Agency veteran Doug Harper will end his nearly 10-year run at Young & Rubicam (Y&R), Chicago in mid-September to join the directorial roster of Santa Monica-based production house The Joneses. He spent the past six years producing at Y&R, including the last three as a senior producer.
This is the first commercial representation for Harper, who was signed by The Joneses largely on the basis of his self-financed director’s spec reel. The Joneses executive producer Dan Bryant said he first met Harper a few months ago, while Harper was producing Barilla Pasta spots for Y&R-"Chef Fernando" and "Chef Paul"-directed by The Joneses’ Jim Manera. Said Bryant, "We got to know each other. Doug gave me a spec reel of spots he’d written, directed and produced, and I was blown away by it. He’s a really accomplished comedy/dialogue director."
For his part, Harper related that his instant rapport with Bryant factored heavily in his decision to join The Joneses. "I felt he communicated his point of view and his interest in me really well," said Harper. "He spent a considerable amount of time writing a letter laying out his pitch, and I was really impressed by that letter. It was very much on a personal relationship level that I started leaning towards them."
Manera also led Harper to come aboard. Explaining that he has high regard for Manera both personally and professionally, Harper said, "He definitely played a role in encouraging me to join the company."
Harper’s spec spots, which were produced through Los Angeles-based A Band Apart Commercials, include "Worth It" for Jim Beam. Set in World War I, the ad’s cinematic visuals highlight a story of soldiers who deliberately injure themselves to get a taste of Jim Beam, which is used in lieu of anesthetic.
The payoff comes in the final sequence, when the spot’s main character-recovering in a field hospital medical tent after an amputation below the knee-turns to a fellow injured soldier who is swilling from a Jim Beam bottle. "A whole bottle, Hobbs?" he asks. His colleague, who has no limbs from the waist down, responds, "Yeah, well-triple amputee, you know?" The protagonist gazes at the man, who clearly has both arms and, with realizing what triple amputee means, admiringly responds, "Touche."
Another spec spot, "Templeton’s Lament" for Erewhon Outdoor, plays on the notion that the mysterious disappearance of socks are evil forces-specifically, a group of villains, who gather to discuss the socks they’ve stolen. One bad guy gleefully reports that he’s stolen a sock from Johnny, a young boy about to play in a soccer tournament. But one attendee, Templeton, sadly says that he could find no socks to steal. "Why boss, why?" he whines. A voiceover follows: "Sandals. Now on sale at Erewhon."
"Doug is very experienced in production because he’s been an agency producer for almost 10 years," noted Bryant. "He’s come out [to the West Coast] all the time on production, and he’s worked with some of the top directors in the business. And he’s very intelligent and articulate. I think he really gets what’s necessary to be successful as a commercial director. He has a very good sense of who he is, what his strengths are and how to build on them."
The Joneses has produced three additional spec pieces for Harper’s reel, including "The Bear" and "First Day," for temp agency Banner Personnel. Both are told from the naive perspective of young, idealistic job-hunters. In "Bear," a recent college grad is placed in a job as a "street marketer," handing out fliers while dressed in a bear suit. The man manages to maintain his sunny attitude despite being assaulted by two other restaurant mascots, one dressed as a hot dog and the other as a layer cake, who feel he’s invaded their turf. In "First Day," another hapless young man finds himself given an equally unappealing assignment: cleaning toilets.
The other spec ad is "Music Lesson" for Everything Wireless, which details the creation of the annoying tone you hear when you dial a phone number not in service, and suggests that, with the Nokia Digital phone’s 100-number memory, you’ll never misdial again.
Harper related that he had begun to explore the idea of directing a couple of years ago: As a senior producer, he’d started to work more closely with several Y&R creative teams in developing work. "Basically, if I thought I had a good idea, I wanted to pitch it, and I found some people receptive to that," explained Harper. "Once that started, I began building a portfolio of ideas."
Harper subsequently co-developed several ideas for spec ads with Y&R copywriter Conrad Winter (now at Grey Advertising, New York). Although these became the Banner Personnel spots that Harper ultimately directed, he didn’t start out with that assignment in mind. Instead, after initial conversations with established directors to see if they’d be interested in doing the spots, Harper recalls, "I started sensing that I really wanted to direct them myself." He then set about trying to build a spec reel and garnering directing experience on other spec spots, before he attempted to helm the Banner ads.
Harper commented that he believes the essence of comedy is subtlety, which is reflected in his film. "I’m oriented toward writing creatively, so you’ll find a lot of people talking in my spots," he pointed out. "I like dialogue and I believe in narrative that allows for as much inference and deduction by the viewer as possible"-like the ending of the Jim Beam spot, for instance. "Allowing the audience to be involved intellectually is a much-preferable way of getting people to remember your spots."
Harper joins a directorial roster also comprised of Manera and Ali Selim. The shop is repped on the West Coast by Connie Mellors, on the East Coast by Mary Ford, in the Midwest by Kathy Aronstam and in the Southwest by Alyson Griffith.
