Vice President International, 360i / Director of Digital Strategy, Dentsu Network
'I used to make ads, now I feed feeds'
Veteran NYC adman blessed to work with some of the greatest brands worldwide. Photos & observations from the road, with a little pop culture thrown in.
National point of sale I created back in 2004 on behalf of Crown Royal, supporting the brand’s Kentucky Derby sponsorship when I ran my own boutique agency.
Crown is still my favorite drink, I have turned all my friends into Crown drinkers (“Adorers” as my Diageo friends call them), and the signature purple bag is as simple & powerful a brand differentiator as they come.
“Advertising men & politicians are dangerous if separated. Together they are diabolical.”
- Phillip Adams
Expensive, glittering clutter
Where billboards are more valuable than buildings
Times Square, NYC
Coming soon: This Tumblr brought to you by…
Happy Surreal Bowl
In 1995 I started my career making Super Bowl ad campaigns for Pepsi, which won the USA Today Ad Meter for the four years that I worked on the brand.
17 years later I’m making Big Game ad campaigns for Coke, but with a “second screen” emphasis on social and mobile via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr, and moments shared as important as what’s broadcast.
Now that Ad Meter and Facebook have teamed up for the 1st time, we’ll see multi-screen campaign viewing and sharing measured together as well.
Let the games begin… and don’t forget to watch the bears as they watch the game at Cokepolarbowl.com
So once I worked on an infamous Super Bowl :60 TV ad at BBDO called “Gnat”,
that riffed on Mick & the Rolling Stones…
“Brown sugar. How come you taste so good?”
Not sure the stones were talking about soda, but that’s a minor detail.
Chelsea Market, where the National Biscuit Company first started making Oreo cookies 99 years ago.
When I ran LEGO global advertising at Ammirati (after Lintas but before the Lowe merger fiasco)
I traveled back & forth to Lego HQ in Billund, Denmark
to top secret facilities where we saw future LEGO sets not yet created
and I wrote the new strategy; “create your own fun”, which for the first time featured kids playing and building not according to the set instructions (which up to this point was Gospel), but as kids actually play with Lego, their own way - usually freeform
and then created a campaign with Boba Fett & Darth Maul
that was a good job.
Anatomy of a TV shoot from behind the scenes.
Each frame of a TV shooting board - everything from the establishing shots, main action blocked out take-by-take, reaction shots, FX plates, cutaways - each are drawn and tracked, and shot based on how the production is planned, but never in sequential order. In this particular production, the entire shooting board is shown on a single foam core, and replaced frame by frame with actual filmed shots of the “dailies” as they’re completed by the director, and signed off on by client and agency (actually VTR playback screen grabs).
Editing then becomes assembly of the individual shots and specific takes like puzzle pieces, and tweaking sequence, performance and overall timing to tell the story, in this case in 30 seconds (not counting end graphics, logo and tagline).
Best part is watching an idea become real, and compelling.
“Stork”
The final of four epic :60 ads produced for the Monster.com 2008 brand relaunch, as shot by Danny Kleinman for BBDO New York. Of all the TV campaigns I’ve been a part of over the years, this was by far the craziest, most surreal production (that led to some of the best work) I’ve ever known.
Are you reaching your potential?
360i named digital agency for Guinness http://t.co/rOY3zGf via @adage
If you build it, they won’t come.
Not only won’t they come, they probably won’t even know it exists.
Not without smart, concerted awareness efforts (via paid, earned and owned media) to drive them to “it.”
Then, if they do come, “it” had better be legitimately awesome, valuable, compelling, or so whacked it’s worth their time.
And “it” had better be defined by a simple, well designed user experience that makes it really easy to talk about and share “it”.
Better yet, create an “in-the-know” seeding strategy to get influencers with related interests/passions to check it out first, and have their word of mouth help amplify and spread “it”.
But for God’s sake, don’t assume “it” on its own will do much of anything, or attract anyone. The web is chock full of fancy, expensive, barely visited rabbit holes.
"“Slots”
Produced by BBDO for the Monster.com global brand relaunch, and shot by the enigmatic Frank Budgen, we filmed this ad all over & under the city one very long week in Buenos Aires.
Find your own path.
Behind the scenes of a television ad shoot in Hollywood.
No matter what client, concept, talent, location or even budget, a pretty awesome way to spend a workday.
Unless it’s a weather day.
