By Robert Goldrich

In May 2005, David Gray earned inclusion in SHOOT’s New Directors Showcase during an event at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Theatre in New York. In February 2007 he was at the DGA Awards ceremony in Los Angeles as a nominee for best commercial director of 2006.
    While the timeline would strongly suggest he has been an overnight success–April will mark just his three-year anniversary at bicoastal/international Hungry Man, his only career production house–the fact is that it was many years on the agency side of the business that groomed him to be a director. And the lessons learned as a creative at such ad shops as BBDO New York and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, have served him in good stead.
    But before reflecting on those lessons, Gray reflected on the DGA nomination, which he earned on the strength of the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Transvestite” and “Mugger” for Ogilvy & Mather, New York;  Fulltiltpoker’s “Jesus Throws” out of WongDoody, Culver City, Calif.; and eBay’s “Born” via London agency Delaney Lund Knox Warren.
“I’ve won a fair share of awards over the years [as an agency creative and director] but the DGA nomination itself is for me the biggest honor,” relates Gray. “To be recognized by your peers and mentors–and to be nominated with directors whose work I’ve admired like Bryan Buckley, Joe Pytka, Dante Ariola [who won the award] and Tom Kuntz–has been an amazing experience. On awards night to sit in a room with Scorsese, Spielberg and so many others was a lot of fun and an incredible honor.”
    Gray considers himself “fortunate” to have landed at Hungry Man. “It’s a great company that offers tremendous support and has uncovered opportunities for me as a director. But once you get those opportunities, you have to work hard. When you’re on the agency side, you tend to look at the director and think, ‘That’s not so hard. You turn on the camera and go for it.’ But it’s so much more than that for the director who cares deeply about the work. The amount of hours and prep that go into getting everything right, getting the right sense of style, making the work unique and your own and doing full justice to the concept is something most people in the outside world can’t fathom. At the end, I find myself physically and mentally exhausted. But then when you see the film, it all kind of pays off and makes it all worthwhile.”
    Indeed proving to be most worthwhile has been Gray’s agency experience. After graduating from Syracuse University, he broke in as a junior art director at Saatchi & Saatchi New York. Looking to branch out beyond the largely packaged goods fare he was working on there at that time, Gray got the opportunity to come aboard BBDO New York, where his initial account was Pizza Hut.
    “I was doing about 10 productions a year and just taking it all in,” recalls Gray. “The working experience was invaluable and evolved into other work for FedEx, Visa and ultimately creating the Snickers campaign [including the lauded ad “Chefs”] with Gerry [Graf].” During his nearly six years there, Gray moved up from art director to associate creative director. “I learned so much about creativity, collaboration and working with directors.”
    The quality of his work at BBDO put Gray on Goodby’s radar. He joined there as a creative director, coming to regard agency principals Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein as “my great mentors and friends…While I learned about advertising and television at BBDO, I learned about the business as a whole from Jeff and Rich–not just being a creative and creating ads but building brands and other content, whatever was going to be right for the brand. I learned a lot about people and dealing with people in the business. Goodby broadened my scope. Because it was a smaller agency than what I had been used to, I was called on to be more of a jack of all trades and more hands-on in different areas. A creative was more than a creative person just as an account person was more than an account person. There was no relegation as to where an idea could come from. It could come–and did come–from anybody and everybody. Jeff and Rich were inspiring that way, in fostering a wide-open attitude where everyone contributes.”
    During his tenure at Goodby, Gray garnered his first taste of the DGA Awards. He and aforementioned creative partner Graf [who moved over to Goodby and now is executive creative director of TBWAChiatDay, New York] teamed on E*Trade’s “Trimount Studios,” which was one of the spots that earned Hungry Man’s Buckley the DGA Award as best commercial director of 1999. “I remember how exciting it was to be a part of the body of work that helped Bryan win the DGA honor,” says Gray.
    Fittingly, Gray also received his first crack at directing while at Goodby. “It was all part of us doing whatever we needed to do in order to get something done. The budget was small. It was a small business-to-business E*Trade job that we had to direct in-house.”
    Gray notes that the Goodby shop has spawned several directorial careers, including those of Erich Joiner who left to open Tool of North America, as well as creatives such as Tom Routson, Sean Ehringer and Harry Cocciolo who are now also on Tool’s directing roster. “The agency encourages people to grow, which I credit Jeff and Rich for,” observes Gray. “Sometimes that growth leads you outside the agency business–or in other cases people went on to form their own boutique agencies.”

Hungry director
    Gray moved back to the East Coast for a stint as executive creative director at McCann Erickson, New York. He then took the production house plunge at Hungry Man, with humorous work for Voom Networks and then Starter putting him on the industry map. The Starter athletic apparel fare–starring Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Brett Favre and his eccentric, Favre-obsessed neighbor–went on to win a Bronze Lion at  Cannes.
    Gray’s DGA Award-nominated work is also in the comedy genre–he described the entries as “comedy that is human and which people can relate to.” Now Gray’s goal–beyond hoping to again be nominated for the DGA honor–is to bring more visual sensibilities to comedy, hearkening back to his art director roots. “It seems that the norm has been for the look of the film, a sense of style, to be neglected in comedy commercials. There’s room to do much more visually, in attaining a visual reality, in this work.”
    Meanwhile Gray has diversified beyond comedy with a recently wrapped campaign for Ping golf clubs out of The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va. The spots capture the game of golf, particularly its mental edge and reflect the personalities of PGA Tour players.
“I’m looking to stretch myself,” says Gray. “I love comedy and want to keep doing it. But like all directors, you hope to build a well-rounded reel that shows your different dimensions.”

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