In his fourth arti­cle for Adver­tis­ing Age, our chief cre­ative offi­cer explains how the empha­sis ad agen­cies place on port­fo­lios is doing every­one a disservice. 

Watch­ing Mad Men a few weeks ago, I was both­ered by a scene in which an art direc­tor, refer­ring to a planned pub­lic­ity stunt on behalf of an agency client, asked an all-too famil­iar ques­tion: How am I going to put this in my book? When the most recent episode began with an aspir­ing copy­writer pre­sent­ing his book to a dis­in­ter­ested Don Draper, it fur­ther rein­forced my frus­tra­tion with the impor­tance our indus­try places on portfolios.

My expe­ri­ence with the process began in 1995 when I grad­u­ated from a small state col­lege in New York and decided to pur­sue a career as a copy­writer. After a few infor­ma­tional inter­views, I quickly dis­cov­ered the sense of utter worth­less­ness that came with not hav­ing a “book.” A book, I soon learned, was syn­ony­mous with a port­fo­lio, which, from what I could tell, was an anti­quated term for an expen­sive case that con­tained over­sized, lam­i­nated, felt-backed prints of ads that had never been pro­duced. Of the sev­eral thou­sand words of wis­dom I was able to extract from the hand­ful of cre­ative direc­tors who were kind enough to meet with me, “spec” and “book” seemed to account for nearly half.

We’re proud to announce the newest mem­ber of the HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME team: Sheena Ruf­fin, social media man­ager. Sheena, who moved to LA from NYC just a few months ago, most recently worked on the client-side at TheLadders—a pre­mium job-search site for peo­ple mak­ing six-figure salaries. A grad­u­ate of Brown Uni­ver­sity in Rhode Island, Sheena has also served as a cre­ative strate­gist and con­tribut­ing writer at Appetite for Good, an advo­cacy blog for phil­an­thropic causes in the food and bev­er­age indus­try. In her new role, Sheena will develop social media strate­gies and man­age online com­mu­ni­ties on behalf of our clients. Wel­come, Sheena, we’re happy you decided to make your daily check-ins at HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME.

HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME recently worked with a tech­nol­ogy com­pany called Mod­i­Face to cre­ate a Face­book appli­ca­tion that allows users to upload a photo and sim­u­late the effects of the Mean­ing­ful Beauty Cindy Craw­ford skin­care line. Click the image below to try it for your­self.

HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME recently launched a new ad cam­paign to drive sales of Sheer Cover min­eral make-up, one of the pre­mium cos­metic brands under the Guthy-Renker umbrella. We devel­oped the “FLAWLESS is FEARLESS” theme to quickly com­mu­ni­cate a direct tie between the product’s func­tion and the emo­tional ben­e­fits to the con­sumer. In addi­tion to a robust online cam­paign, we also devel­oped a rich HTML5 land­ing page to con­nect users from the ads through to the the shop­ping cart.

Just before July 4, HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME launched a national dig­i­tal cam­paign called “Fla­vor­ful Occa­sions” to help pro­mote Arbor Mist as the drink of choice for sum­mer­time fun. Below is a “siz­zle video” we cre­ated to get the sales force excited. Don’t let the num­bers at the end fool you—in the brief time that’s passed since the video was pro­duced, Arbor Mist has reached more than 200,000 “Likes” on Face­book, mak­ing it the most pop­u­lar wine on the world’s most pop­u­lar social net­work. Visit the Arbor Mist Face­book Page (man­aged by HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME) to see all the excite­ment we’re gen­er­at­ing.

Arbor Mist from HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME on Vimeo.

HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME has been selected by both Paul Mas­son Grande Amber Brandy and Trion Worlds to assist each with upcom­ing mar­ket­ing initiatives.

For Paul Mas­son, the #2 brandy in the United States, we’re han­dling online media plan­ning and buy­ing (in con­junc­tion with our part­ner, Pal­isades Media), social media strat­egy and com­mu­nity man­age­ment, appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and dig­i­tal creative.

For Trion Worlds, a highly antic­i­pated and much-lauded new­comer in MMO video game pub­lish­ing, HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME will be pro­vid­ing fully inte­grated mar­ket­ing strat­egy and cre­ative support—including print, dig­i­tal and broadcast—for the launch of the upcom­ing release Rift: Planes of Telara.

Wel­come to the fold, Paul Mas­son and Trion Worlds. We look for­ward to sip­ping on some incred­i­bly smooth VSOP as we level up in the next great MMORPG.

If you hap­pened to hear a lot of clink­ing glasses in Venice, Cal­i­for­nia recently, it may have been HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME cel­e­brat­ing our appoint­ment as the agency-of-record for the entire fam­ily of Robert Mon­davi Wines: Robert Mon­davi Win­ery, Robert Mon­davi Pri­vate Selec­tion and Wood­bridge by Robert Mon­davi. In con­junc­tion with our part­ner, Pal­isades Media, we’ll be sup­port­ing all three world-renown brands with search mar­ket­ing, media plan­ning and buy­ing, brand strat­egy and cre­ative cam­paign development.

For any­one who doesn’t know the story of the incom­pa­ra­ble Robert Mon­davi, we rec­om­mend his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Har­vests of Joy. It pairs per­fectly with a chilled glass of 2006 Fume Blanc.

HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME wel­comes two new team mem­bers this week: Pearl Suh, art direc­tor, and Shana Gold­berg, account executive.

Pearl, a native Ange­leno and grad­u­ate of Art Cen­ter Col­lege of Design, for­merly served as art direc­tor at Arnold World­wide in New York where she con­tributed to cam­paigns for Her­shey, Glax­o­SmithK­line, U.S. Ten­nis Open and Avon. Upon return­ing to LA in 2008, she led cre­ative efforts at Cause­Force and then enjoyed a brief stint as a free­lancer before join­ing HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME.

Shana, a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado, honed her craft at agen­cies like Crispin Porter + Bogusky and 72 and Sunny before going to work on DIRECTV at Deutsch in Los Ange­les. In addi­tion to hav­ing a pas­sion for trend fore­cast­ing, fash­ion and music, Shana is also flu­ent in Span­ish: Sí, es cor­recto, nos dijo con flu­idez en español.

We’ll be spend­ing the next few days get­ting Pearl and Shana accli­mated to all of the agency’s prac­tices (includ­ing four o’clock tea and bis­cuits) and encour­ag­ing them to attend pet adop­tions so they can take advan­tage of our dog-friendly office.

Wel­come aboard, Pearl and Shana. We’re happy you’re here.

In his most recent arti­cle for Adver­tis­ing Age, our chief cre­ative offi­cer encour­ages ad agen­cies to avoid the “bait-and-switch” when pur­su­ing new business. 

Because new busi­ness is often con­sid­ered the lifeblood of agen­cies, most shops are addicted to pitch­ing. Like most addic­tions, it’s an exhaust­ing habit that depletes vital resources like time, money, energy and opti­mism. But for all the injuries endured, fre­quent pitch­ing should, at min­i­mum, pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with invalu­able insight into the agency review process.

I’ve had the pleasure—and displeasure—of being actively involved in nearly a hun­dred pitches. Some were man­aged by search con­sul­tants; oth­ers weren’t. Some were pro­tracted engage­ments; oth­ers were abbre­vi­ated. Some were focused on cre­ative; oth­ers empha­sized media. But nearly all shared one thing in com­mon: at some point in the process, the prospec­tive client asked, “Are you just the pitch team, or will you actu­ally be work­ing on our business?”

HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME is hon­ored to have been named the new dig­i­tal agency-of-record for Arbor Mist, one of the top-selling wine brands in Amer­ica. In con­junc­tion with our part­ner, Pal­isades Media, we’re pro­vid­ing the Canandaigua, New York-based com­pany with search mar­ket­ing, media plan­ning and buy­ing, social media com­mu­nity man­age­ment, brand strat­egy and, of course, cre­ative cam­paign development.

The HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME fridge is now stocked with all 12 wine and fruit combinations—if you’re in the neigh­bor­hood, stop by for a per­fectly chilled glass (or two). Cheers!

Every sum­mer the lit­er­ary world con­venes in pic­turesque Idaho for the Sun Val­ley Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence. Anchored by the event’s key speak­ers, the con­fer­ence brings together both writ­ers and read­ers to dis­cuss lit­er­a­ture and con­sider its future. Aware that the con­fer­ence had become one of the most pres­ti­gious events in its indus­try, SVWC real­ized it was time for a new iden­tity to match its stature. That’s when they called us.

Armed with clear direc­tion from the client, our logo devel­op­ment began in typ­i­cal fash­ion with page upon page of thumb­nail sketches. After a lot of graphite and inter­nal debate, we selected 12 sketches to develop fur­ther. Our objec­tive was to pro­vide a range of solu­tions for the client to con­sider: from sub­tle evo­lu­tions of SVWC’s exist­ing mark (what the client requested), to con­cepts that were com­pletely fresh and unex­pected (what we always strive to deliver). As is often the case, some of the ideas didn’t trans­late well from sketch to com­puter, so 12 became seven, which then became five.

Our chief cre­ative offi­cer on the lessons “Project Run­way” holds for cre­ative directors. 

Watch­ing Project Run­way won’t make you the next Diane Von Fursten­berg, but it could put you on the path to becom­ing the next Dan Wieden. Tune-in any Thurs­day night at ten o’clock and in one hour you’ll observe many of the dos and don’ts of being a cre­ative director.

Let’s start with the dos, as demon­strated by Tim Gunn. While Tim is best known for his catch­phrases, he’s also the con­sum­mate cre­ative direc­tor. (Not coin­ci­den­tally, Gunn is the chief cre­ative offi­cer for Liz Clai­borne.) Here’s why:

He never imposes his own taste on the con­tes­tants. Rather, he tends to cel­e­brate sen­si­bil­i­ties that are dif­fer­ent than his own. In essence, he doesn’t ask, “Do I like this?” but instead focuses on what really mat­ters: will the tar­get audi­ence like it. As a result, he’s uniquely skilled at main­tain­ing objectivity.

He doesn’t dic­tate solu­tions. Gunn doesn’t say, “Make this red, make this longer and make this fuller”; he says, “I’m not sure this color is right, we’re see­ing an awful lot of skin here and I’m con­cerned there may not be enough vol­ume in this area.” Fol­low­ing up with his trade­mark “Make it work” is sim­ply his way of say­ing, “it’s up to you to find solu­tions you’re com­fort­able with.”