My whole career has spanned several blocks," notes Alex Bogusky, vice chairman/partner/creative director at Crispin Porter+Bogusky (CP+B), Miami. Indeed, Miami-born Bogusky has never worked anywhere but his hometown. And, while he says, "I obviously love this part of the country," he admits it isn’t the easiest place to make a name for oneself. "Southeast is one thing, but South of Atlanta is another. I think, for most [clients], the U.S. ends in Atlanta, and there’s no reason to go down that dang peninsula."
During his 13 years at CP+B, however, Bogusky has been giving them plenty of reasons. As one of the main creative minds behind the landmark Florida Department of Health anti-tobacco campaign, "Truth," Bogusky has helped breathe new life into public service announcements, garnering several awards in the process. CP+B and Arnold Worldwide work together on the national anti-tobacco account for the American Legacy Foundation (ALF), of which "Truth" is one of the main campaigns. (CP+B took home a the Grand Prix in the Media Category at the 2001 Cannes Advertising Festival for the Florida Department of Health’s "Secrets of a Tobacco Executive," a horror movie trailer parody directed by Phil Joanou of bicoastal Villains.) He’s also helped his agency grow from an independent 30-person boutique, to major player with a staff of over 100 and several high profile clients.
Earlier this year, Maxxcom, a Canadian network of ad agencies and marketing firms, invested in CP+B. In addition to the Maxxcom partnership, CP+B made headlines when it scored the coveted BMW Mini account after an exhaustive, three-month review. Bogusky says it was worth the wait. "To have an automotive account has changed the agency in other peoples’ eyes to a degree that I didn’t really foresee," he relates.
While he’s unable to give details at press time, Bogusky says, "we’re doing a bunch of broadcast" to re-introduce the hot ’60s car, the Mini Cooper, in the United States. As for directors, he reports, "we’re super pleased with the people we’re talking to."
If the "Truth" campaign is any indication, CP+B’s BMW work should be impressive. Initially devised by Bogusky and his team in ’98 for the Florida Department of Health, the daring "Truth" spots brought the agency its first real national attention. "To know our agency and the way we work, you wouldn’t think a government account would be ideal," Bogusky notes. "We’re pretty informal, very honest. We aren’t about politicking—just about doing good work for a client."
Nonetheless, CP+B opted to compete for the anti-smoking account, which was to be paid for with money from the state’s settlement with the tobacco industry. (Florida was one of the first states to use its settlement funds for an ad campaign.) "You didn’t have to do too much research to find out that typical PSAs, with the ‘say no’ approach, would actually increase the prevalence of tobacco usage among teens," he explains, "because it makes [smoking] more alluring. Tobacco use is so tied into rebellion. It would just make it more of a rebellious act.
"That made us very nervous," he continues. "We thought, ‘What if you got this account, and you had to do typical work?’ Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you know you’re actually responsible for more deaths thirty years from now."
So, Bogusky chose an approach that was anything but typical. Initially called "Rage," the proposed campaign channeled teen rebellion against Big Tobacco itself by pointing out how cigarette companies target—and ultimately kill—young consumers.
To Bogusky’s surprise, the state of Florida liked the premise. "We kept expecting to get knocked out every round, but the opposite was happening," he recalls. "We were doing really well. We thought, ‘Oh my God. This is crazy.’ ”
Crazy or not, the agency won the account, changed the campaign’s title to Truth, and set about making such compellingly edgy ads as "Demon Awards," directed by Jeff Gorman of JGF, Hollywood, in which "Tobacco" wins the trophy for "greatest number of deaths in a single year" at a ghoulish awards show. Other spots didn’t just encourage teen rebellion—they participated in it. Gorman has worked on several "Truth" ads, both for the national ALF account as well as for the Florida Department of Health.
The campaign proved successful. "We saw a fifty percent decrease in middle school [cigarette] consumption, and a twenty percent decrease in high school consumption," Bogusky relates. "Then, about a year and a half later, the national settlement occurred."
The national settlement between 46 state attorneys general saw the creation of the ALF, whose ad account is worth an estimated $150-$250 million annually. CP+B teamed up with Arnold Worldwide, and won the national ALF account in late ’99. "So there really are two campaigns called Truth," explains Bogusky. "Florida and national."
Many of the national ads depict actual protests. In the ALF’s "Body Bags," for instance, teens piled 1,200 body bags outside the New York offices of an unnamed tobacco company. Directed by Christian Hoagland out of Redtree Productions, Boston and New York, the ad was shot on video, giving it the look of a real documentary.
CP+B shifted focus a bit with a recent ad for the Florida Department of Health campaign. In "Focus On The Positive," directed by Pedro Romhanyi of Oil Factory, Hollywood, the action starts off like any other "Truth" spot—with documentary style footage of teens trying to get the truth out of a tobacco executive, but instead of being escorted out of the building, the kids get a musical revue, with tobacco execs singing and dancing about focusing on the positive. The positives being that the shredded research on the addictive properties of nicotine will be used in a ticker tape parade. Turns out the sequence was just a fantasy, as the spot ends with the documentary footage of the teens being tossed out by security.
Before the Truth campaign, Bogusky says, "I think I probably would have done tobacco advertising." Not any more. "I learned more about the industry and the product," he notes. "Of course, [at this point] I don’t think [a tobacco company is] going to ask me to work on its account."
Family Tree
Advertising has always been a part of Bogusky’s life. "It was the family business," he explains. "Both of my parents were art directors. And, since I wasn’t really on the fast track in terms of higher education, my mother taught me how to do mechanicals as a trade. She said, ‘As long as you know how to do this, you’ll always have a job.’ "
When a young Bogusky called his father from Hawaii and informed him of his decision to become a professional windsurfer, his father made him a proposition. "He said, ‘Get on a plane, come back here, try to get some interviews. I’ll try to set you up. If you get something, fine. If you don’t, go back and do your windsurfing deal,’ " he recalls with a smile. "So, unfortunately, when I came back, I did land a job."
Bogusky began making mechanicals for ad agency Ryder & Schield, Miami, and worked his way up to art director. In ’89, he joined the then newly formed Crispin & Porter (formerly Crispin Advertising) as a senior art director. And four years later, he became a partner. "[The agency] used to be thirty people in this little culture of creativity," he recalls. "We’d come to work, and we’d be insulated from the rest of the world. Over time, it’s grown. It’s not a large agency by New York terms, but it’s a very large agency by South Florida terms. So, I think that now, we’re able to influence the market a little bit." In addition to growing in South Florida, the ad shop has started looking to new horizons. A couple months ago CP+B opened an office in Venice, Calif., with Sally Hogshead serving as managing director/ creative director. The new entity will pursue its own clients, and is currently in the process of staffing up. (SHOOT, 10/5, p. 7.)
Directors clearly enjoy working with Bogusky, who appreciates free interpretation. "We don’t do boards, we do scripts," he relates. "Sometimes, I feel like the scripts are even too detailed. I don’t want the director looking at it, going, ‘I have to shoot it like this.’"
For a recently released Florida "Truth" spot, "Junkyard Dog," Bogusky gave creative latitude to director Tony Kaye, of Tony K, Santa Monica and London—and he was very pleased with the results. In it, a young man rubs barbecue sauce on his tongue, sticks it through a hole in a fence, and allows a junkyard dog to bite it off, demonstrating the dangers of chewing tobacco, which causes cancers of the tongue and mouth. "I was seeing it as somewhat surreal, and the way he shot it was so different than what I was imagining," Bogusky remarks. "It looks like found footage. And it was one hundred percent from [Kaye]. It was the spot that delighted me the most, because it was so surprising."
Bogusky isn’t one to keep his success to himself. At the Advertising Federation of Greater Miami’s recent Show of Shows, he announced the formation of The Right Brain Rehab Center—a club for South Florida creatives, which will hold its first meeting on Dec. 4. "There are some good shops down here, but they haven’t had probably as much recognition as we have, and maybe not as many chances as we [at CP+B] have had," he says. "We’ve made a lot of mistakes over the last thirteen years, and then we’ve done some things right. I like the idea of everybody in town learning everything they can from us and us learning everything we can from them. We’ll hopefully make more of an advertising culture down here."
