By Christine Champagne

Argentina-based Luciano Podcaminsky directs the kind of provocative commercials most other directors can only dream of doing. In fact, watching his reel, one is continually struck by the thought, I can’t believe he got to do that. Take MTV Latin America’s “Father and Daughter,” for example. Co-directed with Armando Bo and created by Young & Rubicam, Buenos Aires, the spot opens with a little girl asking her rocker daddy how she was born. He launches into a rather graphic description as evidenced by a series of risqué vignettes in which we see mommy and daddy mating like bunnies–getting it on in a variety of locations, ranging from the kitchen counter to the car. At the end of the spot, the girl is frozen in place, mouth agape, and the tagline “Rock is hard” appears on the screen.
    Another MTV Latin America spot called “Zoo,” also co-directed by Bo, centers on a zoo employee whose job is to clean up after the animals. We see the poor guy catching elephant poop in a bucket, picking up the waste of a giraffe and lion by hand and wiping a rhino’s bum. At the end of a long workday, the guy, who one imagines must reek, takes a shower, picks up his pay and heads straight to a music store where without hesitation he spends his hard-earned money on a guitar. “Life is shit without music” reads the tagline.
    Further evidence of Podcaminsky’s flair for the outrageous: A teen-oriented campaign for Sprite out of Ogilvy & Mather, Buenos Aires, that frankly presents “things the way they are.” “Misfortunes” finds young people delighting in the misfortune of others, laughing as a boy drops ice cream from his cone onto his shoe, a construction foreman is mowed down by a crane and a gymnast running full speed toward a pommel horse crashes into it. Another spot titled “Wanna” informs girls that their male friends aren’t real friends but simply swarms of hormones waiting for the opportunity to pounce.
    When told that some of his best work could probably never air in our rather conservative United States, Luciano says, “I know,” with a laugh. “There are some things you can only do in places like [Argentina].”
    Argentina is an exciting country for spotmakers, according to Podcaminsky. “People talk a lot about commercials–they are very popular,” the director says.
    Podcaminsky is represented for spots by @radical.media worldwide except for in Argentina, where he works through Rebolucion, Buenos Aires, a company he runs with Bo.
    A seasoned director with more than 10 years experience, Podcaminsky began his career on the agency side of the advertising business, working as a copywriter. He found life as a copywriter less than satisfying. “Maybe if I was in very, very good agencies, it would have been different,” he muses.
    “But I wasn’t doing very good creative stuff.”
    With nothing to lose, Podcaminsky pursued his passion for directing in 1996 as part of the directing collective Peluca, which worked out of the Buenos Aires-based production company Peluca Films that Podcaminsky co-founded.
    Podcaminsky ultimately went solo, and since then, he has made a real name for himself. Selected in 2005 for inclusion in the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase, he also ranked eighth on the Gunn Report’s list of the most award-winning directors for that year.
    Podcaminsky, whose work has been honored by shows ranging from the Cannes International Advertising Festival to the Clios, is happy to win awards, of course, but he stresses that spots need to be crafted to serve the client, not for festival wins. “You have to think about the product first,” he insists.
    Still, he believes that one can produce effective advertising while aspiring to create original, even genre-busting work. An example of his ability to do this appears on Podcaminsky’s reel in the form of a spot for Pampers out of Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Buenos Aires. Titled “Crying,” the humorous commercial, which warns against coddling an infant too much, is hardly your typical diaper commercial, depicting a grown man as a freakish crybaby who bursts into tears when a guy steals a ball from him during a basketball game, when a bell hop takes his luggage and when his date helps herself to the tub of popcorn sitting on his lap.
    By the way, it should be noted that not all of Podcaminsky’s work is edgy and funny. The director also has a sensitive side as we see in the cinematic Clio automobile spot “Scarecrow” out of Buenos Aires’ Lowe Argentina. In the spot, a scarecrow, complete with crows on his shoulders, is seen driving a Clio from the farm, where he usually spends his days and nights standing in a field, to the beach. There, he dips his feet in the water and takes in the ocean air. When he has gotten his fill, the scarecrow drives back to the farm and is warmly greeted by the nice human being who loaned him his car and stood in for the scarecrow while he was gone. The two embrace, the man gets in his car and goes on his way, and the scarecrow assumes his post again.
    This from the same man who brought us the “Father and Daughter” spot.
    When it comes to choosing work, Podcaminsky says he doesn’t have any specific requirements in terms of genre or style. What’s most important is that the concept speaks to him. “If I like it, I do it,” he says, noting, “It’s the same amount of hours to do a bad script as a good script, so you try to do something that you like.”
    While all of the aforementioned work was helmed through Rebolucion, Podcaminsky recently completed his first job through @radical.media–a spot called “Lions” for France’s CANAL+ through BETC Euro RSCG, Paris.
    He also recently co-directed with Bo a Got Milk? campaign via GrupoGallegos, Long Beach, Calif., and is putting the finishing touches on a commercial he directed solo for Nike out of Wieden + Kennedy Portland, Ore. The Got Milk? assignment entailed three spots: “Law of Gravity,” which is not scheduled to debut on air until May; and “Laughs” and “Dream Town,” which both just premiered.
    In the latter commercial we are taken to a fantasy land where people’s dreams come true–from driving whatever luxury/sports cars they desire to winning the lottery to a guy having an eye on the back of his head so he can watch sports on television without his wife ever knowing. We see the sports-obsessed male being attentive to his loving spouse and infant in the foreground while he’s really fixated with his third eye on the big game playing on the TV set in the background.
    In the spot’s final scenario we see a teen boy drinking a glass of milk before going to bed. That’s because milk helps everybody get a good night’s sleep and the better you sleep, the better you dream. As he nods off, we see four young, hot-looking women singing him a lullaby in his bedroom. Ah, the dream has already kicked in.
    At press time, Podcaminsky wasn’t at liberty to discuss the details of the alluded to Nike project, although he couldn’t withhold sharing his enthusiasm for it, describing it as “the best spot I have done in maybe all of my career.”

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