Chief creative officer
BBDO New York
1) Six-second commercials, even more precisely targeted messages—i.e. thin-casting* (*tm, Greg Hahn), and shrinking budgets. The common theme being doing more with less.
2) Restrictions force you to be creative, to come up with new, fresh solutions. In production, they force you to call upon and develop new resources. In some ways doing more with less has enabled us to expand.
3) Sandy Hook Promise, “Evan”. With a very limited production budget and an even smaller media budget, it was able to make a huge impact for a cause everyone involved really believes in. It’s a testament to the power of partnerships, a compelling message, and an interesting way to tell it.
4) For every forward-lash, there’s usually a backlash. I think along with doing six-second commercials and quick hit digital messages, clients will begin investing in branding and long form pieces. We may even see a resurgence in the :30 or :60 TV ad. Trust is going to be a huge issue in the coming years. I think a brand investing in itself this way signals that it’s standing behind its name and reputation. In all the noise, people will turn to brands they trust.
5) Creatively speaking, applying our creativity to every aspect of our clients’ businesses. Not just the messaging we’re tasked with doing, but really stepping back and looking at their business problems and opportunities to see how we can solve them creatively.
As far as personal resolutions, I read an interesting article about something called “The Reverse Bucket List.” It’s basically just going back through your life and listing out the things you have already accomplished that make you proud. I’m going to take that approach to this year’s resolutions. List the five things I’m most proud of accomplishing this year. The idea being that at the end of next year, without knowing specifically what they are, I will have achieved five more things that I can look back on. For me, standard New Year’s Resolutions are just a prescription for self-disappointment.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More