In the advertising business, Dave Merhar is one of a rare breed. He serves both as a director (repped by Santa Monica-based Visitor) and as founder of his own ad agency, Fusion Idea Lab, Chicago (with accounts that include a portion of the Budweiser business).
Despite his busy directing schedule, don’t expect the affable Merhar to give up his other day job anytime soon. "I’ll try to keep both going," says Merhar. "It would be easy for me to say, ‘Let me just be a director,’ but I still have a craving to create. I’m still writing."
Double duty has always been difficult, but Merhar’s latest work from the director’s chair has only gotten better. He has continued to helm hilarious spots for Budweiser, including "Run" and "Log Jam," via Fusion, which won first prize at this year’s Mobius Awards. He has helmed nearly 20 spots for Budweiser to date. He also recently directed "Home Again" for flu-reliever Relenza through Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, and Pep Boys’ "Water Cooler" via DDB Chicago. Currently, he’s in what he calls a "nonstop whirlwind" of work for the likes of Sears, Royal Crown Cola, Cox Communications and FOX Family Channel.
Merhar first caught the director’s bug during his seven-year stint at DDB, where he rose to the rank of senior VP/group creative director. Working on memorable Budweiser campaigns for DDB such as "I Love You, Man" convinced him to make a go of directing. "It was just like, ‘Hey, I could do that,’" he recalls. "Then when you do that, it’s a whole new world, and you have to decide what you want to do."
Bright Idea
Merhar didn’t want to give up being an agency creative, but he felt the need to pursue directing. He broke the mold by leaving DDB and starting his own agency with fellow DDB expatriate Mike Oberman. There certainly weren’t any hard feelings between Merhar and his old agency. DDB awarded him work for Bud Light that enabled him to make a breakthrough as a director, including the :30 "Shopping," which depicted men taking refuge inside a clothes rack when forced to go to the mall with their significant others. "Shopping" premiered during the ’98 Super Bowl.
Four years after starting Fusion, Merhar is so swamped with directing assignments that he has cut back on working for the agency he himself started. Whereas last year his workload was split 50/50 between Fusion and Visitor, he estimates the scale has tipped to 85 percent for Visitor. "When it comes to new business for Fusion, I’ll say yes or no based on my workload when they ask," says Merhar. "What I really do is spend time as a freelance writer for them when they come to me with a project. I don’t have any learning curve; I understand what they’re looking for."
There are potential conflicts inherent in juggling directing and agency work. At Visitor, Merhar will not take directing jobs for any beer company other than Anheuser-Busch. "I wouldn’t want to jeopardize my relationship with them to work on a competitor’s project," he explains.
The Budweiser work—he directed three more ads in December ’99—came through Fusion as well, but he sidesteps any entanglements of directing assignments via his own agency. "When I direct something, I treat them as an agency separate from me," he says.
However, directing for Fusion accommodates his desire to get involved on a project as early in the creative process as possible. "They look to me to do more for the boards. We talk it through pretty well," explains Merhar. "Based on who we are and how well we know each other, we work as a team really well. If we have disagreements, we settle them in a civil way."
But does he have an edge when it comes to getting director duties on a Fusion project he covets? "They look at the job for what it is and pick the correct person for it," Merhar says. "We have to keep an objective relationship. Budweiser feels comfortable with me helming the spots."
Merhar doesn’t usually write the spots that he creates, but his input usually comes early in the collaborative process. When he does pen a commercial, he usually gives it to someone else to direct. By his own estimation, less than 10 percent of his directing jobs come through Fusion.
However, through Fusion he did recently directed a campaign for the FOX Family Channel. True to his trademark, the promos—"Button," "Magic" and "Wrestlers"—are funny, yet something of a departure for Merhar. He had to shoot three ads in a single day. Merhar has grown accustomed to visual punchlines, but the FOX spots showcase a misguided family trying to amuse itself instead of watching TV, which required a more traditional storytelling technique. "When you have people act, it’s simple and more complicated at the same time," he says. "In [‘Bunny’], a grandfather tries to be a magician and pulls a rabbit out of his hat. But then the rabbit bites him and he can’t shake the rabbit off his finger. In shooting this, you have to use every bit of the frame and do lots of different positioning with the camera."
Even a typical Merhar shoot is not without its challenges. An upcoming spot for Royal Crown’s new cola, RC Edge, via Blum Group, New York, features a fly landing on someone’s forehead. Merhar eschewed CGI special effects in favor of having a real fly hit a mark. The fly’s landing was created with the actual insect on a monofilament leash. "There are some amazing fly wranglers out there," says Merhar.
At the end of the day, the greatest challenge for Merhar is juggling his time. He isn’t about to turn his back on his personal life. "It’s difficult," he says. "My family lives in Chicago, and I get a lot of frequent flyer miles."
Could his days be numbered as a director/agency man? "That’s a tough question to answer," Merhar says. "I’d be happy if I could keep things the way they are, but things change. I hope people still want me to work for them in five years, and I hope I’ve gotten better."c
