Next December marks SHOOT’s 50th year of publication and in this year-end issue we begin a series of features that will run through 2010 in which noted industry executives and artists reflect on the changes they’ve seen over the decades, as well as the essential dynamics that have endured. These folks–from different sectors of the business–will also share their vision and aspirations for the future.
Our first group consists of: Lee Clow, chief creative officer/global director of Media Arts, TBWA Worldwide, and chairman of TBWA/Media Arts Lab; director Bob Giraldi of Giraldi Media; Larry Bridges, founder of Red Car; and Robert Greenberg, chairman/CEO/global chief creative officer, R/GA.
This series will set the stage for SHOOT’s blockbuster 50th Anniversary commemorative issue that will be published in November 2010.
Lee Clow Back around 1970 when ChiatDay was starting up in Los Angeles, Lee Clow found himself working at N.W. Ayer and didn’t enjoy the environment there. “It was too much about what was bad about the Mad Men days–martini lunches and keeping clients happy rather than striving to do something better and creative on their behalf,” recalled Clow. “Meanwhile there was a lot of buzz about this shop across town on Olympic Boulevard [in L.A.] called Chiat/Day. Jay Chiat and Guy Day were there, Hy Yablonka was the creative director. It was a place I wanted to work. After bothering them for a year, I finally landed a job and I’ve been there ever since.”
The “there” has changed quite a bit over the years, as reflected in Clow’s current roles with Media Arts, TBWA Worldwide, and with TBWAMedia Arts Lab. Yet whatever titles he’s carried over the years, Clow has always found himself trying to maintain a key working dynamic. “It was fun being 18 people on Olympic Boulevard,” he related. “There was a passion and intensity in trying to figure out how to do new brave stuff. Jay Chiat pushed for breakthrough work. Today, we still aspire to do the same. But when you get as big as we are now, it gets harder to maintain the feel of what we had at ChiatDay with those core people. That’s the feel, though, that I still look to attain today, so that our creative brand groups feel and act like little agencies with the same kind of passion we had for one or two accounts back then.”
Clow’s creative passion has translated into such iconic work as Apple’s historic “1984” Super Bowl spot, and years later the reunion between Apple and TBWAChiatDay which first yielded the lauded “Think different” campaign. That creative spirit now extends all the way through iPods, iPhones and the ongoing “Mac vs. PC” campaign which has become part of mainstream pop culture.
As for how agency creatives and their mandate have changed over the years, Clow observed, “Back in the day it used to be that the high threshold for a creative person was to do TV. Lower down the food chain there was print, and further down there were dealer ads. But today creative people and creative departments have to be part of an all-media thinking creative group. Creative is not just about a TV commercial.
“Today,” continued Clow, “creatives have to consider what kind of conversations are going to start up around the idea they’re putting out there for a brand no matter what the medium. You don’t have control over conversations in social media, blogs, chats, on Facebook and Twitter. But you can do things as a brand, take actions that beget conversation, beget interest, that tap into the power of people wanting to spend time talking about you, your brand, what you do. We have never sought to seed or try to force conversation on the Internet. It’s the brand that does that and the conversation is spontaneous. ‘How do you like your iPhone?’ The brand has to be smart, likeable and trustworthy. Everything a brand does is advertising.
“Ultimately,” affirmed Clow, “brands are going to become media, with people choosing to seek out a certain brand and spend time with it. If the brand has done a film, people want to see it. They want to see their product, their store. The Apple Store is probably the best ad Apple has ever done. The store is an audio-video experience with passionate kids at the genius bar, an inviting design, interaction with the products, a theater in back where they teach and where other forms of film are shown that engage, inform, tell stories and sometimes entertain. Apple’s packaging tells as much of a story about that brand as a TV spot. The experience of getting an iPhone, opening the box, how reverently that packaging is designed, the words and pictures taking a dimensional form on the package. People want to touch, feel and see a brand. Our task is to help build a brand that’s strong enough as a medium so that people will want to interact with that brand’s stories.”
Yet with all the changes, there remains a constant for good agency creatives. In fact, because of the ever changing landscape and the fact that people are more discriminating, selective and have more control over their media and the brands they spend time with, this constant is arguably even more essential. “I still believe we are all storytellers–words and pictures, art and copy remain our tools,” said Clow. “We’re telling stories and using media to share those stories. The media forms have broadened dramatically as have the length of films. But it all comes down to creatives being good storytellers, having and crafting a relevant, entertaining story worthy of a person’s time. I don’t think people dislike advertising. They dislike bad advertising. I don’t buy the concept that people don’t watch TV commercials anymore. They are just more selective about what they watch and decide what messages they are willing to spend some time with. So it’s incumbent that our creativity is notched up or people will blow right past you.”
Asked to reflect on the highlights of his career, Clow related, “I’ve been fortunate to work for great brands. I’m probably the most lucky guy in advertising to have been around a brand like Apple that is so world changing. From day one with Apple, we shared the belief that everything the brand did had to be great. We cared about the packaging, about how the instruction manuals were written. Anything that was an expression of the brand we cared about. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, we said, ‘Let’s get the magic and the passion back.'”
Apple and TBWAChiatDay reunited in 1997 upon Jobs’ return. “Apple was ready to go out of business back then,” recollected Clow. “But Steve re-energized the company. They developed new products, liberated the design people. ‘Think different’ was a challenge to the creative people who cared about the brand as well as a challenge to Apple itself to rethink what it made and did. Two of the proudest moments of my career were the ‘1984’ spot and then years later the ‘Think different’ campaign. I have a deep feeling for ‘Think different’ and the “Crazy Ones’ commercial. It was a pivotal moment for Apple and it speaks to any creative person, anyone who tries to break the rules, who pushes the boundaries to try to do something that hasn’t been done before. Everybody in our agency kind of looks at that commercial as being a mantra for our belief in creativity just as it was a mantra for Apple wanting to be a company dedicated to people who do creative things. It was a mantra for Apple users as well. It is a mantra that defined Apple, its customers and us as an agency.”
Robert Greenberg To reflect on change in the industry, Robert Greenberg needs to look no further than the evolution of what is now R/GA, which began in 1977 when he co-founded R/Greenberg and Associates with his brother Richard Greenberg as a motion graphics company specializing in film. By incorporating computers into every aspect of filmmaking, the company was credited with creating the first fully integrated computer-assisted production process, making its mark in feature films, trailers and title sequences.
In ’86–starting the second of what would be milestone nine-year chapters in the company’s history–R/GA became a precedent-setting digital studio spanning features, TV commercials and print. From ’86 to ’95, R/GA’s body of work included some 400 features and 4,000 TV spots.
In ’95, R/GA started to evolve into an interactive advertising agency while continuing to serve the film and advertising communities. This was well before the term interactive agency had become common industry parlance. In making the transition from a production house to an interactive ad shop, R/GA survived the dot-com implosion, emerging with innovative approaches and breakthrough work.
And in ’04, the current chapter in R/GA’s history began as the shop became an agency for the digital age, centering on the digital experience and the consumer. R/GA built further upon its creative and technological core, adding mobile and retail offerings along with planning, data/analytics, and media capabilities.
Among its notable projects is the landmark Nike+ which bridges two products, a Nike+ shoe and an iPod nano. A sensor in the Nike+ shoe records running data like time, distance, speed and calories and transmits it to the runner’s iPod nano. When the runner returns home and docks his or her iPod, the data is automatically uploaded to nikeplus.com. The digital platform allows runners to set goals, compare runs and track individual progress as well as connect to a digital community through virtual challenges and a global forum. The interface seamlessly integrates the physical with the virtual and creates a completely new brand experience. In less than a year, the Nike+ community logged more than 12 million miles–and the Nike+ initiative garnered assorted awards, including a Cannes Lions Cyber Grand Prix, and a coveted Black Pencil (in the New Uses for Websites category) from London’s D&AD Global Awards, both in ’07.
And like so much of what R/GA creates, Nike+ is a platform that keeps on connecting with its community. Challenges have brought runners from around the world together as first embodied on a grand scale in The Human Race, a 10 kilometer running event held in 25 cities on Aug. 31, ’08. Virtual challenges continue to build competitions worldwide.
And just as this ongoing initiative builds its global footprint, so too does R/GA itself. In addition to its N.Y. headquarters, R/GA launched what were once fledgling offices in San Francisco and London. Today the U.K. office has 50-plus employees while the San Francisco shop has more than 30 staffers. By the first quarter of next year, R/GA plans on having offices up and running in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Singapore.
“We intend to have a complete global run-out, the reason being that our clients are global,” related Greenberg. “And we don’t believe in going the acquisition route like many agencies to expand around the world. We started our London office from scratch with one person. This way we can grow and expand our culture to different countries.”
In the throes of a global recession, R/GA is indeed growing, securing new clients and continuing to build platforms in ’09. “More has happened in our industry the last nine months than the last nine years,” said Greenberg. “That’s because the impact and exponential growth of technology have been unfolding at the same time as the global economic downturn.
“Most agencies are struggling, doing very little to change their model, hoping things will come back,” continued Greenberg, adding that R/GA has continually sought out new ways of connecting, constantly monitoring how people use technology to immerse themselves in culture, information, entertainment and life.
“It’s a matter of seeing around the next curve,” said Greenberg, citing what he described as a dyslexia which in “an odd way” allows one to see patterns others don’t. “I could see the model we wanted and needed to build each time we’ve evolved.” That’s how the unprecedented and improbable development of a leading production company turning into a groundbreaking advertising agency came to fruition.
“If you look back over the years at our comments in Back Stage and then Back Stage/SHOOT and SHOOT, you’ll see that we predicted many of the things we are doing currently,” said Greenberg, adding that part of each iteration in R/GA’s evolution has been education–educating others about computer graphics, about the digital studio, about the integration of film, video and computer graphics, about an interactive agency, about digital displacing traditional media as the most important point of contact between brands and consumers, about being an agency for the digital age. Education breaks barriers.”
Bob Giraldi Bob Giraldi of Giraldi Media has a directorial career that has spanned the decades and is still going strong, a remarkable bit of longevity. He has redefined himself over the years, showcasing his talents in TV spots, music videos, shorts and features.
But perhaps his most interesting takes on how the advertising marketplace has changed over the years come from his perspective as an educator. Giraldi teaches two undergrad classes at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York–The Project Class, and Evolutionary Dynamics In Advertising.
The former class reflects the enduring relevance of classic filmmaking. “I have 18 scholarship students who are directing, casting, producing, editing in the narrative short form,” said Giraldi. “No music videos, no experimental films, no abstract stuff, just an old fashioned short film with a story arc, human relationships and characters. Shorts have become a hot property because of the web and other new media. But the overriding reason I believe in the class is that simply there’s something beautiful about crafting an emotional, character-driven short film. It’s still the foundation of what we do.”
On the flip side, Giraldi’s Evolutionary Dynamics class is completely contemporary, centering on what he described as “social media, the new media, any media–wherever a brand needs to market itself outside of traditional media. There’s no television, radio, print or outdoor in this class. What’s allowed are new ways of thinking encompassing apps, other mobile content, Twitter, Facebook, both the more and less obvious of emerging outlets.”
Perhaps a key to Giraldi’s longevity has been his ability to be contemporary while maintaining his self-described “foundation” in classic storytelling. On the contemporary relevance score, he and his exec producer at Giraldi Media, Patti Greaney, are slated next month to introduce a mobile app, Rush Hour Meals, through which users can access famous chefs’ recipes for dishes that take no more than five minutes to make.
Giraldi has also had a hand in making mobile communications a more significant part of the SVA landscape. Last year SVA announced the launch of the Out of Hand International Festival, a showcase for innovative digital content created by students worldwide and intended for playback on a mobile, PDA or other handheld device. The Festival grew out of discussions between Giraldi and the now late SVA founder, Silas H. Rhodes,.
Last month, the winners of the inaugural Out of Hand competition were honored, with the the grand prize of $5,000 going to Guilherme Maueler, a student at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.
“I’ve been lucky enough as a director to be able to connect with different audiences and generations over the years,” said Giraldi. “Today’s generation is one of more directed, more specific marketing. And so much more is emerging in the mobile world. Creating websites, marketing messages, entertainment, and embracing mobile and the online video revolution are vital for any agency that wants to be relevant. Our presidential election, the Iranian election protests and the role online digital and mobile played in them underscore how the world is changing. Protestors in Iran were able to get the attention of the world when traditional media shut down. Agencies have to embrace what’s happening.”
Prior to his successful directing career, Giraldi made his mark as an agency creative. Asked what the climate is today for a young up-and-coming creative as compared to the so-called Mad Men/Golden Age of Advertising era when he came up the ranks, Giraldi observed, “It’s probably easier today during a much tougher time. We are in a tough economy but there’s a hunger for young talent who have grown up being informed and entertained online, who have lived with computers and mobile devices as a way of life. Agencies want to tap into that kind of experience and expertise.
“More than ever, they see the importance of bringing young blood into the fold. BBDO, Y&R, JWT have embraced intern programs for juniors and recent grads. Once you’re in, if you show some talent, you’re going to stay there. That wasn’t possible when I was starting out. Now there are more immediate opportunities available for young people who know how to connect with and market to others.”
Larry Bridges Editor/director Larry Bridges, founder of Red Car, has some capital ideas about how the industry has evolved. On one hand, in production and post, the cost barriers to entry are lower and more affordable than ever before. Filmmakers can access more reasonably priced cameras, editing software that runs on their laptops, VFX tools and other resources they need in order to showcase their talent and vision. Thus young, up-and-coming talent can more easily be seen and heard in meaningful, tangible ways.
On the flip side, the economy has made working capital all the more precious and essential. The costs of staying in business have become more daunting as smaller entrepreneurial companies find themselves bankrolling, sometimes for an extended period of time, production for large multi-national advertisers and agencies.
Bridges observed that the gauntlet of challenge has been thrown down during a time when the world is looking to shift from recession to recovery–and it applies to the economy at large as well as, relatively speaking, to the micro economy of advertising and filmmaking. For example, the American automotive industry has to profoundly change, said Bridges. “You have cheap cars down the road coming out of India and China. The demand is now on the U.S. for innovation. Maybe it’s nano technology that uncovers something we cannot yet conceive of as it would apply to a semi permeable fuel cell or the electric car industry. Auto companies have to innovate and sell their innovation. Price might be lower somewhere else but it’s incumbent on us to produce something cool and hard to do elsewhere.”
Similarly advertising and filmmaking have to innovate for their clients, affirmed Bridges. “The facial animation you will see in Avatar comes to mind–innovation in software and technology that causes us to rethink how we do live action, and view differently the way we pay for talent.”
And innovation in the ad/marketing sector encompasses such areas as how to create viewer engagement and positive impact, and how to best embrace social media. Yet at the same time, observed Bridges, “I believe there’s still a place for passive advertising. It’s just one part of the picture, though, with all these different communication touchpoints becoming significant.”
Innovation, continued Bridges, requires a perennial dynamic that continues to be the lifeblood of the advertising/filmmaking industry–talent. “Yes, there’s been a loss of pricing power in today’s economy but talent is still at a premium. Artists who can tell stories–from directors to cinematographers to editors, visual effects artists, composers, writers, art directors, producers and other varieties of artists–remain the currency. Those cast members haven’t changed ever since I entered the industry in the 1970s. Talent is a form of insurance the advertisers pay for to make sure the quality of their advertising is optimal.”
Talent is certainly a major part of the Red Car equation as are a local boutique approach and the marshalling of resources so that any boutique in the family can access what the others have to offer.
“Ninety percent of editing is local,” observed Bridges. “Our clients are very loyal and treat us in a very warm way with regard to the service we provide. It’s like having a dry cleaner or a dentist or restaurants in your community that you swear by. That sense of our being part of the local community with all our boutiques has stayed unchanged over the years.”
What has changed, though, continued Bridges, is that “more clients are relying on the web for approval and for saving time and travel expenses. Yet at the same time, there’s something to be said for creatives getting out of their work environment to be different and original, collaborating face to face with artists. It’s healthy to occasionally get out of your own environment; [agency] in-house editing will always lack that aspect.”
Another key change has been adding to the local community experience by being able, through technology, to access resources from all over the map. “We have clients who are editing here [in Santa Monica] yet able to tap into graphics in our New York and Chicago boutiques, to do mixing in our Dallas shop, color correction in Chicago,” said Bridges. “If you need an extra Flame room and one isn’t immediately available where you are, you can access one virtually in another city. We have a separate graphics division called Redhead–no matter where our clients are, our technology enables them to access Redhead’s talent and resources in New York. True connectivity among our facilities–which wasn’t possible years ago–has opened up more possibilities for the advertising and filmmaking communities.”
Click here to read Part II of this series. Hear from…
Rich Silverstein, co-chairman/creative director, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco
Stephen Dickstein, global president/managing partner, The Sweet Shop
Phil Geier, former Interpublic Group CEO and current chairman, The Geier Group, New York
Click here to read Part III of this series. Hear from…
Joe Pytka, award-winning director, PYTKA
Bryan Buckley, award-winning director, Hungry Man
Joe Sedelmaier, ground-breaking director
Click here to read Part IV of this series. Hear from…
Dan Wieden, founder and CEO, Wieden+Kennedy
Susan Credle. chief creative officer, Leo Burnett North America
Noan Murro, award-winning director Noam Murro, Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles
Click here to read Part V of this series. Hear from…
Tony Granger, global chief creative officer, Young & Rubicam
Kevin Roddy, chief creative officer, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), NY
Kristi VandenBosch, CEO, Publicis & Hal Riney
Click here to read Part VI of this series. Hear from…
David Lubars, chairman/chief creative officer, BBDO North America
Jon Kamen, chairman & CEO, @radical.media
Stefan Sonnenfeld. president/managing director, Company 3 & oversees features and commercials business, Ascent Media’s Creative Services
