| Most appliance manufacturers give retailers back 3% of their dollar purchases. While these "cooperative" funds are suppose to be used for advertising the brand locally, retailers would use them to simply lower the price or place multi-brand advertising in newspapers. Worse, these co-op funds were far bigger than the entire national advertising budget. If only there was a way to convince the retailers to let Panasonic spend those dollars. But that was like stealing a sacred cow. My concept was to embrace the media vehicle appliance retailers respected the most: Four color Sunday Newspaper inserts. I designed a four page full color brochure that could be customized with the retailer's name and prices, so it looked like THEIR store circular. Panasonic gave mock-ups to the sales force to see if there was any interest, assuming that would shut me up once an for all. The result was these marvelous brochures with an average print run of 30 million. |
AGENCY: Scali McCabe Sloves CLIENT: GAF Resilient Flooring
| The client gave me a free hand to create an ad for a ceramic tile-like floor covering that was soft and warm underfoot. Unfortunately, the chairman of GAF felt the photo was too sexy for the American market, so I fought to have the ad translated and scheduled in magazines in South America. It received the highest readership scores of all ads in every publication it appeared. ...beauty survives. |
| The world's largest jewelry store is really a mall of 200 independent retailers. My task was to design and produce a brochure that would convince Manhattan tourists to visit the store. I insisted we showcase the best jewelry, but getting the tenants to cooperate took a diplomat, not an art director. Exasperated, but not undaunted, I managed to borrow over $3 million in gems and arranged to shoot the photography on premise under their watchful eyes. The brochure is now in its 8th printing. |
| This New Jersey company manufactures the best line of liver paté you've ever tasted. The reason is in the recipe that came from the Black Forest of Germany and then carefully guarded and passed on to family members. I found the story so compelling, I decided there was no way to sum it all up with a clever slogan. This four page brochure told the whole story and helped to position the Alexian brand on top... where it rightfully belongs. |
| Most motor oil advertising shows a package, but never the product itself. For Quaker State, I had an artist render a quart of Quaker State motor oil being poured. The company was so impressed, they used it everywhere, like on the cover of this sales folder. But I was even more thrilled when they bought the original artwork from the artist and proudly hung in the lobby of their headquarters. |
AGENCY: RnB Design CLIENT: Victory International
| The fragrance company asked to promote all its products in one ad to the perfume trade. These were two of my suggestions. |
| Hot Shoppes is a regional chain of restaurants serving the major highways of the Northeast. It had a reputation for being a pancake house. The assignment was to communicate a quality message with an emphasis on the wide selection of other fine menu choices the francise offers. Great food photography is dependent equally on finding the right photographer as well as finding a great food stylist, who must make the food look appetizing while it sits under hot studio lights. Coordination, and making the right choices of which foods to prepare first and last, is crutial if the shots are to turn out as good as these. |
