By Robert Goldrich

SANTA MONCA --

Director Eric King has joined Santa Monica-headquartered Tate USA for exclusive spot representation in the U.S. Via Tate’s relationship with Industry Films, Toronto, King additionally gains a sales/production foothold for Canadian commercials. And through Tate’s recently struck deal with Janie Balcolm’s newly formed, London-based independent repping firm, King will also be exclusively repped by Tate in the U.K.
    King comes over from Headquarters, which was recently closed by its partners, president Tom Mooney and director David Cornell. (Cornell is now with Los Angeles-based Form, while Mooney has teamed with director Joe Pytka and exec producer Tara Fitzpatrick of PYTKA, Venice, Calif., to launch an as yet unnamed bicoastal house.) King had been at Headquarters since 2003; it was his first career production house roost after years as an agency creative spanning four shops: BBDO New York, Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore., Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, and TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco.
    At Headquarters he made the transition to full-time director, with credits for such clients as Butterfinger, EA Sports, Starbucks (the noted Red Cup viral campaign) and the Washington Lottery. The latter, out of Publicis in the West, Seattle, was short-listed at Cannes, with one of the campaign’s comedy spots, “Welder,” earning inclusion in SHOOT’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery. “Welder” shows hapless members of a construction crew botching the job; among them is a welder who puts a blowtorch to a building’s wooden supports, setting them on fire. A voiceover provides some context to this incompetence, relating that every year millions of Washington Lottery players help with school construction throughout the state. “Thankfully,” concludes the voiceover, “their contribution is purely financial.”
    Tate USA owner/executive producer David Tate said he was drawn to King’s creative pedigree, noting that the director’s “understanding of conceptual advertising is so innate that agencies seem to relish his directorial input.”
    King broke into the agency biz as an intern at BBDO New York. He was then hired in the self-described hybrid role of “junior art director/slave/Christmas invite creator.” During his eight months there in ’93, he received an on-the-job education, working with creatives such as Michael Patti and Don Schneider primarily on Pepsi.
    Then Wieden+Kennedy called and King moved to Portland, starting there as a junior creative and moving up the ranks to become a full-fledged art director within three years. Among his creative credits there were a couple of noted Nike jobs: a Spike Jonze-directed ad in which tennis greats Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi set up a net and play a guerilla match at a busy city intersection; and a Pytka-helmed baseball strike spot, in which a lone fan is trying to do the wave in a cavernous stadium.
    Next came a two-and-a-half-year stay at Goodby, where as a senior art director King helped pitch for and win the Wall Street Journal account. While at the agency, he also got the opportunity to co-direct with then aspiring helmer John Dolan (who went on to bicoastal Anonymous Content) a spec spot for Levi’s, which was a spoof on a Cops-style reality TV series; it covered the exploits of a pants burglar and the trouser-less victim he left behind.
    In ’99, King landed at TBWA/Chiat Day, where he was part of the creative team as a writer/art director on Fox Sports’ “Beware of Things Made in October” campaign promoting the TV network’s Major League Baseball postseason coverage. The spots in the campaign–“Nail Gun,” “Leaf Blower” and “Boat” (directed by Baker Smith of Santa Monica-based harvest)–made their mark in ’92 at such competitions as the Cannes International Advertising Festival, the AICP Show, the One Show, the Clios and the ANDY Awards. “Nail Gun” also received a primetime Emmy Award nomination in ’02.
    Towards the end of his tenure at TBWA/Chiat/Day, King directed a four-spot package on the side for Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom, out of New York agency FunCryHappy. The theme of the campaign was to trust your gut instinct. In one ad, a guy is hallucinating at a party. His gut instinct tells him to stop partying, to put down his beer and chill out. The spot affirms that your gut is smart, so if it tells you to eat a Jody Maroni sausage sandwich, then go with your gut.
    King now joins a Tate USA directorial roster that consists of Federico Brugia, Vadim Perelman, Jonathan Teplitzky, Ted Pauly, Phil Brown, James Dodson, Ago Panini and Jason Reitman.

MySHOOT Profiles