Ever wonder who the people in your neighborhood are? Several of the players on Portland’s Trail Blazers basketball team did, and now thanks to a new ad campaign, they’re getting a chance to find out. TV spots featuring such team members such as Darius Miles, Dan Dickau, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Theo Ratliff and Damon Stoudamire show the hoopsters mixing and mingling with Portland locals in a variety of offbeat situations.
In "Welcome to the Jungle," the sports stars are seen hanging out with the city’s mayor, visiting a local hunting supply store, trying their luck at fly-fishing, taking a ride on a trolley car and shopping at a tire store, among other things. Throughout the spot, the seminal Guns n’ Roses song "Welcome to the Jungle" plays, as quick shots of the players enjoying the city are shown. Subsequent ads feature each of the players in one-on-one vignettes with the locals. The campaign, which is designed to help the city’s residents open their arms a bit wider to the team, is a collaboration between agency Nerve, Portland, and the recently opened ad shop 72andSunny, which has offices in Los Angeles and Amsterdam.
The agency, which opened its doors on April 5, and was founded by creatives John Boiler, Glenn Cole and Robert Nakata—all of whom worked at Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Amsterdam (Boiler and Cole also did stints at the agency’s Portland, Ore., headquarters)—along with Greg Perlot, who was previously the director of advertising and corporate research at Microsoft. "The four of us crossed paths individually and together throughout the years," explains Boiler. "I met Glenn at W+K in the early 1990s. We had a lot of fun working together, first in Portland and later in Amsterdam. We met Greg when we pitched Microsoft in 1995. He actually killed our campaign for the launch of Windows 95, but he did it in the most charming way imaginable," he laughs. "Robert, who is this world-famous graphic designer, was hired at W+K in Amsterdam just as I was heading back to the States." According to Boiler, the men all hit it off famously from the get-go and found that they "really respected" each other’s work.
Boiler’s résumé includes building such international brands as Nike, Miller Genuine Draft, Coke and Gortex. During his 11 years at W+K, he ascended from art director to executive creative director of the Amsterdam office before venturing out as part of a freelance team with Cole, who previously oversaw such accounts as Nike Europe, Audi and Heineken during his tenure as a creative director at W+K in Amsterdam. "We’d all been talking individually about wanting to start our own company for a while and then the timing was just right," Boiler recounts. "Geography also had something to do with it because Glenn and I decided, after living in Portland and then Amsterdam for a while, that it’d be fun to be in the sun for awhile … hence the name 72andSunny."
Flexibility
The philosophy of the new full-service advertising, design and brand identity agency involves each of its founders playing to their strengths. "We’re just a bunch of sports freaks, design nuts, gear heads, movie buffs and surfers who happen to have some credentials in this space," says Cole.
"Getting good ideas from advertising agencies can be too expensive and encumbered these days," Perlot points out. "We want to work with companies that have big aspirations—whether they have the interest in a traditional media buy or not."
Playing to their strengths also includes the locales the men will be working from. For Boiler, Cole and Perlot, the base of operations will be in Los Angeles, not far from their Hermosa Beach homes. Nakata, who retains dual Canadian/Dutch citizenship, will head the Amsterdam operation.
"For me, the Netherlands is home and has been for about nineteen years," says Nakata. "But for John, Glenn and Greg, their families are in L.A. and that’s the location that will work best for them going forward." Nakata brought his acclaimed design skills to W+K in ’93, where he worked with Boiler and Cole and the Nike account.
His hope for 72andSunny is that the agency will break down the walls that sometimes exist between advertising and design. "It seems to me that those two components have tended to be separate in this world of specialization, and historically—in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s—they went much more hand-in-hand," Nakata says. "That’s one of the reasons I was interested in working with these guys, because they also see the need for strong coherence between the two in building brands."
Boiler echoes the sentiment: "We want to stretch ourselves creatively and to further blur the distinction between design and advertising," he notes. "Face it—the idea that advertising equates to a commercial or print ad is pretty antiquated. We’re trying to redefine the concept of ‘ad agency’ to reflect that notion."
The partners also plan to redefine themselves in the process. For example, Cole and Boiler served as creatives on the Portland Trail Blazers work, with Cole additionally serving as the campaign’s director. He and Boiler will be co-directing some upcoming TV spots for USA Networks. "We’ve been a freelance directing team for the last year, [producing mostly through bicoastal/ international] Hungry Man," Boiler relates. "We wanted to get some experience doing that so we can direct some of our own scripts going forward. Given the size of some of the business we want to work on, we might not always be right for [a project], but we’ll see on a case-by-case basis."
However, Boiler by no means plans to abandon his role as a creative. "Speaking for myself, I’ll never be able to take myself away from developing big brands," he says. "I’ll always want to be able to do that." So far, in addition to doing project work for the Trail Blazers and USA Networks accounts, 72andSunny has lined up print and online work for Windows’ Musicmatch; and Bugaboo, a Netherlands-based stroller manufacturer, is on their official account roster.
They also have their eyes on several surf-related companies and at least one high-end audio/visual manufacturer. "We definitely have a list of brands that we are hot for," Nakata states.
"We’ve had a lot of opportunities in our careers to work on some of the biggest brands in the world and it’s been great, but now we feel like it’s time [for something new]," says Boiler regarding 72andSunny’s objectives. "We’re at a point in our respective careers where we’re not ready to go quietly yet or to just drift into obscure management positions. We want to make new companies famous while building a big new brand out of ourselves."
