I first came across Christian Simmons work when I was checking out some of the competition for the Doritos Superbowl contest. There were over 1,700 entries submitted and believe it or not, me and my creative partner saw nearly every single one.

Most of them were flat-out horrible (just trust me on this) but out of the 30 or so that were contenders, there was one commercial that really stood out to me: Christian Simmons’ “Birds of a Feather”

Birds of a Feather, just don’t call him boring.

The rest of the competition seemed like stereotypical, in-your-face Superbowl fare. But “Birds of a Feather” felt different, it had a strange style to it that seemed slightly “off”…in a good way. Continue reading →

This is a guest post from Adam Witten, a talented commercial director represented by The Insanity Corp. based out in NYC.  After seeing my post on 6 Mistakes to Avoid When Directing a Spec Commercial, he wanted to add on with his own tips on making it in this industry.

from Scion: BOXHEAD, directed by Adam Witten

1. Don’t write your own spots.

Even if you think you are the best copywriter in the world, at best you get a good spot but at worse you write a bad spot and no one is there to tell you as much, not to mention you lost an opportunity to meet and work with real agency folk.

Copywriters have whole drawers of dead scripts that the client killed. Many are great and just not want the client wanted that very moment. The creatives want to see this stuff made as much as you and if you are offering to pay for it most of the time they are happy as a pig in shit. Continue reading →