I was fortunate that I was introduced to an agency producer when I was in college and that conversation prompted me to change my major and put me on this path. That journey turned into living in 7 different cities, making spots and content around the world ever since. I have managed global campaigns, tiny groups, huge departments, broadcast, business affairs teams, print, digital and experiential groups. Along the way built the biggest stand alone agency production studio in the world, while being a partner at Deutsch.
Up to this point, there have been 1000's of spots and content pieces made but I need to say that I have been extremely fortunate to work with some amazing people along the way, clients, creatives, account, strategy, directors, editors, artists, musicians and most of all producers. That has equaled over 20 Super Bowl spots, 50 Cannes Lions, countless other awards from shows all over the world, 7 Emmy Nominations and the EMMY for outstanding commercial of the year.
What I am most proud of is the mentoring I've done, giving FILM2FUTURE a home in Steelhead, which is an inner city LA high school program that every summer shows dozens of students the path to careers in Hollywood. Also consulting with Invisible Collective, a 100% diverse owned start-up production company and telling them everything I know. Then there are the hundreds of producers that worked for me, many I still talk with and mentor. I started with showing them the ropes when they were new to the industry and now I'm thrilled to watch their maturation and knowing they are out in the world making sure the work comes first.
Special Group // Partner - CPO
Special Group landed on US soil in the middle of covid and quickly established itself as a strong independent player as a small independent agency with one of the biggest clients in the country, UberEats. Launching with a Super Bowl campaign that garnered the US office Adage's 2021 Newcomer of the Year, after 10+ successful years in the Aus/New Zealand markets as Campaign magazine Global Agency of the Year.
I came on board as a Partner in the summer of 2023, to support the continued growth of the agency, and create a modern production infrastructure that excels at partnering with the best talent and companies in the world to execute at the highest level for our clients.
So far in my first 8 months, we have landed new business and created a global phenomenon with the UberEats 2024 Superbowl campaign. it started with David and Victoria Beckham's teaser going viral, by leaning on their hugely popular documentary series. The results of just the teaser led to 130M organic social views in 24 hours, and 1.7B impressions. The spot, reunited Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer for the first time since their Friends days, along with the Beckhams, Jelly Roll and Usher, who all forgot crucial moments in their lives to remember that UberEats has almost anything. This landed the spot as #4 on the USA Today poll and the campaign taking on a life of it's own with 2 dozen unique spots, running throughout the winter and continuing on through March Madness.
Now, over the past year Special Group has been named both ‘Global Creative Agency of the Year’ by Campaign UK and ‘The Most Effective Independent Network in the World’ by WARC.
Hayvenhaus Productions
CEO // Executive Producer
Started my own production consultancy based on my career experiences and my desire to help agencies, brands and production companies big and small navigate the ever expanding and rapidly changing world of production.
During those 2 years, I have been asked to consult for agencies to evaluate their overall production departments, to level up the creative execution and the grow the internal production offering to maximize profits.
Hayvenhaus acted as Managing Director for a post production company, to manage the staff and lead growth of the company during covid.
Additionally I created a business plan for one of the biggest production companies in the Asian market to expand their growth into the US and European markets.
Film 47
President // Executive Producer
Recruited by Hollywood Feature Director Pete Berg to launch Film 47, a commercial and branded entertainment production company formed alongside his feature film company, Film 44 and TV production company Film 45.
I built FILM47 to utilize the existing production infrastructure and filmmaker network from its sister businesses and an ecosystem that supports working with those collaborators across the advertising landscape. The goal was to use the resources to make the process of creating content for multiple platforms seamless. The structure offers brands and agencies the ability to work directly with Hollywood creators (writers, directors, actors), moving them further upstream in the creative process and increasing brand lift with creative solutions with unparalleled production execution.
At the launch of the company, I spearheaded the content creation and execution of the global launch of the first all electric SUV, Rivian. Quickly followed by one of the most comprehensive branded content campaigns ever created as Verizon's Super Bowl campaign consisted of 12 mini documentary films, a dozen spots for the NFL playoff run and a spot to urge consumers to upload their own story. The finale was a Super Bowl spot and a half hour documentary that ran on CBS Networks. Equally unprecedented was the length of consumer engagement with the brand campaign averaging over 20 minutes and with the spots landing at #4 on USA Today SB poll, #1 digital re-call and eventually winning multiple Cannes Lions.
The 2019 NFL 100 Super Bowl spot was named USA Today's Admeter #1 spot on the game and was the Highlight of the NFL's 100th season, with 43 current and former NFL stars shot for a 2:00 epic spot that ran at halftime, 10 teasers led up to the game and a half hour TV special about the making of the spot made in collaboration with NFL Films.
Over the 3 years 5 Super Bowl spots were created for NFL, Verizon, Microsoft, Ford and Frito Lay.
STEELHEAD
President // Executive Producer
I created, co-designed, managed the architect and contractors for the building of a state-of-the-art full service production studio. Steelhead Studios, became the biggest, agency built, free standing "in-house" production studio in the world at 50,000 sq.ft.
I operated Steelhead with my staff of 155 full-time production employees, that executed campaigns from commercial to branded content, social media, experiential and print production. The team made content for Volkswagen, Sprint, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Dr. Pepper, Snapple, 7-11, Pandora, Zillow, Hulu, Amazon, Tile, Interscope Records to name a few.
The building includes a 7,000 sq. ft sound stage that serves as a multipurpose space to shoot everything from print to experiential to large-scale video productions.
Two private hair/makeup/wardrobe rooms, kitchen, greenroom area, 2 x 400 AMP ‘3 phase’ power and a 4k Live SDI connection to post production bays.
The multipurpose Steelhead Studio was also designed to be a truly social space. It has an indoor/outdoor patio with stadium seating for 150 people, a coffee café with a full-time barista,
a greenhouse and a fully stocked private 900-sq. ft.
speakeasy bar.
Post Production services include, 6 Edit Bays, 4 VFX color and motion graphic suites, 2 recording studios, pre-press and mechanical studios for printed related material.
DEUTSCH / LA
Partner // Director of Production
Deustch won the NA Volkswagen business and recruited me to come in and upgrade the execution of the content and digital production offering. In the first year I hired 40 digital production staff to rebuild the VW consumer website and then we re-launched the brand by bringing back a modern version the "punch buggy" game on the Super Bowl.
By the end of the 1st year we made VW "Mini Darth" which became the most watched automotive commercial of all time on YouTube, widely regarded as the best spot of 2010 at every award show around the world. Over the next 9 years Deutsch won the Target, Sprint, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, 7-11, Pandora, Tile, Interscope Records, Hulu, H&R Block.
The Target "More Music" initiative became an annual event starting with the first ever Live Performance from a brand on the Grammys Broadcast with Imagine Dragons and then the next year the first ever Live Music Video from brand on the Grammy Broadcast with Gwen Stefani.
During my time at Deutsch, we became known as a creative powerhouse and then the biggest agency on the west coast, adding 27 Cannes Lions and 2 Emmy Nominations, among 100's of other awards.
FALLON // MN
Director of Production
Recruited to run production at one of the best and most creative agencies on the planet. Fallon is known for the Citibank Live Richly campaign, Porsche, BMW Films, Travelers Insurance, Holiday Inn, Nordstrom, United Airlines and many more award winning campaigns over it's existence.
Being able to be in the room and listen to Pat Fallon and the leadership of the agency was a seminal moment for me in understanding the business of advertising. As Pat said, they needed to create a new advertising agency for companies that would rather outsmart the competition than outspend them. Starting a global powerhouse from the frozen tundra of Minnesota, they lived the mantra everyday and being there gave me the leadership skills to mentor the production team and maintain the work to a level that people expected from Fallon. A special place, filled with special people making some of the best work in the world, I was lucky to be a part of it.
wieden + kennedy // Portland
Executive Producer
Wieden+Kennedy is quite simply the most creative and greatest agency in the world and rightly so. Moving to Portland, I was immediately immersed in the Nike business and started out with 6 Yankees playing stickball the street with 6 Mets. Cut to 2 months later when I was producing the most iconic golf commercial of all-time with Tiger Woods bouncing a golf ball on his wedge to an Esquivel track. It was a viral video before there was such a thing as viral videos. On Nike Basketball I produced the first ever piece of true branded content in modern advertising as the 3:00 version of "Freestyle" debuted on MTV as a music video with the Choreographer Savion Glover and the director talking through the process with Carson Daly. The following year the Nike "Move" became globally one of the best and most awarded spots created that year, ultimately winning the Academy of Arts and Sciences EMMY.
Producing many more Nike spots over those years, working with the greatest athletes of the time, I learned about the power of brand, to fail harder, and that the work comes first.
Hill Holiday // Boston
Senior Producer
I headed back to Boston when I was recruited by my friends at Hill Holiday. The biggest creative powerhouse outside of NYC on the east coast. Hill Holiday allowed me to collaborate with some of the best creatives in the business on brands like Wall Street Journal, Spalding Golf, Budget Rental Cars, Fidelity Investments and AMD.
AMD always wanted to go big, so I produced one of the best VFX spots of the year, the VES winning AMD "FlatZone" directed by Michel Gondry, while he was at the height of his powers. That spot caught the attention of the folks at w+k and they reached out about to ask me if I wanted to head to Portland.
J. Walter Thompson
Senior Producer
Recruited to the world’s best-known marketing communications brand at the time, I was lured to JWT by the idea that a global agency doing global work, would give me the experiences that I was missing to take the next steps in my career.
Sitting in the world headquarters in NYC, I found myself traveling the globe making campaigns for Unilever, Trident, Kodak and Pepsi brand Lipton Brisk. Producing the iconic "Rocky" for Brisk, the highlight was Stallone doing his own voice for the puppet. J. Walter Thompson is a true global network with more than 200 offices in over 90 countries and with author James Patterson as the CCO at the time.
The depth of the talented staff that was there at the time are now running agencies, directing, producing and making some of those most iconic and award winning advertising campaigns in the world, since our days there as young ad execs.
Houston Effler
Producer
Where my advertising agency career started, after starting as a production assistant for commercials, music videos, a television show and a couple of movies. The PA jobs started while I was in college in Boston and NYC, then in Los Angeles after I graduated. Coming back to Boston, then super young CCO, Pete Favat convinced a super young me to stay on staff after my freelance gig was ending. I did and ended up producing ads for Converse and the very first spots of the Anti-Smoking campaign. I was glad I stayed, as it lead to a career path that took me to agencies all over the country and producing content all over the world.
Been around the Block
What is producing, in its truest form? Storytelling meets problem solving, by definition, solving hundreds of small problems on any given day to create something memorable. The goal is that the work helps to solve the clients business problems and makes an emotional connection to the brand.
It means taking the input from every single person that has anything to do with creating content and deciding when pushing, pulling, cajoling, steering, whispering, befriending, leading, writing, art directing, directing, analyzing, driving, editing, listening, mixing, parenting the idea to create the best piece of content possible.