During the past 49-years, the annual Fells Point Fun Festival has seen the historic Baltimore seaport neighborhood change. Crusty old taverns, flophouses, and oyster packing factories are now Zagat-rated restaurants, high-end shops, and pricey condos.

The 49th Annual Fells Point Fun Festival wanted its advertising presence to be heavy on "family fun".  We wanted to harken back to saltier days.

I think Jason Smith's award-gathering illustration and design does both.

fellspointfunfest.com

When Price Modern told us they hired the Dunbar High School Marching Band for their company party, we knew these guys had an extremely cool sensibility. Hopefully that shines all over their website.

http://www.pricemodern.com/

John Lithgow said this was the best theatre spot he had ever seen. But he might be biased.

When nobody's jumping off the casting session reel, it's time to hit the streets.

Many faces in these spots were "discovered" around Baltimore -- at Camden Yards, Lexington Market, Sabatino's in Little Italy, Pimlico, even the Big Tall Men's shop in Fells Point.

Bernie Telsey brought in alot of great people for the cab driver role, but nobody seemed to sparkle. Then somebody suggested we ask Billy, a film editor friend, to give it a bash. He ended up as a finalist for Best Actor at Cannes for the performance.

Loretta, the waitress with a "6" in her hair, worked at Sabatino's. After she made the commercial, she started playing 6-2-0 and won big.

You know you've made it when people start complaining about your commercials in public. BUS is based on a real conversation overheard on a Baltimore bus. "Nobody plays the lottery like that, you gotta have a system." Huh?

The bus driver is one of the MTA's finest.

When the Same-sex marriage law passed in Maryland, I was delighted to be part of Charm City's warm welcome. We do!

This was for a travel issue of T, the fabulous weekend Style section of the NY Times.

Haribo

When the Haribo brief says "Advertising must feature all the flavors" there's mad mood ring fun to be had.

(scroll down for copywriter confession)

Smart Balance Facebook Posts

Here is where I confess my guiltiest copywriter pleasure. Laugh if you must.

Writing silly Facebook posts is as much fun as passing notes in class at Ira B. Jones Elementary.

Also, you never know what the reaction is going to be. This one broke the agency record for "Likes".

Yoshitaka Amano -- Japanese anime wizard and creator of Final Fantasy  -- had his own fantasy. He wanted to live in NYC, paint, and exhibit his swimming-pool sized canvases at the Puck Building gallery space.

Although Amano was world-renowned for his animation, he was an outsider to the art scene. We were contacted by his people to figure out just how to introduce this fascinating man to New York.

We met at the artist's SOHO loft. Through a translator (he spoke no English) Amano told of his wanderings around the city. He reminded us of Bowie's character in The Man Who Fell to Earth, an alien dropped from another world. He had strange personal routines and weird observations.

And so, we invited New York into Amano's incredible mind. Essentially, to THINK LIKE AMANO.

Grey Entertainment was asked to handle art direction, production, media. They killed it! Posters and wall paintings were everywhere. Amano's truisms filled subway cars, covered tee shirts, umbrellas, shopping bags, all kinds of swag.

THINK LIKE AMANO ended up being the title the show and a book about his New York paintings.

NOTE: It turned out that Amano's people had also asked for creative from three other sources: the behemoth that is Grey Entertainment; a boutique headed by the storied Sal DeVito; and Mad Dogs and Englishman, creative hot shop. We won a pitch without knowing it was a pitch. Crazy.

All I want for Christmas is:

Reality TV...

...a full body realignment...

....a monkey...

...and the deed to a plot on the North Pole.

More to come!
 

Wacko way to launch a novel: 

1) Serialize it, ala Charles Dickens complete with cliffhangers. (MOTHER'S WORRY divided easily into 9 installments.)

2) Make a booklet for each installment and get Wes Goodwin to illustrate the covers.

3) Throw a give-away party every Wednesday for 9 weeks. Each party should relate somehow to that week's installment.

4) Get Sally Hutchins to shoot pix for the blog / fb page. Thanks Sal!

5) Watch the readership grow into a dedicated fan base!

I was lucky to work with Cliff Freeman. He had a juicy imagination and ran his creative shop like it was a comedy troupe. Which it pretty much was.

With Little Caesar's pizza, the message was simply "Two pizzas for one low price." We went wild trying to crack each other up with the wildest way to say it.

(And of course anybody schooled in Tex Avery cartoons and MAD Magazine appreciates the fine art of the sight gag!)

One state, two approaches.

I did a stint working in Times Square for Broadway shows. I saw Spiderman stranded,  dangling over the audience during intermission after a trapeze malfunction;  brainstormed with Scott Rudin about marketing strategies for House of Blue Leaves and Book of Mormon;  got a good look at Mary Poppins' shoes; collaborated with the guy who created all of Woody Allen's movie posters from Manhattan on.

And this.

We were challenged to tame the untrained dogs in the men's room.

Ventev makes accessories for wireless devices that are stylish, well-designed, and functional. Naturally we want their advertising and web presence to share those qualities.

https://ventev.com/

Ventev makes accessories for wireless devices that are stylish, well-designed, and functional. Naturally we want their advertising and web presence to share those qualities.

https://ventev.com/

Nice catalog design. I wrote the words.