Steve Sandoz, creative director at Portland, Ore.-based agency Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), passed away Dec. 26, 2000, after a long battle with leukemia.
A 13-year W+K veteran, Sandoz had most recently served as creative director for W+K Interactive. In that capacity, he was responsible for overseeing the interactive components of integrated ad campaigns. Among these were last year’s campaigns for Nike’s Presto and Shox sneaker brands.
In 2000, Sandoz also was involved in one of the industry’s most notable projects, the multi-spot "whatever.Nike.com" interactive campaign. It was billed as the first ad campaign to originate on television and end on the Internet, where people could pick among several possible story endings that played as QuickTime videos. Johan Renck of bicoastal Mars Media and Stockholm-based Pettersson Ackerlund Renck directed the initial spot, "Racing Marion," featuring Olympic sprinter Marion Jones (SHOOT Top Spot, 1/28/00, p. 10), in addition to ads starring St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire and snowboarding champion Rob Kingwill.
W+K president/CCO Dan Wieden told SHOOT that Sandoz had a profound impact on the agency. "There are two levels of contributions," said Wieden. "One pertains to the actual process of producing advertising, and he was enormously important there. While what he most loved to do was humorous work, he could also write incredibly insightful, intellectual pieces on art or sport, or whatever." Sandoz was also an early champion of new media forms and technologies. "Steve had enthusiasm about everything," Wieden observed, "but he’d been pushing me to buy computers when I didn’t know what they were."
Sandoz’s second contribution went far beyond work-related aspects, continued Wieden: "He’s been battling this damn illness for over ten years; he’s one of the longest survivors of this form of cancer in the U.S." Wieden related that Sandoz underwent a bone marrow transplant nearly 10 years ago. "Just having him around, as a presence, was powerful. He was so ready and willing to talk to anybody—at the deepest level you wanted to go—about the personal issues he was dealing with."
During his W+K tenure, Sandoz contributed creatively to every major account, including Nike, Coca-Cola, Miller Brewing Company and Microsoft. His work has received numerous national and international industry honors—among them, Clios, One Show awards and several Gold Lions from the Cannes International Advertising Festival.
Among Sandoz’s credits over the years are "Start Me Up," which introduced Microsoft Windows ’95, directed by the late Paul Giraud, out of bicoastal HSI Productions; and Nike’s epic commercial "Godzilla vs Charles Barkley" (SHOOT Top Spot, 9/11/92, p. 18), directed by Michael Owens, through San Rafael, Calif.-based Industrial Light + Magic (now Industrial Light+Magic Commercial Productions, San Rafael and Los Angeles).
Prior to W+K, Sandoz worked at Seattle-based Livingston & Company during the mid-’80s. There the accounts he wrote for included Alaska Airlines. Working for this client gave him the opportunity to collaborate with premier comedy director Joe Sedelmaier, Sedelmaier Film Productions, Chicago, on a series of acclaimed airline spots. In a story in SHOOT’s 40th Anniversary edition (11/3/00, p. 34), Sandoz cited Sedelmaier as a mentor. "I learned so much about the process of directing, just by watching Joe," stated Sandoz.
Aside from his agency duties, Sandoz found an outlet for his creativity with assorted sideline projects. He maintained his own boutique entity, Artsy Fartsy Productions, through which he conceptualized and directed assignments. Among his pet projects was the Portland International Film Festival; every year since 1991, he had written and helmed the festival’s promotional trailers on a pro bono basis.
Many of Sandoz’s side projects were produced in collaboration with Portland-based Food Chain Films. One such recent effort comprised the spots "It’s Time 1" and "It’s Time 2," for Portland AM radio station 860 KPAM, which he wrote, edited and directed. The work earned recognition in SHOOT’s gallery of entries for Best Work You May Never See (SHOOT, 10/20/00, p. 11).
In ’98, Sandoz completed God’s Clowns, a short film he wrote and directed, which Food Chain produced and W+K helped to finance. The agency funds a select number of creative projects—"only the ones we love," noted Wieden—which are submitted for consideration by employees.
The 13-min. Clowns, which was screened at the ’99 Northwest Film Festival, Telluride’s IndieFest and the Florida Film Festival, was a mockumentary about an order of monks who devote their waking hours to making God laugh. "It was an odd film, very much in the Steve Sandoz tradition," related Food Chain executive producer David Cress. "He had this idea about what would happen if people lacking meaning in their lives discovered God through the shtick of great comedians … so they’d study the works of Shecky Greene and so forth."
A service to celebrate Sandoz’s life will be held Jan. 20, at 3 p.m., in the W+K atrium, which is open to anyone wishing to attend. Sandoz is survived by his wife, Laurie Paus, and by his son, Devin, and daughter, Emilie. He also leaves behind his parents, Hubert and Joan Sandoz of San Diego, and two brothers: Robert in Seattle and John in Alexandria, Va. Donations in remembrance of Sandoz can be made to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
