When two job-hunting advertising creatives get together, it makes sense for them to channel and pool their talents, to promote themselves as they would a client. That’s just what copywriter Marc Guttesman and art director Tom Millar have done on their Web site marcandtom.com.
The site features a :90s PSA of the two men trying to make it in jobs outside of the advertising industry but to no avail as they fall victim to their agency creative sensibilities. Working with small children in a school setting, Millar, played by actor Nick Basta, corrects a young girl with blonde pigtails. Her drawing “isn’t working,” he explains, suggesting the tree should be smaller and the rainbow removed because it creates confusion. As a waiter, he can’t leave the table after presenting two entrees. He pauses to assess the food’s arrangement, correcting the layout on the plates before leaving his customers.
Guttesman, played by Peter Esmond, can’t shake his advertising tendencies either. When he sits in court as a stenographer reading a prostitute’s testimony back to the judge, the witness’ words have been altered. The copywriter’s instinctual revisions make the woman’s earthy streetwalker talk sound instead like that of an infomercial spokesperson touting bargain basement prices.
GETTING TO WORK
This is not the first project on which these two men have collaborated; they worked together at Bozell, NewYork, in the late ’90s into ’01. Millar was a creative director and Guttesman a senior copywriter. After leaving Bozell, neither found career satisfaction. Marcandtom.com is the product of their commiseration and desire to land better jobs.
“At Bozell, we worked on the Milk campaign, we worked on Lycos, we had the opportunity to work on some brands that did really great creative,” Millar said. “That’s what we wanted to move back to.”
While developing the idea for this spot, Guttesman saw an article about a piece directed by Joe Leih in SHOOT‘s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery (1/4/03, p. 11). Impressed, Guttesman contacted the director to discuss working together.
Leih said he immediately responded to the PSA’s concept. And it was an opportunity to showcase his skills in a spot that he said seemed likely to attract attention.
Noting one of the director’s important contributions to the project, Millar said, “We knew in a way what scenarios would be funny to people who are in the business and who understood what creatives do–and how that would maybe affect poorly another type of job they’d try. But Joe was smart enough to realize it’s got to be funny to everybody who would see it.”
As of press time, Leih was seeking production house representation. Ginger Myers executive produced the :90. Brian O’Carroll was DP.
Additional credit goes to Justin Quagliata, editor, earth2mars, New York; colorist Carlos Rodriguez, Moving Images, New York; and Tom Lino, sound designer/mixer, FlickerLab, New York.
