Jayanta Jenkins
Jayanta Jenkins is global creative director with TBWA/Chiat/Day (www.tbwachiat.com), the agency known for the iconic 1984 Apple ad, where he is responsible for managing and creating the global integrated marketing communications for Gatorade. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with a BFA in fashion art and advertising, Jenkins began his advertising career at The Martin Agency in Richmond, Virginia, and then went on to work at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, Amsterdam, and Tokyo, where he created and produced integrated campaigns for Nike Basketball, Nike Running, EA Sports, Powerade, Lebron James, and Amazon.uk. His work has been awarded at Cannes, One Show, and the Communication Arts Annuals, among others. His portfolio and blog live at www.freshistheword.com.
Tracy Tuten: Jayanta, how did you end up in advertising? Did you grow up wanting to be in the field?
Jayanta Jenkins: No, it was completely by accident to be honest with you. I grew up in a family that definitely wasn’t on any particular side of creativity. I mean, my father wasn’t in advertising, nor was my mother or my grandparents, for that matter. My uncle was a lounge singer, and I always found it interesting going as a kid to watch him sing. I guess if there’s any form of creativity in my past, it was from him. And, as a kid, I loved to draw. I loved to take pictures. There is one thing growing up that I think did have an impact on me. We lived probably about twenty-five minutes west of Washington, DC, and I always ended up at the museums because my father worked literally less than a block, a quarter block away from the Smithsonian Mall. I do remember quite often spending a weekend at least once or twice a month just hanging out at the museums all day. This happened from the time I was eleven until I was eighteen. Usually I would end up at either the Air and Space Museum or the National Gallery of Art. Those were my favorites.
Tuten: So with advertising you are able to integrate your love of art with your career?
Jenkins: That was definitely the beginnings of my interest and love for art. In terms of how specifically I got into advertising, I would say it was really by mistake. When I went to undergraduate school, I went into school wanting to be either a painter or a graphic designer or a photographer. Ultimately I ended up studying fashion photography and photojournalism, and I got my major—those are my minors—my major was in fashion art and advertising. But I remember the kind of pivotal thing that happened while I was in school. There was a guy named Jerry Torchia, who was a creative director at The Martin Agency. He had an advertising class at VCU where I got my undergraduate degree. Basically in this class, he taught about advertising, and the creative process used to come up with ads.
In the class, we would create ads and we had to bring in work that we’d done for critique. I hadn’t done any ads whatsoever. All I had was photography. So I brought in photos that I’d taken. He looked through it all, and then he looked at me and very convincingly said, “You should be an art director.” And I’m like, “Okay. What is an art director? It sounds cool. Yeah, sure.” And I remember him giving me an art director’s annual, a One Show Annual. I started going through these things, and I don’t know what happened, but I completely locked into it.
I had definitely wanted to be a creative in advertising because what I had noticed and saw at the time was just the ability to do all of the things I’d ever loved as a kid and as a teenager. Everything I loved was at my disposal as an art director: photography, illustration, film, music. Once I fully understood that I could in some way or shape connect to all these people and collaborate—that was it. I absolutely dug my nails in and I haven’t looked back since.
Tuten: That was the pivotal moment, for your teacher to turn to you and say you could be an art director.
Jenkins: Yeah, absolutely. Because again, I had no clue what an art director was. I didn’t even know how ads were made at the time. We’re all surrounded by advertising from the moment we’re born until [we] die. Growing up where I grew up, there’s no reason I would have known or had any insight as to how ads are made or that people even actually came up with them, you know?
Tuten: Did you think, “People get paid for that? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Jenkins: They get paid, and in some instances you get paid very well. It’s crazy just how well. More importantly beyond money, you get to inspire and challenge yourself daily.
Tuten: You finished out your fashion and fine arts degree. You didn’t switch over to a degree in advertising at that point?
Jenkins: No, I went back to school after I got my undergraduate degree. At the time, the big school for advertising was called the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, Georgia. All the people that I’d seen in these One Show annuals had gone to the Portfolio Center. It was highly recommended at the time. So I applied and ended up going to the Portfolio Center for two years to get my advertising skills sharpened.
That was a great experience as well because I went from VCU, which was kind of very broad and general, to a very highly disciplined program. I was surrounded by kids who had the same ambition, and I learned and grew and was taught by other advertising professionals. Those are really great experiences, and it really helped me prove to myself that I actually should pursue a career in advertising. Up to that point, it was a desire for me, but I hadn’t made any ads! Like I said, I had just been doing photography—and Portfolio Center was a good training ground for me to finesse my skills and create a portfolio.
Tuten: What was your specialty? Did you stick with photography or did you branch out at that point?
Jenkins: You know, at that point, when I got into Portfolio Center, what I really fundamentally began to understand about all creative—photography, illustration, film—is that it has to be guided by a powerful concept or powerful idea. Whatever message you have has to be guided by a powerful, powerful idea. It was part two of my “Aha” moment in advertising. To be good, you must come up with really great ideas. Photography or film or whatever is going to be the medium that you may use to execute that idea. And then you must execute brilliantly. Illustration, same thing. Television, same thing. Design, the same thing. Even product packaging! All these things are guided by the key component, which is having a great idea. So that was the thing that I focused on in my time at Portfolio School—creating ideas. It wasn’t like photography or illustration, but it just was making sure that no matter what the delivery device was for the message, that it had a brilliant, beautiful, big idea.
Tuten: In your role now, as the global creative director, are you still generating ideas?
Jenkins: Absolutely. I mean, ideas are like oxygen! We require ideas to breathe. Ideas are definitely the thing that drives business. I work on Gatorade now, and my work, it’s all about ideas, one hundred percent.
Tuten: You’re actively involved in client work?
Jenkins: Oh yes. I’ve been involved on a daily basis. When I first got into the business, [I had] no concept of the client work. It’s a skill that can’t be taught in school. It’s just honed over time. It’s one of the things I love doing—interacting with our clients and helping sell ideas and working together collaboratively to make things come to life. It’s one of my most favorite things about being in this business—the collaboration.
Tuten: Can you share something you’re working on now? Something that you’re excited about?
Jenkins: Now that I’m doing global work, what’s really exciting is taking the platform that we started here in the United States. We’re basically transforming Gatorade from a hydration company to a sports nutrition company and creating that imprint around the world.
We’re creating a global language that will unify the brand, not just as an American brand, but as a global brand. You don’t really get too many opportunities like that in your career to lead brands like Gatorade in a really big way. It’s very exciting to me, and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. It started when I was working on Nike in Portland at Wieden+Kennedy. I was working on basketball, and I had the opportunity to launch Lebron James in Asia. It was just really exciting to strip away language and again come up with ideas that could connect with people universally. Once I started seeing ways of doing it, being able to participate in the process, I recognized that I wanted to be the global guy. I didn’t just want to be the guy that worked on a brand and spoke to people within our borders. I wanted to really develop ideas and platforms that really spoke universally because we are a global community. That really excites me about being a communicator in advertising. It’s being able to express ideas universally to people, you know?
Tuten: What is a typical day like? Do you have one?
Jenkins: You know, I’m glad you asked that question because this is one of the things I love about advertising. It’s a different job every single day you walk into the door. My father worked for the government. His job was the same exact type of job every single day of his life. I mean, that works for some people. Some people like that very systematic routine. But advertising is such that literally the complexion and the complexity changes every day, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Sometimes something happens that you don’t like, but no matter what, it’s a different organism every day you walk into the office.
Tuten: How much time are you spending traveling?
Jenkins: A ton. I probably spend a good fifty-seven percent, if not a little bit more, presenting work or on production. Travel is a big portion of this job, which is also fun. I love going to different countries and seeing things and learning about different cultures because that helps to inform the work that I do on Gatorade, and other things I get to do as well.
Tuten: Now, with Gatorade, you mentioned that company shifting its focus to nutrition.
Jenkins: Yep.
Tuten: So repositioning the mission of the brand even. Did you help come up with that idea? Did you help direct the path?
Jenkins: I was part of the team. I work with some really amazing strategic people here at Chiat Day. One guy in particular is Scott MacMaster. He’s a brilliant strategist. A couple of other guys I work with are Nick Drake [global managing director], Brent Anderson [global group creative director], Patrick O’Neill [executive creative director], and Steve Howard [global group creative director]. We have a really amazing team of smart, passionate people on Gatorade who love the brand. Our clients are passionate and have a really strong vision for the brand as well. You’ve got to put all these heads into play as you look at things to roll out, like the tagline we just came up with, or the positioning of going from a hydration brand to a sports nutrition brand. There are a lot of players involved in the work.
Tuten: Do you usually specialize in sport, given your background at Wieden? Did you come into Chiat to work on a sport brand?
Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, I did. But the thing for me that’s interesting is that I was never a big sports person growing up. I didn’t really play sports as a kid, but the thing that I probably bring to this whole game that helps tremendously is my love for culture, popular culture and sports culture. And, you know, not being that typical—not that there’s anything wrong with being a jock, but I was never that numbers kind of jock person, you know what I mean? I was never in the gym all the time, but I loved the culture behind sports. That’s been the thing that’s really helped me carve out a little path for myself and find my own voice within this whole experience for sure.
Wieden was my first entrance into dealing with a sports brand. My very first job was with The Martin Agency, ironically because the guy who got me into this was from The Martin Agency. But when I got up to Wieden, I was assigned to Nike. I just immersed myself. That’s what you do. You immerse yourself. What makes the stories that people tell special, whether those stories are told through commercials or some other channel of communication, what’s special is that the stories they tell are told through their own lens, their own filter, their own take on things. What’s brilliant about what comes out of Wieden and absolutely what comes out of Chiat or any really great advertising agency is the ability to tell stories and to tell them from a unique perspective. You’re coming at the story from a different angle. It’s about getting people’s points of view that come from their own experiences. That’s what makes everything really unique, I think, in most cases.
Tuten: I would think your background, not being a jock, would really be a huge benefit to you to speak differently, to have a unique voice in the world of sport, and help you understand people who also come to sport from a different perspective.
Jenkins: Yeah, absolutely.
Tuten: So, tell me about the path that led you to your current role. You started at Martin. You would have worked under Mike Hughes at that time?
Jenkins: Yep. Mike is awesome. Mike was one of those people who really helped me take flight. The Martin Agency was an amazing place to start for me. Obviously, they have an amazing reputation, an amazing legacy, and they continue to do amazing things. But one of the things that I learned really, really strongly, one of the things that made an imprint on me at Martin was their ability to do print. They were doing print advertising back in the eighties to nineties that was just head and shoulders above anything that was being done nationally. Maybe even internationally. I learned the craft of print advertising from those guys, and they really took me under their wing and helped nurture me and give me a real good runway to take off because my second job was at Wieden+Kennedy.
Wieden is where I really found my voice. I learned television and I learned how to take an idea and blow it out to many different forms and to communicate the idea on multidimensional levels. It was an amazing place to grow and to be nurtured and, again, to find my voice. I grew up at Wieden.
Now, Chiat has just been amazing. I’ve been able to take all that I’ve learned over the last—let’s say eight or nine years—and throw it away to a good extent because every place is different and has a different approach to things. With Chiat, I’ve developed a degree of maturity that has aligned with all my past experiences and has allowed me to really become more than I had ever imagined I would become in this business. I’m still growing. I’m still defining myself, but Chiat has given me an amazing platform to lead brands and to do things in a way that I never dreamed of at Wieden or at Martin. It’s been an amazing career so far actually, when I sit down and think about it.
Tuten: Well, when I consider the path, the hierarchy of the agencies, going from Martin to Wieden to Chiat. That’s impressive.
Jenkins: Thank you. I don’t know if anyone else has talked to you about this, but you begin to wonder what’s next, you know what I mean? You reach a point where you wonder what the next challenges are. Each place that I’ve been at so far has really given me the ability to stretch and grow into roles and to define myself and to access things that really career-wise have been amazing. Really, really amazing.
Tuten: So what do you think you want to do next in terms of a personal goal or professional development?
Jenkins: [With] the pursuit of a career in advertising, what’s been great is all the things I’ve been able to achieve. But I’ve left some things off, and that’s been personal relationships. I’ve never been married and part of the reason is because I’ve been really chasing this thing. I’ve been totally dedicated to developing my career. Personally, I’d like to get to a place where I can just feel good about where I am and maybe be married and have a family.
Professionally, it’s looking for the next challenge and maybe the challenge isn’t through creating a TV commercial. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s a movie. Maybe it’s working on product development. I don’t know what. I just think the lesson I’ve learned, that I’ve been learning over the last ten-plus years, is it’s all about the power of an idea. The vessel is what you use to deliver that idea.
Tuten: You have me curious. I’m going to follow you and find out what you end up doing.
Jenkins: Me, too.
[Laughter.]
Tuten: Do you think about opening your own shop?
Jenkins: No, I don’t think about opening my own shop. A good friend of mine just recently opened his shop. For me, it’s not really anything that’s ever crossed my mind. I can’t explain why not, but it’s not something that I’ve actually wanted to do, to be honest with you.
Tuten: Just because you like to focus on doing the fun stuff and not the other stuff?
Jenkins: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Tuten: Well, I’ve talked to a mix of people with this book. Some people at major agencies like you, and some people, like David Oakley, who have started out on their own, and consistently, they all said, “We had no idea what we were getting into.”
Jenkins: Yeah, that’s kind of the beauty of this business or businesses like this. That unknown and that question mark really helps foster and create a lot of this magic that happens. I don’t know that anyone who begins an agency really knew where they were going to end up. They just have the passion. And I think that’s the common theme with everyone you’ve spoken to. They’re very highly motivated, passionate people who have had the luxury and the blessings of being able to land themselves with brands that need people like them to help communicate their stories. They’ve had the opportunities to work with great brands that want to put good into the world.
You know, I’ve never worked on cigarettes. I don’t want to. I don’t drink anymore so I wouldn’t put my energy toward that kind of product either. But it’s really been a blessing to be able to align myself with brands that promote the common good among people. That kind of work is inspiring, amazing.
Tuten: Is there a brand that you want to work with? One that’s like a dream?
Jenkins: Yes. There is a brand that I would love to work with: Prince.
Tuten: Prince the musician?
Jenkins: Yeah. I think it would be amazing to work with someone like that in developing marketing for a record or for a tour, you know, whatever he put his pursuit toward. That’s someone that’s actually been a really big influence on my career. Prince is an iconic individual who has taken an industry and, through his point of view and music, has defined himself and the category. And not just music, but film and however many other different things.
I always imagine that if I could approach my career in advertising the way that Prince has approached his career in music that it would be a never-ending journey of fun, amazing, great things. Can you imagine what it would take? I don’t know if you follow Prince or musicians like Prince, but just imagine what it would take to reinvent yourself, to stay part of the social consciousness, and to do it your own way. I think that’s amazing. It’s that same quality that I admire about Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. That’s what I admire about Mike Hughes and also David and John at BooneOakley, and Rob Schwartz, Patrick O’Neill, and Lee Clow here at Chiat. These are people who really helped define things on their own terms, and a lot of people agreed with them or came along for the ride, you know? I think that’s beautiful.
Tuten: Do you actively try to plan for your life and your career following in Prince’s model? Are you doing that?
Jenkins: You know, I think—yes, to answer the question. I mean, I don’t know if I’m anywhere near that trajectory, but I know that’s been my motto for sure, absolutely.
Tuten: When did you come to a place where you recognized that would be a model that would be appropriate for you?
Jenkins: It was long before I got into advertising. I think this was probably when I was a kid, you know, a teenager, when I was listening to his music. I think to a lot of people back in the eighties, Prince’s music was just highly sexual. It wasn’t the sexuality that attracted me to his music. What I definitely saw was someone who was creatively a genius. I was really moved by the approach and the music and just the style of the music. His personal style. To this day it still really blows me away and it motivates me in a really huge way.
Jenkins: I don’t, and it’s funny because I’ve been to like seventy-five-plus concerts and I’ve definitely followed this cat for a while, but I’ve not had the opportunity to work with him yet.
Tuten: I bet you will. I can just see that happening. You’ve put your wish out into the universe, and I think it’s going to come.
Jenkins: Yeah, I hope so. That would be a good one to come true.
Tuten: Do you have something that you worked on in the past that never made it, that never got produced, but something that you loved when you were working on it?
Jenkins: You know what? Here’s another thing that’s really been cool because I was talking to a good friend of mine, Melanie Myers, who is a global recruiter at Wieden+Kennedy. We talked a few weeks ago about creatives who get into these funks where they don’t produce things for a year or six months or however long. Going dry that long can be a mental death if you’re a creative person. The conversation made me think back on my career and productivity. Ever since I started at Martin, I’ve been consistently producing work. There’s probably work that someone might wish would get produced that doesn’t, but I think I’ve been really blessed, knock on wood, that every year that I’ve been in this business I’ve been able to put something out there to be judged or contribute to the greater good. I can’t say that there’s anything that’s been killed or a brand that I’ve wanted to work on that I haven’t been able to put my hands on yet.
I will say that I never could have imagined that when Jerry Torchia told me to be an art director that I would have worked on brands like Nike and Gatorade. I couldn’t have imagined then that I would be able to say I’d be a global creative director helping lead a bunch of people in the business. I mean, that’s just mind-blowing. So I don’t spend much time thinking about what I haven’t done or what I wish I’d done. I’m just very blessed at the moment where I’m at, and hopefully where I’m heading.
Tuten: What do you do to nurture your creativity?
Jenkins: I take lots of pictures, I’m on Instagram, and I just try to stay connected and present. In advertising, time can go by very quickly. The downside of working in advertising is the social aspect. Socially, the focus tends to be on alcohol. Which is just not good. It puts you in a place of being unconnected and not present and not in the moment. I think these days what I tend to try to do is give myself a creative outlet. The outlet is staying connected to the culture, and just doing things that kind of again keep me in the moment. When I first got into advertising, I got caught up in the external part of advertising. The part that people think is really cool. Drinking is a big part of socializing in the advertising industry.
Tuten: The Mad Men portrayal.
Jenkins: Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s different, but I’m definitely in a happy place right now. I quit drinking almost a year ago and I’m really happy about that. It changed my whole point of view [about myself] and being in this business, and I think it’s made me a better person, you know?
Tuten: How did that come about?
Jenkins: Well, this business, for me, it’s been about relationships on a very personal level, being able to communicate with people and being able to be a nice person. This is what I’m getting at. There were times when I wasn’t “in the moment” like I am now. Times when I would come to work and I was just so hazy and so cloudy from drinking the night before that I wasn’t able to be one hundred percent—I wasn’t able to contribute one hundred percent. I was only contributing about, let’s say, forty-seven percent, which is actually—I was doing damn good at forty-seven percent [laughter]. Which is why it’s even more of a blast to people to be doing my thing at one hundred percent now. But I don’t know, I just feel a lot more together and my head’s screwed on a little more tightly, without all that other nonsense.
Tuten: You said at Chiat that you came into your own and developed your maturity, and I can hear that maturity in what you’re saying. It a big step to take, I think, for anyone.
Jenkins: Yeah, it is. You know what’s funny about being a creative in advertising? The idea is that you want to stay a young person at heart. You need to feel that you can connect to people and feel you’re not passé. I’ve been able to maintain the sense of connection without having to go off on the deep end. I don’t need to drink and act like a complete lunatic, which I think some people think you have to be to be a creative in advertising. Again, maturity is the word. Chiat, my work here, has matured me for the better. I love it.
Tuten: Do you have a mentor now?
Jenkins: You know, that’s funny. Yes, I do. Jimmy Smith has been my mentor probably for the last twelve years, and that’s actually a very interesting story if you have time to hear it.
Tuten: I certainly do.
Jenkins: Jimmy Smith was a creative at Wieden+Kennedy. And after Jerry Torchia told me to be in advertising, I started going to annuals and looking at work religiously. I saw Jimmy Smith’s name. He happened to be at Wieden+Kennedy. After I started looking through these annuals over and over again, I started recognizing the work of Wieden+Kennedy and places like Chiat, Fallon, and BBH London. Very soon after I discovered I wanted to be in advertising, I also discovered I wanted to work at places like Wieden+Kennedy, by all means. Jimmy is another African American, and I just cold-called him. He asked me to send him my portfolio, and I did, and he didn’t like it. That’s when I’d gone back to school, to the Portfolio Center. I’d stayed in touch with Jerry Torchia, who was my first mentor in advertising.
Then Jimmy Smith became my mentor. Jimmy would give me pointers here and there, but to make a long story a little bit shorter, I ended up, through Jimmy’s guidance, getting the job at Wieden+Kennedy. Jimmy talked to Dan, and Dan saw my work, and then Jimmy helped to continue to nurture me from the point when I joined Wieden. The very cool thing that happened was Jimmy went from being my mentor within my fourth year of working at Wieden to becoming my partner. At the time I didn’t think about it much, but my mentor became my partner. We worked together for a number of years, and then we became business partners, and then he became a family friend and today he is probably like a brother to me, like more than a brother to me. That cold call turned into this relationship that became something much bigger and broader than I would ever have imagined. To this moment, he’s still one of my best friends and continues to inspire and to give me pointers. And, he tells me when I’m fucking up. He’s been a huge force in my life as a friend and professionally as well.
Tuten: Did he play a role in your decision to mature and to stop the haze?
Jenkins: Yes, yes, yes, he did. He absolutely did. In fact, he also played a role in me coming to Chiat. Chiat had gotten Gatorade and spoken to Jimmy. Jimmy had left Wieden in probably 2005 and I’d stayed behind. Then Chiat asked me to come too without knowing that Jimmy and I were connected. It was cool because we were able to reconnect again. He’s actually gone off and started his own business called Amusement Park Entertainment. He’s doing his own thing now in a big way. When I look back on it, it’s a really cool relationship that I’ve stumbled upon because of advertising.
Tuten: Are you helping to mentor anyone yourself now?
Jenkins: I am, definitely. I mentor a guy who basically just cold-called me out of the blue and then showed up in Portland! I’ve been mentoring him for probably the last five or six years. I’ve at least tried my best to help him along and do his thing. The thing that’s interesting about when you mentor people is that sometimes people will show up for a split second and then basically they’ll get discouraged and go off and do whatever. But then you have a small few people who really value your time and your input and actually end up finding their own path. They may need a little bit of assistance, but they’re doing amazing things. This guy is starting to do that for sure for himself.
Tuten: He’s at Chiat?
Jenkins: No, he’s not at Chiat. Actually, he works for the Food Network, as an associate creative director.
Tuten: Interesting.
Jenkins: Very different path.
Tuten: That must be very fulfilling for you to have had someone who helped you so much and then be able to do that for somebody else.
Jenkins: Yeah, it’s cool. It’s definitely very cool.
Tuten: What’s it been like being an African American in the advertising industry, where we hear so much about issues with developing diversity in staff and that kind of thing?
Jenkins: That’s a great question. You know what? It’s been crazy. It’s been absolutely crazy. And it’s been crazy because there aren’t a lot of black creatives in the United States, and definitely not in positions like mine. Overall I would probably say less than one percent, right? And then even outside of creative, industry wide, there are just not a lot of African Americans in other positions either. And funny enough, at The Martin Agency, I was the first African-American creative they’d ever hired in the department since they opened the doors in 1977.
Tuten: Seriously? Wow.
Jenkins: Yeah, straight up. But let me get to your question. I think the reason it’s been somewhat crazy from time to time is that I’m sometimes in situations with people who aren’t used to socializing across ethnicities. What am I trying to say? It’s just very interesting as a black person in this business, navigating. Not that it’s been hard or there’s been racism or there’s been doors shut in my face. There is simply just a lack of women and a lack of diversity in the ethnicities represented behind advertising doors. Diversity can really help businesses open their eyes and see the world differently. And I don’t think it’s because of anything that was purposeful, and the industry has definitely changed a lot since I got into the business.
And I’ve talked to Jimmy about this too. It’s changed dramatically since he started working in advertising, probably back in ’86 or ’87. But for me, I think the thing that’s been really great is being able to have a point of view and have a voice that’s helped change things and change people’s perceptions and help brands grow.
Maybe my voice has helped more African Americans be hired in creative departments. If you look at the landscape of this country, it’s not just all white or all black or all female or all male. Having different points of view in agencies really helps brands to stand out and carve niches for themselves, and not just black ones or white ones, but ones that represent a mass of voices, you know?
Tuten: What do you think can be done to encourage more diversity in the industry?
Jenkins: I think kids need to know. When you first asked me how I got into advertising, I said, “by accident.” There aren’t a lot of black-run agencies that are in the United States, right? So there aren’t kids that have neighbors or uncles or whomever who are in these places, so they wouldn’t know about advertising as a career path, right? That’s probably one thing. And I just think more education in school because this is an incredibly, incredibly fun job, right? I come in every day, I sit around with other people and come up with ideas, and I get to work with some of the most talented people on the planet to execute ideas. I think if more kids knew about advertising, like really they knew about the roles within advertising, the creative directors, the writers, the art directors, even the planners or the account management, I think it would probably open things up.
It’s funny because my friend Jimmy, the reason he knew about advertising was Bewitched. He said to himself, “Wow, that guy has a beautiful wife, awesome home, and a fun job. I want to do that.” So that’s how he discovered advertising. You know, of course, I was aware of Bewitched, but I didn’t connect to it like Jimmy did. I’ve actually done a lot of things in communities where I’ve gone to schools and talked to kids about what I do to help inform and inspire kids to consider a career path in advertising. Again, it’s all about creativity and having a point of view and having the skills to develop that.
Tuten: Those skills can be used in lots of different industries as well.
Jenkins: Oh absolutely, entertainment—across the board. Absolutely.
Tuten: If you had a magic, fairy wand and with it you could change one thing about the advertising industry, what would you change?
Jenkins: I would completely eliminate alcohol.
Jenkins: Like hands down.
Tuten: Because nobody’s better with it?
Jenkins: No, no, no. Not at all. I think if there’s one thing that definitely becomes a huge waste of a person’s time in general is alcohol abuse, but I think in this industry, it’s so ever-present. Alcohol does nothing good for any person in this entire business, period.
Tuten: But some people might say that it’s a creative crutch, something that they use to get their creative juices flowing.
Jenkins: What I would say to that is it’s definitely an illusion. I think alcohol creates an illusion, and you know illusions are make-believe. We can contribute at a higher level by expressing through the one creative intelligence that exists in and around all of us.
Tuten: Has that been hard for you since it is so much a part of the culture of the industry when you’re out meeting with people, doing the relationship-building thing? Has it been difficult for you?
Jenkins: No, not at all. It’s been great because I’ve been somewhat of a beacon. When people come across a creative person who doesn’t drink, the first question isn’t, “What’s wrong with him?” It’s instead, “Oh, that’s refreshing.”
Tuten: You might inspire other people.
Jenkins: Yeah, absolutely.
Tuten: Now, you said that there’s one other thing you wanted to change. What is it?
Jenkins: Well, now this is a very personal thing. I just became, within the last two years, a vegan. I’ll tell you, another thing people do, not just in advertising, but in general, people don’t pay attention to diet, I think. When I corrected the way I ate and eliminated alcohol, my clarity and so many things came together in such a beautiful way. In this business, the way we work, it’s a lot of late nights, lots of pizzas, lots of crazy food.
And you see a lot of people in this business who are very unhealthy. Imagine, you get into this business in your early to mid twenties and then for ten years, you are just eating shit. Then imagine being our age. Your body just can’t sustain the energy level that it’s going to take to start a business or go to the next shoot or whatever. Obviously, I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability as it relates to my career and beyond my career and to the traps of alcohol or eating poorly. It doesn’t really add up when you look at the big, big, big picture. Those are simple things, too. You know what I mean? They’re very simple things to adjust in your life.
Tuten: It’s simple, but when you’re talking about the culture of the late nights, the rush, the travel, it’s simple, but it wouldn’t be easy to do either.
Jenkins: No, it’s not because it comes down to a personal choice, because being vegan and the way I travel is extremely hard. But, again, on the other side of it, I have much more energy now and I can do things in a way that I wasn’t able to do eight years ago, and I’m not super old. I’m only forty-one. And my energy level has gone up in the last two years as opposed to plateauing.
Tuten: You mentioned spirituality a little earlier in our interview. What role does that play?
Jenkins: Spirituality’s playing a huge role in my personal life and it’s informing my career definitely. By spirit I don’t meant breaking it down to being Christian or being Islamic or being Jewish, or whatever. What I mean is having the presence of mind to know that there’s more than yourself. The spirit that helps you get through the day. I’ve really been deeply connected to spirituality in a way that I wasn’t before because of bad habits or just—I don’t know—I won’t say “stupidity,” but just ignorance. And I think it’s helped inform the way I interact with people I work with. Being spiritually centered, I feel that I’m just a nicer person, you know. Without getting too philosophical about it.
Tuten: How did you grow into that?
Jenkins: I hope to grow even more.
Tuten: How did you nurture that aspect of your life?
Jenkins: Well, I come from a family background that’s highly spiritual. My father was Buddhist—which is how I got my name—and went through a lot of different philosophies and religions as I was growing up. My grandmother was into metaphysics, which is, you might know, its own thing altogether. My other grandmother was Christian, Baptist specifically. Those aspects of my family definitely informed my journey, my path that I’m on.
Tuten: So you had the foundation already. You just had to return to your roots.
Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I never allow faith or religious views to inform my work directly, but, at the same time, there’s left and there’s right. I try to allow the good principles to inform my decisions as I create things or as I communicate with people or as I walk this path.
Tuten: I respect everything that you’ve said. I’m really impressed with the thoughtfulness that you’ve applied to your personal life and your professional life.
Jenkins: Thank you.
Tuten: Your family must be really proud of you.
Jenkins: Oh, this is funny. This is my favorite story about me in advertising and my family. So I’d been working at Wieden and I was home visiting for the holidays, and my grandmother says to me, “I was at church the other day. Everybody was asking about you.” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s cool.” And she said, “[I told them] Jayanta’s in Portland selling shoes. He’s a shoes salesman now.”
That’s hilarious because my grandmother’s perception of what I do is like Al Bundy from Married with Children. But she got it half-right, because I guess I was selling shoes. She’s never had a concept of what it means to be an art director. No one in my family gets it. I brought my father out to see a shoot. I brought my cousin out to see a shoot so he could see behind-the-scenes work of what it takes to put a thirty-second or a sixty-second commercial together. Even with the visits, what they understand is simply enough to know that I’m wildly happy, so they’re happy to that extent, but they definitely don’t get it.
Tuten: That’s really funny, and, you know, you’re right—I mean, she’s right. When it comes down to the bottom line, that’s what you were doing. You were selling shoes.
Jenkins: Yep.
Tuten: Do you get to see them as much as you’d like to?
Jenkins: I go home once a year and hang out. It’s always interesting going back home because so much has changed for me personally, just things that I’ve exposed myself to. When you go home, it’s just—it’s representative of things from the past most of the time. I don’t know if you’re from North Carolina or if you’re far away from home or not, but it’s always interesting to go back home. It’s always very interesting.
Tuten: Actually, that’s something that I’ve been dealing with quite a lot for the last two years because I was in Richmond. I was actually out at Virginia Commonwealth. I taught advertising in that program.
Jenkins: Oh, awesome.
Tuten: I probably taught the class that changed your life while I was there. And then I re-met someone that I went to school with from fourth grade to twelfth grade and we fell in love, and I moved back to my hometown. For the last two years, after spending twenty years away, I have been going through on a daily basis just what you’re talking about. You know, some things are the same, and some things—you just can’t put the toothpaste back in the package.
Jenkins: Yep. That’s awesome.
Tuten: How do you see the advertising industry changing over the next few years?
Jenkins: I think what’s really awesome is the technology. I love technology. I’ve always loved technology since I was a kid. I love that the whole way we interact with each other socially has changed forever and forever changed the way advertising will grow and evolve. I remember when I was getting into advertising, a big deal was banner ads. Because the internet had just started.
To do a good banner ad back in 1999 was a big deal. The whole social aspect of the way we communicate is going to continue to change and evolve advertising. The thing that’s really interesting to me is teenagers don’t necessarily look at TV to get all of their cultural references. The kids today aren’t connected to television the way we were when we were teenagers. I think smartphones and mobile devices are playing a big role in that, and obviously computers play a big role. It’s interesting because you’ve got to think there’s a wonderful question mark on what this will be even five years from now. Because of Facebook, because of Twitter, because of things that we don’t even have names for yet. All of this will evolve over the next five years to a decade.
I honestly wish I were a teenager right now because this would be the most mind-blowing time from a technological standpoint to be a teenager. Again, if you think about when we were kids, a Walkman was a big deal! It was a big deal because a Walkman meant personal music was portable. I mean, a cassette versus an eight-track, an eight-track versus an LP. I’m very envious of what will be when I’m probably in my seventies because things are going to change so dramatically. It’s exciting. And I think it will give us different ways to understand to each other.
From a global standpoint, we’ll be connected to each other in a way we really never have been before. That’s super exciting. Brands that are smart and the people who run them will get on board and take a stake in this, and not in a way to show and to sell things, not be a huckster, but just to find ways to push things forward and to allow people to grow in really beautiful ways.
Tuten: Do you think brands are ready for the labor commitment that social is bringing in terms of communication? I mean, it’s really not mass communication anymore.
Jenkins: What did you say, the labor commitment?
Tuten: Yeah.
Jenkins: What do you mean by that?
Tuten: Well, when I think about what it means for a brand to speak to consumers, I mean, they might be responding to individual posts or trying every day to engage individuals, to come up with fresh content.
Jenkins: Oh, I see.
Tuten: Just the amount of production that can be involved for social communication is so much more involved than the amount of production that might have been involved for three television commercials we’re running as part of a campaign.
Jenkins: Yeah, that’s true. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but you’re right. I don’t know. I think in a world where a lot of this stuff is user-generated, brands will probably piggyback on that a little bit, and the real big brands will always have the resources to do really interesting things as well. The GEs, the Proctors, the Nikes—those types of brands.
Tuten: Actually, this reminds me of your web site. It’s called Fresh Is the Word?
Jenkins: Yeah.
Tuten: So what’s that?
Jenkins: Fresh Is the Word is—there’s a group that I loved as a kid called Mantronix, and they had a song called “Fresh Is the Word.” It was a song I used to breakdance to. Actually I was shocked I was able to get that URL because I thought someone would have taken it. But Fresh Is the Word basically emanated from that song. I also try to hopefully apply it to my work and to my own life, and that’s always just kind of a reminder to look at things from a very fresh perspective, which is really hard to do. It’s easy to not do it. What’s easy is to follow the status quo. That’s exclusively where that came from.
Tuten: That’s your slogan, your personal slogan?
Jenkins: Yep, absolutely.
Tuten: So what’s next for you?
Jenkins: What’s next for me? I feel very fortunate to Martin, Wieden, and Chiat because it’s been such a great progression. I’ve really started at a medium-sized place and then I went from a medium to a large place to a behemoth. And at all three of these places, I’ve still been able to be creative and to grow and to learn things on a daily basis.
I’m at a point in my career where I want to really be able to contribute in a very holistic way to the culture of the place, and not just to an account. The culture of a place is what seems to me to drive the work. That’s why places like Martin thrive, because of the culture. Wieden, because of the culture. And this place, Chiat, because of the culture. I wonder how I could I contribute to the culture of the agency in a way that would really affect brands and the agency and its work?
Tuten: When I talked with Marshall Ross, of Cramer-Krasselt, he had said that his mission for C-K was to create a creative environment, a culture there that would allow consistently best-in-class work. He defined best in class as what comes out of Goodby or Wieden. You were at one of those agencies. You were working at a place Ross identified as a goal for C-K culture. I also talked to Eric Kallman, who’s with Gerry Graf’s new shop in New York.
Jenkins: Yeah. See, that place seems very interesting, but keep going.
Tuten: Eric basically said what you said. That’s why he went to Barton F. Graf 9000—to have that chance to create something bigger than himself there.
Jenkins: Yeah, I mean, that guy, he is brilliant, genius. Eric is a monster. When he made that move coming off of all the work he’d been doing at Wieden, it wasn’t a “What the fuck?” If you’re dialed in enough to your own thing, you understand why people make moves like that. I’m very envious of that guy in the most beautiful way possible, completely envious.
Tuten: Do you know him?
Jenkins: I don’t. I don’t know him at all. I know he was at Chiat New York for a while, and I know his work. I’ve always heard good things about the guy. It’s very rare that you hear “super nice guy” and “advertising person” in the same breath, and this guy has had that throughout his whole entire career.
Tuten: Anything you want to tell me that I haven’t asked you about?
Jenkins: No, but this conversation’s been really good because you’ve allowed me to sit and pause and think about some things in a way that I haven’t in one setting for a long time, so I thank you. Just for the opportunity to talk to you and to share some of my experiences and contribute. I hope it helps influence and inform the next generation of really awesome, talented people, and not people who are disillusioned about why they should get into advertising.
I think that when you look at a Mad Men or you look at some of the ways advertising has been represented, there are some other ways of doing things out there, and I commend you for your efforts in talking to people who have beautiful outlooks on the industry and the future, and can do things for the right reasons.
Tuten: I hope that you’re right that young people will read this, read these interviews, and be inspired, and believe that something’s possible.
Jenkins: One thing I will often tell kids and young people who want to get into advertising is that this business, any business really, depends on and will grow and flourish on people bringing fresh points of view and insights of themselves to that business. When I sit down and talk to kids, I’ll look at two kids and talk about the way one’s dressed versus the way the other one’s dressed and how each person’s individuality helps feed the creative process. It helps people distinguish themselves and it helps brands distinguish themselves and, it helps people associate themselves and identify with who they are and who they aren’t.
Tuten: It’s interesting to me that you can connect the nodes of people who know each other throughout the book. Everyone is somehow connected and at the same time, they all have had, every single person has had, something so profound to say and something different from everybody else.
Jenkins: That’s one thing about creativity, and advertising suffers from it a little bit, is how to be really distinctly different, having a fresh point of view. One of my old instructors would always say to look at album covers from the sixties. He would point out how there was so much music produced, but every album cover was beautiful and interesting and unique. They were all different, and no one was trying to copy each other. What you said, that you’ve talked to people with distinctly different points of view and something profound to say, reminds me of what my old instructor said about albums. It’s a really good sign in terms of where this industry is going. I think that’s an awesome sign.