Salutations and good day…

I just wanted to drop a note to let you know that this will be my last week at Advertising Age.

After more than three years in New York, my wife and I have decided it’s time to take our recently-arrived son back north to a place many Americans refer to as “that big gray blank space above us on the map,” but what we like to call “Canada.”

Don’t worry, I haven’t crafted some hackneyed, Didionesque rant about my time here, but will say it’s been a hell of a good time working with the classy folks at Creativity and AdAge over the last few years. A particular thanks to Teressa Iezzi for hiring a fellow Toronto ex-pat with no fixed address or experience covering the ad industry, back in 2006.

By the time February starts, I’ll be back in Toronto and a staff writer at Marketing magazine. I’m excited to start work with the crew there and continue talking about the interesting, inspired and insidious ways that business and popular culture cross paths.

So thanks to everyone I’ve worked with and covered so far, please stay in touch and keep me posted on your adventures. I’ll still be wandering the interwebs here, as well as @jeffcbeer, while the sports-related ramblings continue at The Cheap Seats. You can also reach me at theycallmebeer@gmail.com.

And with that, a gentlemanly slap to your raised open hand.

huzzah,
jeff

Last week, I wrote in Ad Age about the coming third annual NHL Winter Classic and how it’s become a very important brand for the league. The consensus among U.S. ad buyers, NBC execs and the NHL itself was that the game had put hockey into a lot of business conversations that it previously hadn’t been a part of. It’s elevated the NHL’s status (at least in the US) by creating a meaningful event that’s acted as a magnet for casual fans and marketers. Yeah, yeah, feel good hockey stuff, right?

Well, while the game and event itself may be bullet-proof — how else would you describe a game at Fenway Park between the Boston Bruins and Philly Flyers on New Year’s Day? — the newly unveiled commercial made to promote it is not. As I said in today’s Cheap Seats entry, I get it, I know what the folks at the NHL’s ad agency Y&R were going for. It’s the modern rink-morphs-to-frozen-pond thing. Makes total sense. Except the end result is just utterly lacking any sort of emotion, be that nostalgia, adrenaline, humor, anything. This is hockey. The ads for a game like this in a city like Boston should feel more like a punch to the face than a long-distance phone commercial.

In that same Cheap Seats bit, I say they should’ve looked at favored Beantown sons and sports fans the Dropkick Murphys. The band’s played at Bruins games before, has a few Bruins-flavored tunes and rocked the Red Sox theme for the team’s historic 2004 World Series run. And they’re insanely popular in that city. You couldn’t find a better fit for a musical hockey/Fenway/hometown hero hat-trick. So until that puck drops and interrupts our New Year’s hangover, we’ll have to make do with this:

Although this is, technically, a personal site, I’m not really of the online type to regale you with tales of my toothbrushing technique or why tomato soup is my favorite of all the warm, fluid-like lunch options. But! Last Wednesday my son Henry was born. And seeing as he’s not unlike many a newborn, my activity here will probably be somewhat interrupted by this sudden and vigorous change to my daily life. But don’t worry, I’ll adapt soon and eventually you’ll see just as many infrequent updates here as before. Besides, wouldn’t you rather just read the twitter version? (Pssst, it’s on the right.) huzzah!

This week, AdAge published my piece on the various marketing efforts behind “Where The Wild Things Are,” particularly those involving or influenced by the film’s director Spike Jonze. I was disappointed not to get in touch with Capt. Jonze himself, but had some great conversations with Girl Skateboards co-founder Megan Baltimore, artist and designer Geoff McFetridge and Vice/VBS creative director Eddy Moretti. Interested? Check it out here.

Let’s just begin under the obvious assumption that 99% of advertising is utter bile. So, any criticism leveled at Fallon London director/creative/wizard Juan Cabral must be taken with the proverbial bucket of salt. Cabral is the guy responsible for some of the best Fallon creative over the last few years (also the worst, read: Trucks), starting with Balls, moving on to Paint, then Play-Doh, a quick diversion over to Cadbury for a Gorilla and now back to Sony. With Soundville.

Creativity has a great Q&A with Cabral about this latest effort, the details of which I’ll leave for you to go there and read, but rest assured it’s all very cool, eclectic, original and creative. (Cliff Notes: Town of 400 in Iceland hooked up with speakers for a week, all set up with the help of Sigur Ros technicians. All the bells and whistles. Hot. Shit.) And yet, in the end, I can’t help but feel like the story, effort and general creativity behind the idea come off more impressive than the actual film. All these snazzy background details go a long way to give industry nerds and creative folk an adverchubby, but will it really get Tommy Whogivesasweethell to buy a Sony over a Samsung? Is that even the point?

With something like Balls, Paint and Play-Doh (KozynDan controversy aside), the visuals and/or music pretty much grab the viewer by the throat and force them to pay attention. A relatively quick payoff, is what I’m saying. Here, we have a moody, mellow, surreality that doesn’t quite pack the same punch. Don’t get me wrong, I dig trippy atmospheric hoo-haa as much as the next rube, but am I quite ready to trot out and buy a TV any time soon? I like to think I support brands who in turn support creative endeavor. Hell, there’s a reason I smell like my grandfather. But I’m not quite sure this one will hit the high watermark set by Cabral’s earlier efforts.

All that said, let’s not get bogged down in how this affects sales numbers and those sorts of dirty ins and outs. In the interest of raising the overall bar of ad creative, I tip a pint to Mr. Cabral, Fallon and Sony and say, in the words of the great Ernie Anastos, “Keep fuckin’ that chicken.”

As the 2009/2010 NHL season approaches, Toronto Maple Leafs fans (once again) prepare themselves for the unknown. While, as the late, great Joe Strummer said, the future is unwritten, a new book by two Hogtown scribes examines the sins of Leafs past to get a hint at where the club should head in the years ahead.

Leafs Abomination: The Dismayed Fan’s Handbook to Why the Leafs Stink and How They Can Rise Again by Dave Feschuk and Michael Grange is like a painful intervention. Far from having a grudge against the Leafs or their fans, the book does a great job of simply lining up all the facts – like a four decade long buffet of hockey incompetence and underachievement.

As a Leafs fan, it’s a lot like waking up hungover and having your friends recount every single transgression from the previous evening’s events in horrifying detail. I slept with who? In the ladies’ room? I drank pure gasoline? We killed a goat in ritual sacrifice in the backyard? Now imagine that night was 40 years long.

Anyway, yesterday over at Creativity, I posted a Q&A with motion graphics wizards MK12. Really nice guys who just happen to do amazing work for brands and feature films. So yeah, check it out… if for no other reason than because they did this:

TAXI’s Paul Lavoie and director Azazel Jacobs’ short film looks to attract new audience to the art museum.

by jeff beer

Living in New York, there are gaggles of cultural must-sees and everyone has their own particular way of prioritizing which ones are worth their time. One person’s Lincoln Center is another’s Yankee Stadium. To that end, MoMA’s most recent project reaches out to those who might not have the museum at the top of their visit lists.

In “I See,” by TAXI, New York, Frank stands looking at Russian artist Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné’s 1913 sculpture, Symphony Number 1. He’s got that bored look in his eye of someone forced to be there by friends or out-of-town visitors, until the robotic audio tour voice begins to relate the piece of art and the inspiration behind it, to Frank’s own life.

Paul Lavoie.

Photo Credit: From Amiga

The short film, directed by Azazel Jacobs, marks a return to copywriting by TAXI chairman and co-founder Paul Lavoie. It’s also the first of what will be a new, annual series of commissioned films by rising filmmakers, and will be shown before film screenings in the museum’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters.

We spoke to Lavoie about the goals behind the short and more.

How did this idea come about?

The challenge that they gave us was to open up a conversation with a younger audience, maybe an audience that wasn’t necessarily prone to going to the museum. So the objective was to find ways and a language that might connect with this group and open them up to the idea of exploring a bit more into contemporary and modern art. Essentially, it’s not about talking to people who would already go to the museum, but more about talking to the audience that would more likely be going to a baseball game. To try and get them to consider going to the museum as they would any other form of entertainment. It’s important to find these common denominators and the points of interest that will get their attention.

So the idea I was exploring when I wrote it was to not think about the actual painting or piece of art itself, but to look at what really inspires artists, and that’s life. And life is the intrinsic common denominator between an artist and the younger audience. When you’re young, you’re embracing life and finding things out but often we think of these artists as old and dead. But the sculptor featured in the piece, Rossiné, was only 22 or 23 when he did that sculpture. So I started thinking how the inspiration for this particular piece of art could relate to the lives of young people in New York.

What I really like about this piece is that the director Azazel Jacobs really nailed it. The key was to make sure it was under-played and subtle. The other thing I like about it is that when we showed it to younger people they really related to it. Sometimes when you’re trying to get their attention the instinct is to go edgy or whatever, but I think the authenticity and intelligence of it really allowed them to relate to it on a different level. It’s a good lesson to any brand, to just be yourself.

How did you decide to feature Symphony Number 1?

There were three criteria. First, I wanted to get a piece of sculpture that most people might not know. Something a bit more discreet. Then, practically, we looked at the pieces that could be shot well and could be shot around. And finally, after some due diligence, I read up on Rossiné and found how he was disrespected as a young artist and I thought, Perfect. Because it relates to young people. Everyone knows the feeling of starting off in a career or in adulthood, and the struggles that go along with that. We make mistakes and experience failure. And that’s something the artist knew well, too. I really liked the idea that he created two pieces and ended up being so frustrated that he threw one in the Seine, and after achieving some success, actually went and retrieved it.

It was just about relating all the different emotions bound up in the piece and trying to relate it back to this young person looking at the sculpture’s life – his girlfriend, the economy, things like that. And this artist was trying to understand these things too and convey them in this piece.

(originally appeared in the Nov. 2008 issue of Creativity)

Hello Von

London illustrator brings artful design to the commercial space

From Madonna to Seal, Bono to Liberace, the mono-moniker has always intrigued. For U.K. artist Von, it works too, and, like those more famous characters, the work backs up the bold name. The 28-year-old artist, based in the U.K., is the singular talent behind the recent two-part exhibition “Migration,” a spectacular “moving” piece featuring beautiful, abstracted birds. “The project inherited the migrational nature of its content,” Von says. The exhibit’s first “flock” initially appeared on the Truman Brewery in London in late August and then in September resurfaced in New York, the birds traveling towards the billboards on the side of the Espeis Gallery in Williamsburg.

“Migration,” and Von’s other works demonstrate a striking balance between traditional illustration and cutting edge design, with craftsmanship playing a huge role—one possible reason art lovers and commercial clients alike are drawn to his work.

“Migration” London

“The level of craft involved in its creation is very visible in the final piece,” says Von, who is repped by Bernstein+Andriulli. “In that respect it can appeal to young people, as well as older generations who find things appealing because they can see the work that went into it.”

Nike

Von has exhibited everywhere from the London Design Museum to galleries in Paris and New York. He’s also created for clients as diverse as The New York Times, Nike, Fuse, Wallpaper magazine, Glenfiddich and American Express. Von says the relationship between his commercial and fine art is a symbiotic one, with one influencing and inspiring the other. “The flexibility and free reign allowed in the non-commercial work allows for development that commissioned work wouldn’t,” he says. “This can then seep back into commercial work in the same way and vice versa. I’m often commissioned off the back of personal stuff as much as I am other jobs from my portfolio. At the moment I couldn’t be purely commercial nor purely fine art. The focus shared between the two is shifting but they will both be playing their roles for the foreseeable future.”

Beetle Shears

Outside of his solo efforts, Von likes to be a team player, too. He partnered with product designer Hideki under the perfectly sensible pseudonym of VonHideki to design the corian and glass “Colombian Coffee Table,” a comment on “consumerism, addiction and desire” that appeared at the London Design Festival. And he’s open to working with others across design lines. “I would love to collaborate with Zoe and David from Commonwealth,” he says. “They are insanely talented and produce 3D work that very much resonates to the way I draw and see my work developing in its morphological approach.”

Bird

In the meantime, he’s thinking up other ideas fast—and abundantly. “Drawing directly onto furniture and then sealing the artwork is something else I’ve been toying with for a while,” he says. “Window displays as well. I would love to do something with glass, too! Pieke Bergman’s glass work is fantastic and incredibly inspirational. [I have] sketchbooks full of ideas. It’s finding the right time and opportunities to realize them that’s the difficult thing.”