Director John Adams, best known for his work in comedy, has joined bicoastal Original for exclusive representation. Adams comes aboard Original after a nearly nine-year run at the now shuttered Form where he directed campaigns for Bud Light, AT&T, Home Depot, and Snickers, among other national brands.
Adams began his career on the agency side as a copywriter and producer, including tenures at FCB San Francisco, Hal Riney & Partners (now Publicis & Hal Riney), San Francisco, and Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore. He broke into directing while serving as head of production at DDB Needham, Dallas.
Adams estimates that he has directed more than 400 spots, most of which leverage his understated approach toward dialogue-driven comedy. His most recent work includes a spot for Cellular One in which a teen reacts in incomprehension when her parents present her with an old fashioned device called a “camera.” (“Who would invent a camera-phone that doesn’t call anyone?” she whines.) He also directed a spot for Home Depot promoting a national “Tool Trade-In” event. In it, a man consoles a buddy who is about to part ways with a treasured, but aging drill.
“I was lucky that, from the start, I got to do things that involved comedy and storytelling,” Adams related. “Styles and fashions change quickly in advertising, but people will always enjoy spots that involve human storytelling.”
Original is led by executive producers Bruce Mellon, Joe Piccirillo, Marc Lasko and Jeff Devlin, and maintains production offices in Los Angeles and New York City. The company’s recently formed postproduction division, headed by Jonathan Del Gatto, provides editorial, design, graphics and visual effects services.
Effie UK and Ipsos Report Concludes Marketing Industry Should Do Its Part To Heal Societal Divisions
Society has never been more divided, according to a new report Healing the Divide in which Effie UK and brand and advertising experts from Ipsos explored brands’ role in shaping society and healing societal divisions.
The report details how instability, inflation, and COVID recovery —the convergence of multiple interconnected crises around the world that coincide with and amplify each other, causing hard to resolve systemic challenges, have become the norm over the past few years. As a result, the use of division as a weapon is now a major theme in today’s culture and politics, and sadly 47% of the UK and 49% of the US agree with the statement that “Within my lifetime, society in my country will break down,” according to Ipsos Global Trends 2024.
While some brands have tried to respond to this, the report finds responsible marketing is now threatened by weaponized division. It points to the World Federation of Advertisers’ decision to shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X, combined with DEI rollbacks, as significant setbacks.
The report says these setbacks underline the importance of marketing in solving collective problems, such as climate change, food security, and harmful online content. It also points to a need for marketers to take more interest in and more responsibility for healing divisions.
Research claims marketers are ideally placed to build and rebuild the antidote to division (trust, empathy, a sense of control, connection and collaboration). According to the Ipsos Veracity index of trusted professionals, society is becoming more trustworthy of advertising executives. Additionally, 57% of Britons agree that brands should communicate their... Read More