A previous Creative Director of mine was a reformed pill-popping drag queen who was nearly murdered by his crack-addict male-escort boyfriend. Perhaps foolishly, I envy him his incredibly interesting life, a life worth writing a book about (which he did). I have no such drama to delight readers, no harrowing tales of derring-do or emotional turmoil. Unless wearing the Crunch Bunny costume while being dry-humped on national television by a lingerie-clad model counts (which it should).
What success I have had is thanks to the friends, partners, and mentors I was
fortunate enough to know. Like John Matejczyk, CD at Goodby Silverstein & Partners who pushed me and Bryan Houlette, my AD, to come up with work that won a Bronze Cyber Lion at the 2008 Cannes Festival, Silver in the 2007 and 2008 London International Advertising Awards, Merit in the 2008 One Show, made the 2007 Cannes Short List, Bronze in the 2007 Andy Awards, and a Gold Effie for the campaign in 2008.
Another was Josh Kilmer-Purcell, at SS+K, who believed enough in me and my AD, Brian Murphy, to let us pitch and win new accounts for the agency with very little adult supervision. He also trusted us to shepherd campaigns through TV, print, interactive, radio and ambient media for flagship accounts like Time Warner Cable, Unicef, and Qwest. Our efforts were rewarded with a Silver Pencil at the One Show, Silver Clio, ads in the #1 spot on Adcritic for two weeks straight and a place in the Top 20 most-viewed ads of 2005.
I have also been lucky enough to have work written up in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Communication Arts, Archive, Creativity, Shoot, Adweek, Ad Age, Boards, Print Regional Design Annual, CMYK, and One. A Magazine.
I learned the art of the pitch freelancing at Crispin Porter + Bogusky LA for Sally Hogshead, working with Rob Strasberg and Tony Calcao. Those sleepless nights were as close as I'll ever get to feeling like a pill-popping drag queen on the morning after. My time at Mad Dogs & Englishmen was pitch-free, as the internet bubble ensured a steady stream of clients like HBO, Moviefone, H+M, Cybiko, iPublish, Crunch Gyms, and Yoo-Hoo. There I swam the warm and weird creative waters under the watchful eye of Dave Cook, and worked with uber-talented people like James and Jaime Robinson, Michel Edens, and Travis Britton.
I've delved into the interactive and non-traditional advertising areas, freelancing on various pieces of IBM, ThinkPad, and Miller for OgilvyOne, and delivered pitch-winning campaigns for VO5 while freelancing for EVB, Nike while freelancing for Agency.com, DirectBuy while freelancing for Kirshenbaum, and Motorola at AKQA.
After returning to NY, I worked on a few TV scripts for one of Ubisoft's upcoming videogames and some print/radio/viral for Combos and Absolut at TBWA\Chiat NY. In recent months, I have been fortunate enough to freelance for Ari Merkin at Toy, producing a 6-spot TV campaign for J&R (one of which ran during the Superbowl, two were picked for BestAdsonTV.com, and another was a Finalist at the 2009 Cannes Festival) and helping on a re-branding campaign for Virgin Mobile which was so well received that the client awarded Toy the bulk of its business.
My love for creating ideas that build brands by getting traditional and non-traditional media to play well together continues to this day. Even after 10 years, I find the thrill of gaining a whole new level of engagement with the audience to succesfully influence culture and all of society to be really mind-blowing. No pill-popping required.
