When dennis Ryan signed on as executive VP/executive creative director at J. Walter Thompson, Chicago, he was admittedly apprehensive. "Let’s be blunt," he laughs. "Thompson had a very questionable creative reputation at the time. They wanted to turn that around. They were making an investment in creative again, so I thought it was a good opportunity. But you don’t want to take a job like that and fail."
For a while, he thought the worst had happened. "God knows, my first six months here, I was ready to take a long walk off a short pier," confides Ryan, who had moved to J. Walter Thompson from DDB Needham (now DDB) Chicago. "I remember we had an absolutely abysmal pitch for trying to retain the Motorola business. It was an embarrassment-convoluted, complex. And it took forever to do. We made the presentation three times, and each time, frankly, I thought it got worse. It was one of those things where you’re sitting there going, ‘Well, this is a car wreck. How do we not do this any more?’"
For Ryan, who says he spells his first name with a lowercase "d" in an effort to save time, things have changed. With campaigns for clients such as Kraft, Nestle and Blockbuster, and a series of soon-to-be-released spots for Miller Genuine Draft (a new account), JWT’s creative reputation is far from questionable. Though he wasn’t at liberty to go into detail, Ryan says the Miller Genuine Draft spots have benefited from the input of their director, Frank Todaro of bicoastal/international @radical.media. "We went with an idea that Frank threw out early on, and developed it into arguably one of the more successful of the four spots," he says. "We had an idea that worked really well in thirty-five seconds. Visually, he was able to figure out a way to lop off eight, while still communicating the same thing."
Ryan says his move to JWT has worked out well. "I’ve been very happy here. We got a new president [Brian Heffernan], and the changes we wanted to make started happening. I think we’ve started to get some good wins, and we’ve developed a philosophy that informs how we pitch business. It’s a lot of fun to work at a place while you’re winning."
Scholarly Look
During his 13 years at DDB Needham, Ryan worked on accounts such as Budweiser and Michelob. At 30, he became the agency’s youngest group creative director. Despite his success, advertising was not his lifelong dream. An art and English major at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind., he initially wanted to design cars, but felt others did it better than he could. Taking a few years off to "find himself" was not an option for Ryan, as he was getting married right after graduation. He decided that advertising would be a good way to utilize his two "highly unsaleable" majors. After graduation he began working at DDB Needham for "a whopping fifteen thousand a year." Still undecided between art and English, Ryan ultimately chose copywriting because "the person who’d interviewed me told me I looked like a writer." While at DDB, Ryan went from copywriter to associate creative director in three years. By the time he left in ’97, he was also worldwide creative director for Frito-Lay. "That and a buck will get you a cup of coffee," he says of his trip up DDB’s corporate ladder, "but I had a great time there."
When he moved over to JWT, his new roost’s client base consisted largely of packaged goods purveyors. "Packaged goods advertising doesn’t have to suck," explains Ryan. "It’s just that a lot of packaged goods advertisers have developed a reliance on rather questionable testing methodology, development processes … all these different things that have lent a mock science, a pseudo-intellectual rule-making, to the process. It’s become calcified. What it needs is clear, concise, powerful communication, like everything else."
JWT’s "A Sandwich Isn’t A Sandwich Without The Tangy Zip of Miracle Whip" campaign for Kraft is an example. The slogan was devised, Ryan says, in an attempt to get back to basics. "They’d gotten all caught up in focus groups and information, but they never made it relevant to people," he explains. "Some very smart people who predated me came up with this concept of, ‘Where do people connect with the brand emotionally?’ They did some very nice stuff with kids, aimed at moms. The brand responded OK. But what we really found was that we needed to put Miracle Whip back in people’s minds. We had to point out that for people who like it, it’s a necessity."
That idea spawned such spots as "Man’s Best Friend," directed by Craig Gillespie of bicoastal Coppos Films, in which a dog attempts to make a sandwich for his master, but gives up when he finds that they’re fresh out of Miracle Whip. The latest installment, "Globetrotters," directed by Jeff Gorman of Hollywood-based JGF, features the basketball team slam-dunking turkey slices, spinning onions on their fingers and tossing tomatoes to create a hero sandwich. But their impressive attempt is aborted when they discover they’re out of Miracle Whip.
Some Miracle Whip ads stray from the "out of mayonnaise formula." A case in point is "Garlic," directed by Jonathan David via bicoastal Shelter Films, in which a method actor reveals his techniques for playing the pungent herb in an ad for garlic-flavored Miracle Whip. (David has since shifted representation to Los Angeles-based Morton Jankel Zander.) Ryan attributes the campaign’s success to its simplicity. "We have this concept that is internally called ‘S3.’ It stands for simplify, surprise and sell." He notes that S3 helped refine the new Miller Genuine Draft spots.
Keeping the message simple, Ryan says, "gives comedy directors something to chew on. We’re not making little films. We’re making sales films. But they can be great if you use the input of a director. We [creatives] go to meetings, we work on print, we work on Web, we work on radio. These directors work on TV every day, day in and day out. So to not allow them to enhance and deepen an idea is really, really stupid."
Ryan is happy to work closely with directors. "It’s not a whole lot of fun to go to focus groups, to hold hands with clients," he says. "Staying involved in production, going on shoots, has been a great joy for me."$
