PETE LOUISON CREATIVE

This job was heaven-sent. A massive outdoor campaign in and around Manhattan. Fifteen incredible placements. A wildly irreverent brand targeted at women. Thanks to Chad Portas and James Cho for dropping this in my lap.

There’s an art to selling a provocative campaign to a conservative client. They will tack to the safe course, but you know they need some edge or they’ll just blend in. This “Canine” campaign was not sold. Nor did we think they would buy it. But it was pitched with a straight face as a great vehicle to get them noticed and get people talking. The campaign they ended up buying was beautiful and highly creative.  People are talking about it, it will win awards. But they wouldn’t have bought it unless we had taken them over the edge with this one. They took one step back. And we got them to stand on their edge.

What a great gig this re-brand was. What a great company. The team built the re-brand from the ground-up with a new tagline, “Build Smart,” a complete identity system, ads, high-impact collateral, launch program and more. Designer Jean B became my design hero. Great account leadership and stewardship from Casey N and Jim P.

It’s just an ad for the Hatch Awards for Boston’s Ad Club. We had one night to do it. I like the thought. The Behance poster was for a portfolio review event we hosted at the agency. James Cho’s illustration that depicts the network of creative people who shape Massachusetts still blows my mind.

I was in a shoot out. My line was chosen for this incredible, one-of-a-kind, 250-foot billboard. I couldn’t have felt more honored, as this is a cause near and dear to my heart. Shout out to John R, Matt L, Alan P, Matt M, Giancarlo P, Josh E and Kim S.

A good ad gets to a human truth. Even if its in the form of a scold. You can read and see a lot more of what we did with Bertucci’s in the TV/Content section. But I had to include this one here.

My agency pitched and won this AOR account and we took it a long way for short money. TV, radio, print, outdoor, website, brand content, even menus. Got to ask my strategy partners to take a bow here, giving us a rich brief. Those late nights with the creative team were maybe the most fun I’ve had in my career.

DuPont is an immense chemical and materials company that’s always had an interesting problem: They’re invisible. DuPont is in the paint in your walls, the fibers in your carpet, the walls of your home and the keys on your computer. So, we ran ads in major business pubs printed on “pages” made from some of their premiere performance materials. Awards ensued.

 The founder and owner of this company was a fascinating person. And he had a highly rated water filtration product with lots of proprietary engineering going on. The ads and collateral he was doing at the time looked like Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap—a typographic sh#t storm. In the end, we made it all about the science—his science.

Beating the drum for Digital Transformation, my agency’s annual meeting was geared to pump us up to “invent the future.” I dearly love historical imagery, and so much is in the public domain, that it was easy to find images I loved and spin headlines against them. The campaign worked for me. I won a Leap Award for it.

This is an older campaign, but I still dig it for its simplicity and contemporary art feel. At the time, the printing industry was in transition and flipping out over how or when to migrate from film to digital. The campaign’s point was that it didn’t matter. Color is color. And Kodak is The Color of the Future. But we all know how that worked out, right?

The client has no money to shoot anything, much less pay an illustrator. All type ads are an option, but hey, why not delve into that public domain treasure trove and serve up some dry wit. These ads stood out wherever they ran and served them well. And I can drink for free at their bar for the rest of my days.

A wonderful purpose-driven company who contribute a substantial amount of products to shelters, nationwide. And yes, that familiar sounding voiceover is Ellen, the majority owner of the company.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what it is. The founder of my first good agency job passed, and we wanted to do something in the local papers. Charlie had been many years retired when I joined the place. Rumrill was purchased by Compton. Compton was purchased by Saatchi’s. But Charlie stayed above the fray and stayed his own man. Not a Mad Man. A kind man.