National Television

Loading music onto your PC was just in its infancy when this spot was created. It featured a music PC configured to download music then burn your own custom CDs, something the music industry was very frightened of since it took their business model and turned it upside down. Since the royalties for the actual recording of the song "Whip It" were so outrageous, it was actually cheaper to bring the band Devo back into the studio to record it from scratch.

As Manager of Broadcast Advertising for Gateway, nothing went on the air with a Gateway logo where I wasn’t involved. This ran the gamut from :15 short book-end spots up to 30 Direct Response shows (AKA “Infomercials”). Below is a sample of some of the work that I’ve been involved with while at Gateway.

Gateway was a corporate sponsor of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. To leverage that sponsorship, we created a series of spots where Ted and the Cow were watching the Olympics, selling the sponsorship and continuing to establish the brand.

Incidentally, the voice behind the cow? Maurice LaMarche...the voice behind "Pinky and the Brain".

The adage goes - “Brand Commercials sell the Who & Why, Call To Action Commercials sell the What, When & Where.” Here is an example of a specific product call to action spot that plays off the groundwork laid down by the branding spots.

Trivia #2 - the voice-over talent for this spot is none other than Billy Vera, from the 80’s band “Billy & the Beaters”.

Siltenan/Keehn Advertising
Rob Siltenan provided the creative behind the following spots.

The Arnell Group Advertising

The Arnell Group revamped the Gateway brand and eventually took the television in a whole different direction. Very stylized and combined the brand attributes with the product placement.

This was the first of s series of spots created by The Arnell Group which followed a new brand design they created. This was a complete departure from previous campaigns. This new look combined multiple products located in different areas of the screen.

Although these spots tested well in focus groups, they didn’t perform simply because they were too hard to follow - “information overload”.

When 40% of your annual revenue comes in the 4th quarter, you BETTER take advantage of the holiday season! MP3 Players were just coming out that were the predecessors of the iPod and were nothing more than a jump drive with headphones, but at the time they were a hot commodity. Like the others, this spot features multiple product messages and offers on-screen at the same time.

Long-form Direct Response

I have had produced a number of long-form video projects used for either direct response fulfillment (by physically mailing a tape or DVD out to interested customers) up to a series of nationally placed 30 minute infomercials and everything in between. Usually I partnered up with Jim Walter of Big Shot Pictures or Brad Morford at Screenscape Studios.

Follow the links to their websites - they do good stuff!

Unfortunately I do not have any surviving electronic copies of these projects - but would be happy to discuss at length this or any of the other projects mentioned here.