Our Alka Seltzer campaign was going strong and everywhere you went, people were saying, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”  When Elliot, the owner of our neighborhood deli, found out I was the writer, he created a sandwich in my honor — a double-decker chopped liver monstrosity with hard-boiled eggs and raw onions, [...]

I heard this story from my friend Bob Wolf, former chairman of Chiat/Day, who I worked with on the Columbia Pictures account at Wells, Rich, Greene.  One day,  Bob and one of our copywriters drove out to Burbank to present an ad campaign for an upcoming Columbia picture to the marketing director.  It was edgy [...]

What’s more important, what you say, or how you say it?  In the case of Ally, the online bank, I think it’s the latter.  Many financial institutions have tried to convince us they’re  straight shooters who have our best interests at heart.  But Ally’s inventive creative approach makes it believable. The hero of the campaign– [...]

I hate time sheets.  They force you to stop thinking.  “Listen up!  You have 7 hours to complete this assignment.  After that, ‘Pencils down!”  But creative people aren’t wired that way. The creative juices are always flowing, and some of the greatest ideas happen during un-billable time.  In the car, in the shower, in bed [...]

The marketing director of Petco was a very smart guy who happened to be a Mormon.  As a result, he tended to be a little uptight about anything sexual in nature. This presented a problem at a particular TV commercial shoot. Our campaign, “Petco, where the pets go”, had been helping to build Petco’s business [...]

They say the best lines come from the  heart.  “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” came from my stomach.  Bob Pasqualina and I had just finished editing “Try it, you’ll like it”, but even before it went on air, we were off to London to shoot a new Diet Rite Cola campaign. The [...]

She was always there. Carol, my missus, my muse.  That’s her in the white blouse, standing in the doorway at our Diet Rite Cola shoot in Paris. This business has taken me to so many wonderful places, all of them made more special with Carol by my side.  She was the girlfriend I took to [...]

Cohen,Pasqualina,Timberman, was four years old when the movie studios came calling.  Our little agency was perceived to be hot, and  if there’s anything that makes movie execs wet, it’s being associated with hot talent, be it movie stars, producers, directors or…ad guys.  One of the most glamorous projects we worked on was a campaign for [...]