John Staffen was in New York when a big snowstorm shut down O’Hare airport a few weeks ago. Since being named chief creative on DDB Needham Chicago’s $600 million McDonald’s account last August, the senior VP/group creative director has been commuting from his home in New York to Chicago. He is in the process of relocating permanently, although he seems rather unfazed by the demands of running such a large creative account while commuting to work by airplane. "I’m having a microchip implanted in my ear so I can be near my cell phone all the time," he says.
That’s the kind of response one expects from a man who thrives on the often-schizophrenic nature of the advertising business. A man who says he knew he wanted to go into advertising ever since he was a kid, yet is uncomfortable with his "big shot" title. The man responsible for creating campaigns as diverse as Michelin’s "So Much Is Riding On Your Tires" campaign, Bud Light’s "Bud Light I Said" campaign featuring the Jerky Boys and the ongoing New York Lottery "Hey, You Never Know" campaign.
Staffen says it was Keith Reinhard, DDB Needham Worldwide’s chairman/CEO, who kept drawing parallels between the New York Lottery spots and the agency’s work for McDonald’s. (DDB won the account from Leo Burnett Co. in 1997.) Specifically, Reinhard pointed to the new tagline "Did Somebody Say McDonald’s?" which he said was a lot like the Lottery’s slogan.
"A slogan like "Hey, You Never Know’ is a thought that’s planted in people’s minds," Staffen says. "It’s a truism, not a tagline, and it comes out of the heart of what we were advertising in the New York Lottery."
Likewise, Staffen calls "Did Somebody Say McDonald’s?" less of a literal line than an evocative way of tapping the heritage and feelings people have for McDonald’s. "There is something magical about McDonald’s," says Staffen, who has been eating at the fast-food chain now more than ever, often at the request of his three-year-old son. "When we pitched the account, we pointed out that McDonald’s holds a small yet important place in the lives of Americans, and now what we’re looking to do this year is show what McDonald’s means in people’s lives."
But Americans will not see any of these spots until later this spring. At present, DDB is showing boards to the client and gearing up for production. Staffen says the agency has not yet chosen directors for most of the spots. In fact, the most he will say about the new spots is that they are "classic and true" and that they all come out of the special place McDonald’s holds in people’s hearts and minds.
Staffen’s mark on McDonald’s can be seen in the spots he’s worked on since taking over the account: "Big Mac/Sosa" featuring Sammy Sosa and "Big Mac/ McGwire" featuring Mark McGwire, directed by Danny Ducovny of Venice, Calif.-based Cucoloris Films. This pair of :30s turns the rivalry between Sosa and McGwire into a craving for McDonald’s. Boards for the Sosa-McGwire spots were lying around the office when Staffen first arrived. "It just seemed like too big of an opportunity to miss," Staffen says. A few days later he met the president of McDonald’s, and the next morning they were discussing the idea in front of 600 franchise representatives.
"It was like doing extra-credit work," Staffen says. "I got to see how fast and responsive this gigantic organization was. I was afraid it might be a lumbering dinosaur, but everyone-from the top-level guys to all of the franchises-got behind the spots, and we had them finished in three weeks."
Staffen points out that the longevity of McDonald’s is one of its strong points. Staffen himself knows something of longevity: He graduated from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Calif., in the early 1980s and joined the agency in New York when it was still Doyle Dane Bernbach. "I got there a year before the merger happened, and all the big shots were so concerned with the merger and what their titles would be, so I found myself getting all of these great jobs in the chaos," he says. "It was a great opportunity for a young person to take advantage of."
Although Staffen left the agency twice, working briefly at Chiat/Day, New York (now TBWA/Chiat/Day), and Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, he says he was always drawn back to DDB Needham. "A lot of people in the DDB network do that," he says. "It sounds clich , but this place has something special about it. Once you become a member of the family, you always have that blood in you."
Staffen says he thrives on the collaboration he gets both from other agency colleagues and from the production community. "There are so many directors I like working with, and I like to think I have a lot of great relationships in the production community," he enthuses. "I love [director] Michael Karbelnikoff [of bicoastal HKM Productions]. I love [director] Jim Gartner [of bicoastal Gartner]. Everything I see that guy do makes me proud to be in advertising. Whenever I worked with him, he helped me find the heart of the story I was trying to tell."
For the rest of the McDonald’s story, however, we’ll have to wait until the spring, when the new spots break. Perhaps by then Staffen will have relocated permanently to Chicago.M
