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Creativity / Commerce / Culture

Fall 2009

VCU Brandcenter Friday Forum

Nov. 20 / 11am - 12:30pm / VCU Student Commons Theater / 907 Floyd Ave.

Jamie began his advertising career in 1986 as a junior account person at Fallon McElligott in Minneapolis. He was pretty lame at that job, and after a year or so, he switched to become a copywriter.

In 1990, he left for Portland, Oregon where he began an eight-year run at Wieden + Kennedy. There he wrote famous and award-winning Nike work for Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Tiger Woods, and the Atlanta Olympics. In 1996, he was named the lead creative director on the Nike business.

In 1998, Jamie joined Fallon, NY as a Partner and Executive Creative Director. Within two years the shop had won four Cannes Gold Lions, and its billings had quintupled to $250 million. In 2000, Jamie was named Adweek’s National Creative Director of the Year.

In January 2002, Jamie checked with his wife and found they had three children under the age of two. Together, they made the decision to leave New York City and relocate to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. In his first four years there, Jamie developed award-winning work for Saturn, eBay, HBO, the Oakland A’s, and Comcast. In 2002, his Saturn “Sheet Metal” commercial was awarded Commercial of the Year by both Adweek and Advertising Age. In 2004, his eBay work was awarded Campaign of the Year by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP). In 2005, Comcast was named Adweek’s National Campaign of the Year. In 2006, Jamie was named one of Creativity’s Top 50 creatives and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners was honored as 2006 Agency of the Year by both Adweek and Creativity magazines. In 2007, Jamie was again named one of Creativity’s Top 50 creatives and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners was honored Agency of the Year by Adweek, Ad Age, and Boards magazine.

Jamie is a Partner and Creative Director on Comcast, Doritos, Cheetos, the NBA, and Quaker Oats. He is also a rapidly fading squash and tennis player who complains constantly about a bad back.

Rafi began his advertising career in 1996 as an Assistant Media Planner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. It was appealing to him because it required a love of media, and was one of the few positions one could get right out of college. Little did Rafi know that he would continue his media planning journey for another 5 years at two other ad agencies.

One of these agencies was called “Black Rocket”—a much smaller spin-off of GS&P, but with the same mindset of creating memorable work. It was there that Rafi got a taste of copywriting when he successfully named a flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; “Peanut Butter Me Up.” It was a Peanut Butter flavored ice cream with caramel chips. Brilliant.

Unfortunately, in 2002 the dot.com bubble burst and with it came layoffs across the board. Rafi was one of them and found himself out of work for a few months until he called everyone he knew back at his old GS&P stomping grounds. He was able to land a position as a Creative Coordinator—essentially, an intern that assisted anyone who needed an image, book, or some random request like snapping a photo of the inside of a funeral parlor. True story.

His role led to a position as a Creative Assistant to Partner / Creative Director, Jamie Barrett—handling both administrative duties for Jamie as well as writing for real projects such as Cal Berkeley Football, the Comcast pitch, and even a video of what life would be like if Sarah Palin were President. Let’s think about that for a moment. Phew. The relationship between Rafi and Jamie was very collaborative; a marriage, if you will, between two very heterosexual males.

Then, at the end of 2008, an opening for a Creative Recruiter opened up and Jamie thought Rafi would be perfect for it. And well, he was right. Rafi loves working with people and has developed a keen eye for smart work. Also, his 10 years total at the agency make him a perfect Ambassador of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Rafi also rounds out the recruiting trio of Linda Harless and Zach Canfield; both seasoned creative recruiters. All together, they make up one of the best recruiting teams in the country. Heck, maybe even the world. Can we say that? I think we can.

Creativity / Commerce / Culture

Fall 2009

VCU Brandcenter Friday Forum

Managing Director of Strategy / Redscout

Alain is Managing Director of Strategy at Redscout, a brand-driven innovation firm that provides brand strategy and product innovaiton for clients including PepsiCo, Diageo, Domino’s, Del Monte, Kate Spade, and others.

Prior to Redscout, Alain was a lead strategist at Mother New York, where he worked with brands such as Johnson & Johnson, LVMH, Coca-Cola, New Balance, etc. He previously held positions at The Martin Agency, Publicis, and SS+K.

More importantly Alain is a Leo. He’s a certified gemologist, wedding officiant, and avocado aficionado. Alain is particularly adept at avoiding writing biographies about himself, until now.

Francis Cape

lecture: Wednesday, November 18 at 12:15 pm

VCU Student Commons Theater

907 Floyd Ave.

exhibition: Home Front

public opening: Friday, November 20, 6-8 pm

Anderson Gallery, 907½ W Franklin St

The sculptures and images making up Francis Cape’s exhibition stem in part from his experiences as a disaster-relief worker in New Orleans. Waterline, the earliest of three installations in the show, features photographs Cape took in the flooded middle-class neighborhoods of Gentilly and St. Roch soon after Hurricane Katrina hit. These pictures of domestic devastation are hung above a meticulously constructed wainscot of painted paneling. “This gesture—based on care, craft, attention to detail, and time—in such close proximity to things torn away in an instant has a soothing psychic effect and is a way of saying a sort of material prayer for all the loss,” wrote critic Jerry Saltz in the Village Voice. “Cape is foregrounding something that has probably always been in his work. But never so movingly as now.”

Cape will also exhibit two recent installations that expand on London Avenue, a project developed for last year’s biennial, Prospect.1 New Orleans, that relates the destruction and rebuilding of New Orleans to Britian’s mid-twentieth-century Utility Furniture Scheme. Formed during World War II after the Blitz damaged millions of homes across Britain, the Utility Furniture Committee was charged with drafting and authorizing standard furniture designs to ensure a supply of quality furniture during a time of very scarce resources. On the one hand, the Utility Furniture Scheme was one of the last clear links between furniture design and social idealism, continuing a tradition that ran from William Morris to de Stijl to Bauhaus. On the other, it was a chance for designers such as Gordon Russell to break the British public’s taste for ornamental reproduction furniture by introducing a more modern, unadorned style.

London Avenue joins the studs of an 8-by-13-foot wall—a standard size in many houses in the Gentilly and St. Roche neighborhoods—with portions of a desk, chair, chest, and wardrobe constructed according to Utility Furniture designs. In another gallery, Cape pairs similarly inspired, impeccably built sculptures with photographs of wreckage taken in New Orleans, upstate New York, and Maine. He uses the spaces of these installations to consider a host of difficult issues relating not just to New Orleans but to a general cycle of American production and consumption, and to the legacy of modernist debates surrounding utility and ornamentation, social idealism and mass consumerism. With this body of work, Cape poses the question: how can we re-imagine forms and models of production in response both to historical precedent and current disaster?

Francis Cape was trained as a woodcarver before receiving his MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has exhibited his work extensively in the US, including shows at the St. Louis Art Museum; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Eli Marsh Gallery, Amherst College, Amherst, MA; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; and in galleries in Germany and the United Kingdom. Cape is represented by Murray Guy in New York City. He lives and works in Narrowsburg, NY.

For information, please visit: http://www.regent.edu/theatre

For more information, please visit: http://www.smfa.edu

For more information, please visit: http://www.mica.edu/Programs_of_Study.html

For more information, please visit: http://www.sothebysinstitute.com

Call For Artists: Project Winterfood

Creativity / Commerce / Culture

Fall 2009

VCU Brandcenter Friday Forum

Nov. 6 / 11am - 12:30pm / VCU Student Commons Theater / 907 Floyd Ave.

Senior Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer / Harley-Davidson Incorporated

Mark-Hans Richer is Senior Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer for Harley-Davidson, Incorporated, with primary responsibility for overseeing all global marketing activities including promotions and advertising, motorcycle product planning, the Harley-Davidson Museum, and the Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.).

Prior to joining Harley-Davidson as Chief Marketing Officer in July, 2007, Richer held numerous marketing and advertising positions at General Motors. In November 2006 he was inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement for his career of high-impact, non-traditional marketing approaches. These include two Cannes Gold Lion-awarded marketing programs while at Pontiac, and prior successes helping lead advertising and promotions at GMC and Chevy Trucks. Richer also has previously won three Effies, the PMA Super Reggie, Promo Magazines’ interactive promotion of the year and a Kelly Award for best national print.

Prior to GM, Richer served as the Director, Latin America for the McDonald’s account at DDB Needham Advertising and served in different roles over eight years working on consumer goods brands as SC Johnson Wax and General Mills.

Richer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Michigan. Richer is a motorcycle enthusiast of 24 years, and the proud owner of Harley-Davidson V-Rod Muscle and Road Glide Custom motorcycles.