Jeff Labbé and Kash Sree, two creatives who scored top honors at the recently held Cannes International Advertising Festival, left their respective agencies—Labbé was an art director at TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco; Sree was a copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore.—to join Leo Burnett, USA, Chicago, as senior VPs/creative directors, forming what could turn out to be one of the hottest new creative teams in the industry.
While they come to Leo Burnett from different shops, the two are hardly strangers. They’re good friends who have actually worked together before, albeit for a short time—about three months—on the Nike Golf account at W+K a few years back when Labbé was also at the agency. That collaboration was brief but long enough for them to see they liked working together, and they’re both eager to see what kind of ideas they can come up with once they put their heads together at Leo Burnett.
There is certainly no shortage of imagination between them. As previously mentioned, both Labbé and Sree were honored for their creativity at Cannes. "Beware of Things Made in October," a three-spot campaign for Fox Sports directed by Baker Smith of Harvest, Santa Monica, and co-art directed and co-written by Labbé while he was at TBWA/Chiat/Day garnered a Gold Lion. The humorous campaign had gadgets like leaf blowers and nail guns malfunctioning because they were put together by workers who were distracted by the baseball playoffs on FOX. ("Nail Gun" also just received a primetime Emmy Award nomination for best commercial—SHOOT, 7/26, p. 1)
Meanwhile, the Nike "Tag" ad—part of the three spot "Play" campaign—copywritten by Sree while he was at W+K and directed by Frank Budgen of Gorgeous Enterprises, London, and bicoastal Anonymous Content, scored the Film Grand Prix. "Tag" followed city residents as they played a game of tag. The two other ads in the campaign—"Shade Running," directed by Budgen, and "Tailgating," helmed by Tom Carty of Gorgeous and Anonymous—also won awards at Cannes this year, a Gold Lion and a Bronze Lion, respectively.
Given his success, it isn’t surprising to hear that Sree found it difficult to depart W+K. "I’d been at Wieden+ Kennedy for five years—the longest I’ve been anywhere in my life," says Sree, whose career includes stints at agencies around the globe, including Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), London; Chiat/Day (now TBWA/Chiat/Day), Singapore; O&M, Madras, India; and Batey Ads, Singapore. "And [W+K chief creative officer] Jim Riswold is like my advertising God, so it was really hard to break away from that. But you kind of know that you have to at some point or another try something else."
Labbé—who ran his own venture, Labbé Design Company, before moving on to posts at DGWB Advertising, Santa Ana, Calif.; Hal Riney & Partners (now Publicis & Hal Riney), San Francisco; W+K, Portland; and the aforementioned TBWA/Chiat/Day—also admits it was tough to leave his most recent roost—not to mention the West Coast. But, like Sree, Labbé also says he felt it was time to try something else—"to work on other brands."
The temptation to work with Leo Burnett vice chairman/deputy chief creative officer Mark Tutssel was also hard to resist. "I’ve been a big fan of his work for quite a few years," Sree says. "He’d done some great work in London and him being here made a difference."
In turn, Tutssel praises the work of his two new hires. "We’re always looking for big, enduring ideas, and they both had that in abundance on their reels," notes Tutssel. "The thinking behind Kash’s Nike ‘Tag’ impressed me: To move away from winning to play—strategically, I thought that was a great move. And execution—the cinematography, the casting, the music—was as good as it possibly gets. It oozes class and style. And that’s also something you see in Jeff’s work. He’s a wonderful, wonderful art director, and he brings exquisite craft to the table in terms of filmmaking and ideas. Jeff’s spot for Nike, ‘Beautiful,’ [done while Labbé was at W+K, and a recipient of a Gold Lion at the ’01 Cannes Festival] which [Frank] Budgen shot, the black and white spot, was a beautiful piece of work."
Additionally, Tutssel says he connected with Labbé and Sree on a personal level. "The one thing about Jeff and Kash is you really like them as human beings," states Tutssel. "They’re just decent people who happen to be in advertising. They fire each other up. They’re soul mates and good friends. They both bring different things to the table, and I think they are a potent combination."
Teamwork
And what do Labbé and Sree think makes them click as a team? "I think we respect each other’s work and taste a lot," Labbé says.
"And I think we both have a problem of liking to work a bit too hard. We tend to scare off other people," Sree cracks.
Labbé and Sree join an agency boasting a big league client roster that ranges from Allstate to Altoids, Hallmark to H.J. Heinz Company and Maytag to McDonald’s. It’s quite a diverse portfolio, and Labbé and Sree report they will get a chance to work on numerous brands.
"I don’t think it would be real advantageous to them or us if they just put us on one thing," Labbé remarks. "We’re probably better at floating around." (When SHOOT spoke to the pair, they’d only been on the job for two days and had not yet been assigned any work.)
"There are people who are good at going in with one voice, their voice, and applying that to different brands," Sree comments. "I think both of us like bringing some versatility to our work so we don’t get bored with ourselves."
In addition to their desire to work on various accounts, the two creatives are eager to continue working with top directorial talent. Labbé collaborated with directing collective Trakor of bicoastal/international Partizan on the Levi’s spot "Badger," and director Michel Gondry, also of Partizan, on Levi’s "Belly Button" while he was with TBWA/Chiat/ Day. Sree worked with director Jake Scott of bicoastal RSA USA on the Nike ad "Move"—which recently garnered a primetime Emmy nomination for best commercial—and Doug Liman, who is now with Independent Media, Santa Monica, on Nike’s "Hackeysack" during his tenure at W+K. (At the time "Hackeysack" was made, Liman was with RSA Independent.)
Labbé spoke with some of the directors he has worked with before about his decision to join Leo Burnett. "I was like, ‘Will you guys call? Will you guys work with me here?’ It was like, ‘Yeah, we go where the scripts are and where our friends are,’" Labbé says.
Labbé and Sree say they like to work with directors who bring something to the party—so to speak. "If we gave a director a script and said, ‘Do it like this,’ and they said, ‘Okay,’ we’d probably say, ‘Well, you’re not going to do it then.’ We’d go find another director," Labbé explains. "We want somebody to push us as hard as we’re going to push them. All of the directors I work with—and the directors Kash works with—respect us because we push them, and they push us, and we’re all surprised by what we have at the end of the day."
It’s a matter of give and take, says Sree, adding, "Selfishly, if you work with a great director, you want to learn from them, and if they’re not bringing something new and fresh in the way of thinking, you might as well not use them."
Incidentally, Labbé is interested in trying his hand at directing. Will he get a chance to helm work at Leo Burnett? "We haven’t really discussed it. But I hope so," Labbé says. "There are certain agencies that provide other creative outlets, and I think to keep myself going [in the long run], I’m going to need to do more than ads."
For now, though, Labbé’s—as well as Sree’s—focus is on generating some buzz-worthy creative for Leo Burnett. Sree acknowledges that there is self-imposed pressure on the pair to perform. "People are going to think, ‘Okay, you guys think you’ve done your good work. Now you’re getting into big advertising,’ " Sree says. "We don’t want to disappear. We want to show we can do good work everywhere. We want to show it can be done."
Tutssel is confident they will deliver. "All they think about is the next ad," Tutssel says. "They don’t rest on their laurels."
