Creative Online All Stars Announced
- by September 14, 2005
What does it take to be an Online All Star? In addition to persistence, pluck, and willingness to take risks, they've all embraced new media's potential. They're innovative, savvy, and have long served as ambassadors and evangelists for online media.
Today, we present Online All Stars in the creative field: 'Subservient Chicken' mastermind, Jeff Benjamin, interactive creative director, Crispin Porter + Bogusky; Arthur Ceria, executive creative director, OgilvyOne, responsible for more than 200 Yahoo! campaigns this year; and Doug Jaeger, founder, thehappycorp, who five years ago at age 25 became the youngest creative director in tbwa/Chiat/Day's history.
Searching for Magic
In 2003, when Jeff Benjamin joined Miami hot shop Crispin Porter + Bogusky to head the agency's interactive division, he believed that the still-young interactive medium had grown stale, even boring. To Benjamin, that was due in large part to the reluctance of clients to embrace online messages that went beyond the "brochure" phase. In addition, interactive designers were getting carried away with the technology, instead of integrating it and making it more seamless.
The interactive scope has changed enormously since then, and Benjamin has been at the forefront of the revolution. "Clients are getting it," he says. "There was a time when they thought it meant putting all your company information on there. Now the space is open to different approaches."
When it comes to bending the rules of interactive, Benjamin has written the book. Charged with increasing the demand for Burger King's chicken sandwiches, Benjamin and cp+b created the outrageous "Subservient Chicken" last year. The site points to the actual product only through a link at the bottom of a Web page. The link--as everyone now knows--featured a guy dressed in a chicken suit who performed various stunts, on demand, after users entered commands.
Irreverent, funny, weird, oddly empowering, and deliciously pointless, the Subservient Chicken became an instant hit. "I sent it to a few friends at the agency, and they passed it on to their friends, and those people passed it on to theirs. Before we knew it, 16 million people had seen this thing," Benjamin says, laughing.
What the campaign meant and why it came into being are questions that delight Benjamin. "Alex Bogusky always says: 'Is this something I would want to tell my friends about?'" he notes. "When I think about interactive, I think about that--if it's something people will talk about around the water cooler. Is there a sense of magic? Will they ask, 'How did they do that?'"
This past summer, cp+b upped the ante by debuting "Coq Roq," a Web site for Burger King featuring a fictional rock band wearing--you guessed it--chicken masks. The name was enough to spur outraged blog posts, but those who could get beyond the hint of obscenity found another silly, enjoyable site with well-rendered interactivity and an edgy appeal. "It's a great time to be in interactive," Benjamin says. "People get excited about it now, and it makes working in the space even more fun."
For Benjamin, the leap into the interactive world was an unexpected one. He was studying economics with the intention of going to law school when he was asked to design an ad at his part-time job on campus. "I realized I had [talent] in me, and they gave me more and more ads to do," he says. "I always had a strong interest in computers, so interactive seemed like a natural fit. I also liked the idea of being persuasive." He eventually dropped out of college and realized his passion lay in advertising.
Rising in the field during the dot-com boom, Benjamin went on to work at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, directing interactive for clients including Hewlett-Packard, Saturn, and Goodyear.
"He has been at the center of much of the talked-about work in the interactive space, which has been both differentiated and compelling," says Joe Jaffe, president of jaffe, llc. "Ask any creative in the industry about Jeff, and they'll tell you the same thing: He's one of the best in the business."
Benjamin feels fortunate to have found his calling early. "If you're passionate about something, you can make up for any lack of knowledge and figure things out.... There's a new approach to creating fun, unexpected interactive experiences."
The Eye of the Storm
Arthur Ceria is no stranger to A-list brands. Over the course of his career in the interactive space, Ceria has worked on campaigns for MCI, Intel, and Polaroid. He did the dot-com thing at Agency.com, led the team that created a 3-D interactive exhibit for the Basketball Hall of Fame, and spearheaded what was thought to be the first digital launch of an auto brand, a campaign for Volvo on America Online.
Yet it is his current role as executive creative director at OgilvyOne that will most likely define his career--not to mention dominate a sizable percentage of his waking hours, over the next few years. Ceria is based in the agency's San Francisco office, which opened late last year after OgilvyOne snared Yahoo!'s online business.
Ceria, who received both an undergraduate and a master's degree from Yale, worked at his own design studio in his native France and spent four years presiding over integrated communications at Euro RSCG Worldwide, New York, before accepting the OgilvyOne post.
What appeals to Ceria, not surprisingly, is the job's entrepreneurial bent. While the hysteria of Silicon Valley has become yesterday's news to the mainstream media world, the area remains a hotbed for technological innovation. "The world's most important companies in recent history have all been created within a 50-mile radius: Apple, eBay, Oracle, Electronic Arts, Google," Ceria notes. "There's a level of excitement and enthusiasm here that you don't see in too many other places. Nobody is afraid to take risks." Translation: If you have online/multimedia aspirations but are not based in or around San Francisco, you're out of the loop.
Ceria, who seems to be a deeper thinker than many of his peers, cites the work of Massachusetts Institute of Technology artist/technologist John Maeda, fervently discussing the way in which he draws people into his "poetic realm." That's not to say that Ceria is purely philosophical in his approach: He is finely attuned to the bottom-line concerns of his post.
His main focus: the battle between Yahoo! and Google for online domination. The former was recently named the fastest-growing company in the United States by Fortune--a designation that didn't sit so well with the latter. Thus, the pressure on the OgilvyOne/Yahoo! team to remain on top has been ratcheted up in recent months, as the two tech titans continue to one-up each other with what seems like daily product and service announcements.
Ceria likens the current climate to being in "the eye of the storm" and notes with pride the determination of his team to help Yahoo! remain victorious. "Creatively, Yahoo! sees the bigger mission, and that's what keeps us all motivated," he says. OgilvyOne has aped the dizzying production pace of its flagship client, launching somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 Yahoo!-related campaigns in the last nine months.
The work is a canny amalgam of wit and artistry; few, if any, of the efforts flaunt technology for its own sake. The approach harkens back to a dinner Ceria had with Cammie Dunaway, chief marketing officer of Yahoo!, some time ago. "She told me, 'If we're going out and selling advertising to other brands, our own ads should be the best out there,'" he recalls.
To this end, Ceria has made it a priority to include sound with every interactive unit, and he strives to make every ad iconic. OgilvyOne's most ambitious effort to date may be the dazzling pixilated ads featuring Green Day and Missy Elliot, designed to hype Yahoo!'s subscription-based digital-music service. Quirky and meticulously attentive to detail (yes, that's a groupie running onto the stage to reattach the head of Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong), the spots give Apple's iTunes silhouettes a run for their creative cachet.
"We discovered the work of Craig Robinson, a digital artist who does incredibly funny and smart things with pixilation. Right away we thought, 'How cool would it be for Yahoo! to own that for its music,'" Ceria says. Online audiences can maneuver Missy Elliot through a series of dance moves or reposition Green Day's drums around the stage. The concept will extend to Yahoo! Music's TV, radio, and guerrilla marketing efforts.
"Arthur's one of the few people who has the creativity and enthusiasm to push clients to do more adventurous work," says Jan Leth, OgilvyOne's executive creative director. "But he also has the leadership you need in that kind of role."
Ceria is surprised at the number of traditional media and creative types attempting to make a mid-career change of venue. "We're seeing more and better portfolios," he says. "Plus, companies are finally starting to devote money not just to the media side [of the Internet], but to the production side."
Whiz Kid
By anyone's standards, including his own, Doug Jaeger is having a pretty amazing life. At 20, he designed a Web site for Lucent Technologies while working at Agency.com. Three years later, he established the interactive creative department for J. Walter Thompson, becoming the most junior partner in the firm's history. Then, at 25, he was named interactive creative director at tbwa/Chiat/Day--the youngest creative director in its history.
At 28, this digital whiz kid, who has already won a slew of awards, formed his own company, thehappycorp.com, a New York-based creative-services company encompassing branding, design, and photography. Today, having just turned 30, he's thinking about, um, breastfeeding. Yes, that's right. But it's on behalf of client Amy's Babies, an educational-services company founded by the mother of Jaeger's business partner, Matt Spangler.
"I wanted to build a company that understands marketing at its core, helps make the world a better place, and encourages clients to do good," he says. "We're not nerdy do-gooders who only work for nonprofits... We're in it to find good, smart people to work with."
Clients include Minyanville, TOPIC Magazine and College Humor. Jaeger is also collaborating on the "Ultimate Reality Challenge," which is being produced by a former adult-film producer and which, Jaeger says, "will either make TV better or kill reality TV. [The show] has an interactive element and is very controversial." Exactly how this will improve the world is unclear, but he says, "People can change, and maybe this program will help create a dialogue in the audience."
In addition to thehappycorp, Jaeger pursues his personal passions via a variety of outlets, such as professional photography under the banner "doctorjaeger"; a T-shirt line, dooker.com, the company he co-owns with former colleague Johnny Vulcan; and lvhrd, a creative collective that arranges instant parties via wireless communication. The parties are not only fun, they're labs where people can exchange ideas. Next on the agenda is a club where people can actually collaborate on creative ideas. Jaeger's company also handles project work for agencies such as McCann Worldwide and the Kaplan Thaler Group.
Jaeger studied computer graphics and communications at Syracuse University. While technically savvy, he knew nothing about advertising and marketing strategy. "I was inspired by inventors and inventions," he says. "I always wondered what made something successful and fancied developing and marketing a product."
When he formed his company, he hung out his shingle--a happy face--outside the Soho building that is also his residence. The aim, he says, was to create a company that crossed all disciplines and employed everyone from sound designers to graphic artists. One result of such cross-fertilization was Semi-Permanent 05, an art and design event for creative types held a few weeks ago at New York's Lincoln Center. Sponsored by Diesel, among 30 others, "It's an open platform for fun and change," Jaeger says. "I want New York to be the most important city to live in, and a great design and creative center."
During an interview, Jaeger talks like a train--fast and furiously--an indication of how his brain functions. He sits drawing on a boardroom table and is surrounded by several stopped clocks (so time doesn't matter), an orange Day-Glo chandelier, and matching grandfather clock and boardroom chairs.
"Doug is an All Star for three reasons: creativity, passion, and the ability to execute. I know he will do a great job and come up with off-the-wall ideas that work," says his former boss at J. Walter Thompson and current client, Kevin Wassong, president of Minyanville Publishing & Multimedia.
"He's an exceptional motivator and inspires people who work here," says Rob Hudak, a colleague at thehappycorp. "We pride ourselves on the fact that we're all artists and appreciate fine art, movies, and music. So when a client comes to us with a problem, we have people with a broader perspective of the world working on it."
Jaeger's former client Christina Bergman, communications manager for Absolut, says it's rare to find someone who understands both the technical and creative aspects of digital media: "There are very few people who are both good creatives/art directors and who understand the technology, and he is one of the best of these few people."
Oh, and Jaeger really is happy. "I'm trying to do right," he says. "I feel I've been treated fairly all my life. I'm not seeking attention; I'm trying to help the system. My dad always told me, 'You can do whatever you want.'"
Ann Cooper, Larry Dobrow, and Alex Miller contributed to this story.
