the moment you're building and we'll start with the brief, not a catalog. More of our work is on the work page.