The Feeling Stays With You

It was really quite a treat to see all of the back work behind an ad as big as "The Feeling Stays With You" with McConaughey. Gus Van Sant's look-book is beautiful and written artfully throughout, the image above is a crop of one of his slides. Our guests were extremely helpful in explaining the creative process not only in the work above, but in a more general sense as well.

Both having worked as creative directors, Donna Lamar and Javier Castillo had a really interesting perspective on the ad business. They spoke to how an agency's leadership greatly contributed to the culture of the agency, the work they put out, and even the types of clients they kept and attracted. One simple example is that some institutions like banks or investment firms tended towards account driven or strategy driven agencies (their leaders have this background) rather than creative agencies. And though it sounds as if creative agencies may be the clear choice to work at, Donna and Javier reminded us that they are often far more work intensive and competitive. While you may be home by 5 or 6 everyday at an account driven agency you'd have to work quite a few late nights to stay competitive and contribute to a creative agency.

Another interesting point that Donna and Javier brought to my attention is that anything and everything is content, if it's packaged and distributed. Which I found to be quite a repulsive idea at first, but it really makes a lot of sense. Maybe the easiest way to picture this is how a documentary is really just real events captured in a camera and distributed through a film via dvd, or honestly probably netflix. They moved on to make the distinction that branded content is just content with an intention and some strategy behind it. This idea really beckons back to the quote that's must be posted somewhere in VDA 20 that goes something like "creativity breeds art, creativity with strategy breeds advertising."