Recently formed, New York-based live-action production house Nola Pictures has added director Juan Delcan to its roster. He last served in a creative director/director capacity at Spontaneous Combustion, New York.
Among Delcan’s clients have been AT&T, Coca-Cola, Ikea, Maybelline, PBS and Verizon. He has an extensive background in broadcast design with credits that include promos and station IDs for the likes of NBC, CBS and ESPN. Over the years, Delcan’s work has garnered such honors as a London International Advertising and Design Award, gold and silver at the Broadcast Designers’ Association (BDA) Awards, and a Telly Award.
U2 took notice of Delcan’s prowess in design and illustration, commissioning his work to be animated and to serve as a backdrop for the artists’ live performance of the hit song “Yahweh” on the 2005 Vertigo tour.
Educated in Madrid, Delcan studied architecture at Superior Architecture School there. After a year with a small architecture firm in Madrid, he branched out into drawing storyboards, one of which helped a commercial production house land a job. In 1987, he started freelancing regularly as a storyboard artist in Spain and later began directing, establishing himself in the market.
In ’95, Delcan came to Southern California for a creative director/director position at now defunct design house Pittard Sullivan. At the end of ’98, he moved to New York to take on the same dual role at Lee Hunt Associates (which later became Razorfish). Then in late ’99, Delcan returned to the West Coast as a creative director/director at production company V12, Santa Monica. In ’03, he went over to Spontaneous Combustion.
He now joins a directors’ lineup at Nola Pictures consisting of Kim Dempster, Rick Knief, Kenny Morrison and Jerry Simpson. Nola is headed by executive producer Charlie Curran, formerly of Crossroads, bicoastal and Chicago.
New FDA Rules To Take Effect For TV Drug Commercials
Those ever-present TV drug ads showing patients hiking, biking or enjoying a day at the beach could soon have a different look: New rules require drugmakers to be clearer and more direct when explaining their medications' risks and side effects.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration spent more than 15 years crafting the guidelines, which are designed to do away with industry practices that downplay or distract viewers from risk information.
Many companies have already adopted the rules, which become binding Nov. 20. But while regulators were drafting them, a new trend emerged: thousands of pharma influencers pushing drugs online with little oversight. A new bill in Congress would compel the FDA to more aggressively police such promotions on social media platforms.
"Some people become very attached to social media influencers and ascribe to them credibility that, in some cases, they don't deserve," said Tony Cox, professor emeritus of marketing at Indiana University.
Still, TV remains the industry's primary advertising format, with over $4 billion spent in the past year, led by blockbuster drugs like weight-loss treatment Wegovy, according to ispot.tv, which tracks ads.
Simpler language and no distractions
The new rules, which cover both TV and radio, instruct drugmakers to use simple, consumer-friendly language when describing their drugs, without medical jargon, distracting visuals or audio effects. A 2007 law directed the FDA to ensure that drug risk information appears "in a clear, conspicuous and neutral manner."
FDA has always required that ads give a balanced picture of both benefits and risks, a requirement that gave rise to those long, rapid-fire lists of side effects parodied on shows like "... Read More