Creative Director
Droga5 New York
What’s the most relevant business and/or creative lesson you learned in 2020 and how will you apply it to 2021?
In a word, speed.
This was the year that produced several occasions where nearly every advertiser wanted to say roughly the same thing at exactly the same time
Some said it better than others, but the ones who got their messages out first stood a much better chance of getting the desired response.
As Mark Singer wrote, “One guy in a tuxedo producing doves can be magic; ten guys producing doves is a travesty.”
Gazing into your crystal ball, what do you envision for the industry–creatively speaking or from a business standpoint–in 2021?
2020 felt like a year dominated by film, both because no one was really doing anything experiential other than experiencing being in the same place for long periods of time and because in a crisis, we prefer to operate from our comfort zones.
In 2021, I think we’ll see more brands poking their heads out of the burrow and looking for different sorts of opportunities to make an impact in the new world they find there.
What are your goals, creatively speaking and/or from a business standpoint, for your company, division, studio or network in 2021?
In 2021, we want to widen the aperture. The aim is to tell some new stories from different perspectives in different ways.
Working on Facebook’s “Born In Quarantine” last year, we spoke to a lot of centenarians about their experiences from the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918.
One woman told us that when it was over, they “came out into a new world, and everybody stopped wearing long dark clothes, and everything was fresh and new and colorful.”
If that’s going to happen again, we want to be right at the center of it.
Tell us about one current project you are working on for early 2021.
The Olympics is coming. After all the isolation and the hardship, it might be just the tonic the world needs.
How did your company, agency, network, service or studio adjust/adapt to the marketplace in 2020 (new strategies, resources, technology, health/safety expertise) and what of all that bodes well for 2021?
Like everybody else, we had to maintain the quality of work we normally produce under a host of new pressures.
So many people across the agency rose to the task in different ways. We were all working remotely; some people spent a year in cupboards; others had their kids dive-bombing into client calls every day. And what we did, for the most part, stayed at a very high standard.
I think when we do finally return to the office, those experiences will have instilled a new sense of mutual trust. Less presenteeism, less hierarchy, more flexibility.
If we could make things work that well in 2020, we can certainly do it again.
What’s your New Year’s resolution, creatively speaking or from a business standpoint, for your agency, department or company?
Have more fun.
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More