talked-about happenings at ad agencies on the West Coast. Earlier this spring there was the news that Gary Topolewski, formerly executive VP/chief creative officer at FCB Worldwide Detroit, Southfield, Mich., was leaving the shop to work at McCann-Erickson/A&L, San Francisco. He was to have been an instrumental part of that agencys estimated $350 million Microsoft account. That in itself was news, but what happened next was even more intriguing. Shortly after accepting McCann-Ericksons offer, Topolewski made an abrupt switch, instead becoming the executive creative director at TBWA/Chiat/ Day, Los Angeles. In Westward Bound, Topolewski discusses his reasons for leaving FCB, and for abandoning the McCann-Erickson offer in favor of TBWA/ Chiat/Day. AI wouldnt have backed out of any offer if it werent for Lee Clow, says Topolewski. Hes such an inspiration to me, and he convinced me. Its almost like it was inevitable. Topolewski relates that at his new roost, he will work on existing TBWA/Chiat/Day accounts such as Energizer and Sony PlayStation, as well as new business, including Citibank.
Meanwhile, San Francisco, home to several highly creative shops, has been steadily churning out inventive campaigns for dot-com and high-tech clients. Perhaps one of the best known is the humorous E*Trade campaign via San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P). In San Francisco Treat, SHOOT senior reporter Justine Elias talks about E*Trade with GS&Ps Gerry Graf, senior copywriter, and David Gray, senior art director, two of the creative masterminds behind spots such as Monkey and TriMount Studios for the online brokerage. In light of the recent downturn in technology stocks, Graf and Gray say they have no plans to scale back the humor in the E*Trade ads. The message is the same now, says Gray. Theyre not promising you pie in the sky, and they never were. The reality is, there are highs and lows in investing, and the humor comes from that reality.
When an evil supervillain needs to keep his plans for world domination out of presumably more evil hands, he needs Driveway.com, a file storage Web site. Any type of computer file can be stored there, then retrieved from any computer. The aforementioned supervillain is actually Lord Insidious, star of a spot of the same name for Driveway.com that was created by agency Elvis & Bonaparte, Portland, Ore. Other ads in the campaign include Svaakhammer, a Swedish rock group only a mother could love, and Wolfman, featuring a man named Jeff Talbot who suffers from lycanthropy, which causes him to destroy important documents stored on disk during his full moon-induced fits of rage. In Elvis Sighting, Elvis & Bonaparte creative director David Helfrey talks about how he and his colleagues came up with the trio of ads for Driveway.com. It was really tough because before we started thinking about anything, we just kind of looked at the whole big picture, and what we had was an unknown service by an unknown company in an unknown category. … So we knew wed have to be really expository, he explains. The agency settled on product testimonials, but from a decidedly off-center group of users.
The West Coast continues to produce top-notch spot concepts, and we hope you enjoy this look at some of the creatives behind the work. As always, we welcome your feedback.
