My love for ads started when I was a kid. My favorite ad back then was the Diet Coke Batman 1989 commercial. I was 7 when it came out. And that is to this day my favorite ad (here's a link).

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My interest in making an ad campaign started when I was around 17. I was getting into The Beatles, John became my favorite and I started to learn a lot about him. One of the things I learned was that he and Yoko created an ad campaign for peace, which was the War Is Over campaign, and I liked the idea so much that I wanted to create an ad campaign for peace some time in the future. That eventually became the Pass It On peace spec campaign featured above.

 

The idea of studying advertising never crossed my mind, I wasn't interested in it, I wanted to be a filmmaker. So, back in 2002 I started college at Hunter College in New York City. The major I chose was film & media. But after being disappointed by the limited amount of classes that had to do with film I decided to drop out after one year to pursue film on my own like many filmmakers do. I had a plan to get into the film industry.

 

Usually what filmmakers that didn't go to film school do is that they raise money and make their film independently. I had a different idea. I had recently come up with an idea for an ad campaign that would work great with Nike, the athletes forming the peace sign campaign. The plan was to sell it to Nike, ask them to let me write and direct the commercials, and use those commercials and the money I got from them to get a start in the film business. But after many years of reaching out to companies and ad agencies I found out the hard way that they don't accept outside ideas for ad campaigns. That's how that pursuit ended.

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Then one day for Christmas I got MasterClass and that changed everything for me. I wanted it because I was interested in watching all the film classes they had but also started watching other classes, and one of them was   an advertising class taught by Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein from the ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, where I learned that if I created a portfolio with a mix of ads and product ideas that it was possible to get a job at an ad agency! I already had the product ideas from something I did in the past, I had the 2 ad campaign ideas I came up with years earlier, and then one day I started getting more ideas for ad campaigns. 

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I spent the following 2 years creating and designing spec campaigns because I really, really, really wanted to get a job in advertising. I ended up making over 70 campaigns. I thought, "I'm going to make it very hard for them to say no to me when I apply for a job or an advertising incubator." We'll see...

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