Born and bred in the East, advertising flourishes in the West. San Francisco has long been the left coast center of the industry, and it’s not surprising. Home of the Beats, the Dead, the Tenderloin, Frisco is enough to make any creative mouth water. Indeed, the city is a magnet for copywriters, art directors and creative directors, including Stephen Creet of Young & Rubicam San Francisco.
A native of Toronto, Creet takes a sweeping look out of the window of his 39th floor office at Y&R, gazes down at sea and city and says, "I can’t complain." Neither can we. After all, he is transforming a conservative agency branch office into an adventurous creative shop with spots such as "The Buzz" for Golden Grain’s Near East cous cous, in which a North African pasta is being positioned in the American market as a substitute for french fries. With tongue in cheek of course.
Meanwhile, down in Los Angeles, where the air quality is often as thick as soup, creative director Bruce Dundore at asher&partners has been helping to clear the air with "Impotence," the agency’s powerful anti-tobacco campaign which features men and their limp smokes. Remember, this is the agency that introduced the Voicebox Smoker in the Nick Brandt directed spot of the same name. It seems somehow appropriate that smoggy L.A. would produce some of the strongest anti-smoking advertising ever made. It also seems right that Southern California the birthplace of Disney, would be the American birthplace of Legoland, another asher&partners account.
Although technically in L.A., Playa del Rey seems like a world of its own, especially down at the TBWA/Chiat/ Day laboratory, which sits all alone in the middle of a salt marsh. An Area 52 of creativity, the playa is perhaps the perfect place to hatch a fast-food ad campaign with tie-ins to outer space. Tacos, pizza, fried chicken and Star Wars: who else could put such space oddities together but a couple of Chiat odd fellows named Chuck Bennett and Clay Williams, the boys who brought us the talking Chihuahua? In order to gain wisdom and guidance in their effort to marry Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC to The Phantom Menace, Bennett and Williams made a pilgrimage to yet another out-of-the-way place, Skywalker Ranch. "There are such global themes to Star Wars," Bennett observed following his illuminating visit.
Another inspiring location for a creative shop in the West is Las Vegas. Miles Nebeker, creative director at Dunn Reber Glenn Marz, can attest to that. A native of Reno, Nebeker once worked as a promotional copywriter for Circus Circus Casino, which might explain his offbeat sense of humor and his casual weekend look. Nebeker’s boss, partner John Glenn, apparently once refused to take him to see clients. " ‘I think you’re possibly the worst-dressed person on the planet,’ " Nebeker recalls Glen saying to him. "But then I said I’ll promise to take showers, stop wearing shorts and start wearing clean socks." Nebeker is responsible for, among other things, University Medical Center’s "Life In Las Vegas," which features people who actually live in the casino town, including an Elvis impersonator. Move over Madison Ave. and make way for Glitter Gulch.
-Richard Linnett, Senior Editor Special Reports
All That Glitters Is Gold
