Eric Kallman

Executive Creative Director
Barton F. Graf 9000

Eric Kallman is executive creative director at the relatively new agency, Barton F. Graf 9000 (www.bfg9000ny.com), headed by Gerry Graf and based in New York. Prior to joining Barton F. Graf 9000 (BFG), Kallman was a copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, Oregon, where he worked with Craig Allen on campaigns that included the Old Spice campaign, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” Kallman was partly responsible for game-changing Skittles and Starburst campaigns during his tenure at TBWA/Chiat/Day. Before going to ad school and joining TBWA, Kallman studied journalism and was a local NPR host in California.

Tracy Tuten: Tell me about this new role you are playing with BFG. You’re in a different situation than the other people I’ve been interviewing because you’ve just like jumped off a bridge into a new agency. Tell me about it.

Eric Kallman: Well, it’s Gerry’s thing. I didn’t know what apparently everyone else had known at the time, which was that Gerry was starting his own agency. I didn’t know if it had started or was starting or what really was going on. The first round of Kayak[.com] commercials done by the agency hadn’t come out or anything.¹ I was in town [in New York judging the art directors’ club show] and we are old friends, so I went to visit him. He was at his new offices. We sat down and he told me what he was doing and that he had just won Kayak from Goodby. Gerry explained his vision for the agency and what he wanted to do, what he was hoping to build. It sounded awesome and something I couldn’t say no to.

Tuten: You went to visit Gerry having no idea you were getting a job offer?

Kallman: Yeah, he offered me a job! It wasn’t worded harshly, like, “Leave your job now and join me,” [laughter] but yeah, he offered me a job. It sounded so exciting. I couldn’t say no.

Tuten: Tell me about the vision for Barton F. Graf 9000.

Kallman: Well, I feel corny using the word “vision.” Gerry had worked at a number of large agencies his whole career. I had only been at larger agencies. He knew he wanted to do his own thing and build it the way he wanted to build it. Most importantly, Gerry wanted to work with the type of people and clients that he wanted to work with. People who wanted the type of work that he liked to do. Ultimately, what Gerry wanted was right in tune with what I would want to do as well, so I decided to join him.

Tuten: Can you tell me what that kind of work is? Is there a philosophy to the work?

Kallman: Oh, good work, literally, good work. We want to hopefully work with clients who want to make good, creative advertising. Solid, creative advertising. Agencies get so big or they’re so political or they’re owned by bigger and more powerful places and the ability to make solid creative advertising can get lost in all of that. It can get to a place where you realize that you have to do a piece of work a certain way or you go into a project knowing its limitations upfront in terms of how good the work could be. We honestly just want to do the best work that we possibly can and want to work with people and clients who want the most creative and best work. It’s pretty simple.

When you start something new, you cut out all the politics and you create the rules and the culture yourselves. I wasn’t looking for a job when this happened, and I am not looking now, but it wasn’t until I talked to Gerry that I could see what my next step would be. If I didn’t work for Gerry, my next job would probably be at the management level at some big agency. I think it would have been like being a junior again in a huge pool of creative directors.

What I imagined about moving up to the management level at a big shop, is that it must get even less talent-driven and more political. Cutting out all the politics, and working hard, and making the best work possible is all we’re going for.

Tuten: How many people are with the agency now?

Kallman: We’re up to twenty-five.

Tuten: Are you worried that as you grow, some of the politics will sneak back in, or do you think you can create a culture that will ensure it doesn’t?

Kallman: Well, I’m assuming that the more people working in an agency, the more politics will come into play in any situation naturally. But we’re really careful with our new hires to make sure that they’re kind and hard-working, straightforward, talented people. It’s a quality-control issue as with any newer agency or any independent agency starting. So far, so good.

Tuten: Are the new hires coming to you or are you getting a reputation for poaching the best in the business?

Kallman: No, well, that’s funny. Our president, Barney Robinson, who was the president of Bartle Bogle Hegarty [BBH], left to come over and be the president of BFG. He’s fabulous at hiring these wonderful people with amazing, amazing pedigrees. Our head planner came from Google and the new account director on DISH worked at BBH and then at Coca-Cola. All of these people are wonderfully smart people with wonderfully smart résumés. He brings them over right away.

And then Gerry and I—we’re slower. I think, we’re being very, very picky. Our creative department right now is five people, and they’re all juniors. We don’t label them as juniors. It’s not their title, but they’re all recently out of school, mostly in their first jobs. They’re wonderful, doing great, and hopefully learning a lot and getting better and better. Gerry and I need to focus right now on bringing in some senior creatives. I don’t know why, but so far, it’s not like I’m getting hundreds of books² in my e-mail inbox or anything. But then again, we’re young. We only have a couple of clients. We’re still a small agency.

Tuten: It sounds like a really exciting time.

Kallman: We’re very excited.

Tuten: Were you scared?

Kallman: Not scared at all. And I’m not even saying that in any kind of egotistical way. I’m not scared at all just because I really, truly believe it’s going to work. Everyone working with us is so talented. Everyone we’ve brought in really is so talented. I feel so lucky to get to work with this kind of agency. I don’t think it would happen, but if for some reason we went under—I don’t think we ever would, but if we did—everyone here could the next day find not just a great job, but even a better job, probably wherever they want. In that aspect, there’s no fear. Maybe I’m just too dumb, but I just haven’t thought about us failing. So far things have been going good, so knock on wood.

Tuten: How do you spend your time at work? Are you mostly mentoring?

Kallman: No.

Tuten: Managing, creating?

Kallman: No. It’s crazy. I go from getting a little bit of time to write—but that rarely ever happens—to calling the client to reviewing work. I’ve often heard creative directors feel like they don’t have enough time to create for themselves.

I see that happens more and more and more for me. I used to have a little time here and there to write or work on my own or with Gerry. As we grow, I’m getting less and less time. The one time I do get to concept and write is when the other teams show me work. I’ll get another thought from what they’ve presented. I’ll sit there with those creatives and work with them and kind of think off of what they’ve brought to me or blow out a new idea. It’s my favorite time to work. Obviously, creatives like to work and be creative. But besides that, this is really new. I’m not only managing for the first time, but I’m also at a new agency.

And I’ll go from working with my creative team and then, right after that, we have to go look at something else. Like we’ll look at the new glass walls in the new office or something. Do you see what I mean? We’re like picking out desks or something random, and I’m like, “I don’t know. You pick the desks. Let’s just make work.” It’s a very unique situation. I’m very aware of how unique it is. Every two hours I’m in a totally different place, doing something totally different, and some of that time I’m doing creative work, or reviewing creative work. Still for me, the creative work is the most fun.

Tuten: How do you mentally prepare yourself for each day?

Kallman: I don’t, actually. I don’t really know when each day will start or end. It’s one big kind of blur. The days just go on and on. I just kind of go and go until . . . That’s another thing I learned. I’m younger than most of the awesome people you’ve been talking to for this book and obviously far less experienced in a managerial position. But what I’ve found is that I kind of have to pick a point to end my day, if that makes sense.

Tuten: That does make sense.

Kallman: Because there’s so much to do, I could just keep going. I could always keep going and never stop on any given day.

Tuten: Do you just decide on spur of the moment, or do you start off that morning saying, “Today my day will end at eight p.m.” or . . . ?

Kallman: Oh, no. I never put limits on stuff like that. So, yeah, I get in as soon as I can and go and go usually until well, I’m tuckered out. It’s pretty much a constant and it’s most weekends, too. But, it’s been going well, and it’s getting more and more exciting and encouraging with every day. This is more than a job for me. I don’t think I could do this if I wasn’t so personally invested it.

Tuten: Does it feel like it’s your own shop?

Kallman: Oh, gosh. No, it doesn’t feel like it’s my own shop. Gerry’s the boss, but I do feel more a part of it than any other job I’ve had. I don’t feel like I’m working under Gerry because there are so few people here. It’s a small amount of highly intelligent people who are all working together. Right now, that’s the vibe, and there’s no weird hierarchy. No one’s afraid to talk to anyone else or express their opinions. It’s a group of really smart people who get along really well. I just feel like I’m a part of something that’s gotten off on the right foot.

Tuten: That’s a good feeling.

Kallman: Yeah, yeah, it’s great. It’s hard to get. I feel lucky to say that I care about this agency, more about its future, this is all more than a job. I think that most people aren’t that fortunate.

Tuten: What led you to advertising as a profession?

Kallman: In college, I studied journalism. I went to college thinking I wanted to be a sportscaster. First, because I love sports and [second,] because sportscasters seem like they have a ton of fun. “Yeah, that Craig Kilborn, he used to be an anchor on Sports Center, and then he got the show after Letterman.” It seemed to be a little more entertainment or comedy infused than in most journalism. So, anyway, I wanted to be a sportscaster. I went to college and I worked like nuts. I interned at NPR, and I interned at NBC Sports.

Then after college I landed an awesome first job. I was the local morning host for NPR’s Morning Edition in Santa Barbara. I did that for a while. But I guess what I was learning, throughout all my internships and then my job, was that journalism was not for me. I’m not trying to get over the top about it, but, really, when you broke it down, instead of doing something with your own life, you followed other people around all day and talked about what they were doing with their lives. When I interned at NBC Sports, I realized it I guess for the first time. I love sports, but I quickly realized that the job meant talking to other people about what they were doing—and what I wasn’t doing. I hope that doesn’t sound horrible. It was just important for me to do something myself, and not just observe others.

Does that make sense?

Tuten: It does.

Kallman: I had this realization about journalism and I quit my job. I moved home, to San Francisco, with my mom and grandparents. I was twenty-three or something like that. I had to figure out what to do. While I was home, I looked at my old college catalog and noticed the only class I didn’t take as a communications major was Intro to Advertising.

And I thought about it. I was like, “Oh, maybe”—I literally thought, “Maybe. I see commercials on TV. Some of them are good, but most of them aren’t any good. I bet I could come up with stuff at least half as good as that.” So I went online and I found the AAAA, the Advertising whatever Association of America web site. And I looked up the agency list in San Francisco. At that point, I couldn’t tell the difference between Goodby or Joe’s Advertising on the corner [laughter]. I just went down the list and I called them all, one by one. I said, “Hi, I’m a recent college graduate, and I’m interested . . .” and then click. They just hung up on me, time and time and time again.

Finally, I got an in. Some account guy—I believe it was DDB San Francisco. Whoever does those Chevron ads with the claymation cars. I put on a suit, and I went in, and I met with this guy. He just talked about himself for two hours. Seriously, and he talked about the business side. And I said, “Well, what about the actual commercials themselves and the ideas behind them. I see that you work on Chevron. Who found the idea for the claymation cars?

And he was like, “Oh, that’s the creative department.”

I’m like, “Oh, where are they? How do you do that?”

And he goes, “You have to have a portfolio.”

And I said, “How do you do that?”

And he said, “You do that in ad school.” That was it! As soon as I got home, I went online and I found an online ad school in San Francisco. I went there for a couple of quarters. And then I went to a different ad school for a short while and put together a book. Eventually I went job hunting and luckily I got my first job with Gerry Graf, at Chiat New York.

Tuten: So it’s like coming home again then to work with Gerry now?

Kallman: Yeah, coming back to the old boss! [Laughter.] Like I said, when I learned about the opportunity, I honest to God didn’t know that he was going to offer me a job. I honest to God didn’t know where he was with starting his agency. I was just in town and I was visiting my old boss. I thought I was just visiting him to say hi and then it turned into a job offer and, of course, more talks later and eventually, it happened. It all worked out.

Tuten: Once you took a look in that old college catalog and you saw Intro to Advertising and you started on that path, did you ever stop? You knew it was the right thing?

Kallman: No, no, no. Maybe. Well, it struck me as right. Then calling the places and getting to go to an ad agency, well then it struck me even more. I was like, “Oh, okay, now this is getting interesting.” And then when I found my ad school, I sat in on a class there and saw what they did. Basically, I saw a bunch of students present concepts to a teacher. Then, I got really excited, like, “Wow, I think this is something I’m really interested in.” And then if you combined all that with the fact that you’re twenty-three or twenty-four and you’re living with your mom and grandparents, you have a very strong, maybe more reason to figure something out and work harder.

But, yes, my curiosity was piqued by that catalog, but it grew and especially once I sat in on the class. And then I thought, “Oh my gosh. This is something I think might be right up my alley.” Besides being a sportscaster, I couldn’t really think of a job for people who get to sit around with their buddies and make jokes all day. Let’s just say I was fortunate to find this career [laughter.]

I was also fortunate to work so hard at journalism in college to realize it’s what I didn’t want to do, if that makes sense. Otherwise I would have been trapped. I wouldn’t have started pursuing advertising until so many years down the line, and I could have been stuck, if that makes sense.

Tuten: I think a lot of people do feel stuck. They would have to go through too much to switch.

Kallman: Yeah. I was fortunate.

Tuten: What advice would you give then to young people today who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives?

Kallman: Whatever you think you might be interested in, you have to fully investigate. That is really the best advice. I also think that generally people don’t realize how willing other people are to help. You’d be amazed how willing people are to help others. If you’re interested in something, you should fully explore and investigate it. If that means going to places you don’t know or going to people that you care about or whose work you respect and asking if you can talk to them, I think people are very willing to help. Talking to as many people and doing as much of it as you can as early as you can will really help you figure out what you are all about. “Oh, I like this aspect or that aspect,” whatever it is about the job. Those kinds of conversations can help you narrow down and find what’s right for you sooner rather than later.

Tuten: Did you have a mentor who was instrumental in how you developed in your career?

Kallman: Creatively? My old partner, Craig Allen, is one of the first that comes to mind. He had been working already for a year, I believe, when I got a job at Chiat. What I learned from him while working with him was just instrumental for me—I learned so much. I’ll always consider Craig not only my partner, but also someone I learned a great deal from, especially in my first couple of years.

Aside from Craig, I learned much from Gerry. Gerry’s my boss, but now my relationship with him is a little bit more like a partnership, not like when I was a junior and he was ECD [executive creative director]. Every day, I feel like I’m learning. It’s similar to when I first started working with Craig and I felt I learned a lot every single day I was working. With Gerry now, I’m learning about managing, about running an agency, about sensing out priorities, and so many other things. I feel like I’m learning so much as I work with him.

Tuten: Any lessons you can share with us? About creativity or about managing?

Kallman: An important lesson is how to approach new ideas. Once you think you’ve thought of a great idea, at least what you believe is a good idea, you should get over it really fast. Get over it. Because you need to think of a lot more ideas you think are really good until you actually have one, if that makes sense.

There are so many different lessons I could share. Different areas to think about. If we’re talking about when “concepting” in general, though, the lesson is “the more ideas you think of, the more good ones you’ll think of.” And always remain open as you move along with an idea, as you’re thinking out the idea. As the idea develops, it may develop in a way you didn’t expect. Even as the idea moves on into being sold to the client, and then into production eventually, it’s easy to get trapped in your own mind. You have to stay open to everyone and everything as the idea becomes an ad.

It can harm the idea’s growth if you get trapped in your own mind, if you already have in your head what the ad should be like, what it is going to be. The idea may grow differently than you imagined, and in a good way.

It’s best to openly collaborate. The more collaboration, the better. And that doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone, but that means considering every idea that comes along. The majority of the time, I probably disagree with them, but something I guess that I’ve learned is that every possible idea shared on any aspect of a project coming from any one at any level is something you should really be open to and think about. Because there’s going to be some good ideas and you wouldn’t want to limit your project or the success of what you end up with by being so blinded by your own vision.

It’s important to stay open not only in your writing or when you’re doing the concepting part, but also with your production.

Lessons learned: the keys are hard work and staying open and sticking to what you’re good at. Maybe I’ve not even ever fully experimented with this kind of commitment, but you should—when concepting and working, you should. This is probably like Advertising 101 and a “no, duh” truth of the business—but, seriously, you need to be true to yourself. A lot of times people can get caught up in what’s popular at the moment. I see a lot of ads that are like a lot of other ads in tone or style. All the good creatives stay true to their own voice and are going to execute on a brief with their own voice. But, yeah, just be yourself.

Tuten: Do you have a way of judging the work either that you do or that your junior people do and come in and present to you?

Kallman: I do have a way of judging work and it’s by this pattern. Everything a) gets weeded out according to whether it answers the brief or not and then, b) I look for the best ad. The best ad may not be humorous. Just because majority lot of the work I’ve done has been humor and the people I’ve learned from like Gerry do a lot of humor, looking for the best work doesn’t mean looking for the funniest. It means looking for the best. For some people, looking for the best ad may sound so subjective. But you’re just looking for the most unique, the breakthrough way, the way to answer a brief, to answer it in the right way, to answer the brief with a voice, to answer with a voice that you’ve never quite heard before. Uniqueness is what stands out and I think it’s what breaks through in any finished ads that you see. The best ad is not only the strongest communication. It’s often times the most unique or new. It’s something I’ve never seen before.

Tuten: That would be hard.

Kallman: Yeah. But it’s hard for anyone to come up with something that’s a good ad.

Tuten: What was it like to be one of the guys who created “The Man My Man Could Smell Like”?

Kallman: Oh, man. It was fun. Looking back on it, it happened very fast [laughter]. Can I talk about this? Well, I don’t work there anymore, so I can’t get in trouble [laughter].

Tuten: That’s right [laughter].

Kallman: I remember Old Spice wanted to do one more spot for the body wash, because it wasn’t selling as well as they wanted. They wanted to do a single spot and then they planned to discontinue the body wash. We had a really short timeline, I want to say three days to write it. Somehow it happened.

Tuten: You had the idea already at that point?

Kallman: No, we didn’t. This is actually a good example of how “staying open” to what everyone else does in a campaign and around an idea really pays off. Old Spice had already established the style and tone and humor in its earlier campaigns. We had done a few Old Spice projects already by that point. The foundation was already in place. The planner—I don’t know who it was—found out that the overwhelming majority of male body wash is purchased by females. Of course, that makes perfect sense. The assignment was to keep that in mind while doing an ad in the Old Spice comedic tone. Basically, do an Old Spice spokesman ad that spoke directly to women.

Whoever it was, I don’t know it if was a strategist at Wieden or someone at P&G, but whoever dug up the fact that the smartest way to sell body wash for men would be to actually sell the body wash to women should get half or more than half the credit for anything. Know what I mean? We had the assignment. We worked on the assignment. The script was written.

I remember the script seeming different than what Craig and I usually pitched. Usually we have a very strong sense of the visuals involved in a spot. When we’re presenting a TV spot, as I would imagine most creatives would, we typically have fully envisioned what will be seen in the spot. In this case, we had a dialogue script, and we had shown maybe eight or ten other scripts to our creative directors. And then when we got to it, I remember we said, “We’re not quite sure what you see yet, but we think you see a guy talking to the camera and we think you see all this other stuff happening.” Anyway, we prefaced it, before we presented it, by saying, “We’re not quite sure what you see yet.” Because really what we had written, it was more like a radio script when we wrote it. It was only the dialogue.³

The creative directors liked it, and as we worked on it further, we figured out, “Yeah, you should just pretty much see what this guy’s talking about.” The visuals just followed the dialogue.

I’m sorry. This could end up being two hours if I take you start to finish on the whole thing.

Long story short, I think we presented two spots to the client. We liked the “The Man You Smell Like” more. The other one sold. There was a regroup with the creative directors and our ECD. We went back and sold in “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” so the project almost died once there. The timing was all off too. When we went to make the thing, we did casting on Christmas Eve. You usually call in two hundred people for casting and one hundred and twenty show up. But because it was Christmas Eve, we barely scraped together twenty to forty people. The choices were horrific, and, then Isaiah walks in the door and delivers it exactly how you see it. Isaiah Mustafa, he’s the actor.

That’s a saving grace. When we went to shoot the thing, we had two days and we weren’t anywhere near to having a usable take. The afternoon of the second day, it started raining something like a half-hour before the insurance ended for a weather day. So we got a third weather day with insurance or something like that. It was almost the last take on that third day that became the one that finally worked and that we used.

They weren’t sure about the spot when we first presented it to them.

Tuten: They weren’t?

Kallman: Here’s what happened. We presented the spot over the phone. They had a link to the ad. They had a roomful of people there. They watched it. We hear the spot playing over the phone, and then there’s silence. And then they came on and said, “We’re going to put you on mute for a bit.” They put us on mute for like ten or fifteen minutes. They came back on, and they said they weren’t sure about it.

Now, these are wonderful clients and wonderful people. Everyone likes or doesn’t like stuff that ends up being popular sometimes, so I’m not trying to diss the clients at all, because they’re great clients. They just weren’t sure about how good the ad was. That’s how it ended up being aired after the Super Bowl. They had already done the media buy to start it on the Super Bowl and keep running the ad after. They decided not to run it on the Super Bowl. They started the day after instead. I wasn’t involved in the discussions—but I believe that the higher-ups talked them into running it through the rest of the media buy, but not on the Super Bowl. Somehow it ended up catching on fire. It caught fire so quick that it ended up winning a one of those Super Bowl polls of what your favorite commercial is, even though it never aired in Super Bowl.

The whole deal was just up and down, a roller coaster ride, the whole way through production. After we had it filmed, we weren’t like, “Yes! We’ve done it!” We had this idea and we went and made it. It had gone through so much and took so much effort. It was over the holidays and the process was so draining.

By the time we were done with it and especially because the first few people who had seen it weren’t over the moon about it, at that point, I was just hoping it would be considered “ok.” Every time you want it to be great, every time you make an ad or spot, you want it to be great. By the time it was about to hit air, I was just hoping people didn’t hate it, honest to God. And then, it caught on and we were floored obviously. It was amazing.

Tuten: It won the top award.

Kallman: Yeah, yeah. It won the Grand Prix for film, the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Tuten: Do you ever feel like the magic might not happen again?

Kallman: Well, the Grand Prix is just as full of luck as anything. Luck is involved. Sometimes things have to come together. We thought it was a cool idea and was going to be a good spot. But the huge reaction was overwhelming. It was similar to when we did the online responses, when we did the “Twitter Response” campaign.⁴

Tuten: I loved that campaign!

Kallman: Thank you. When we went into doing that, literally, it was a team from Wieden, a bunch of technical and digital people who had the abilities and could do things and get them online so fast. There were people who weeded through all the tweets and were responsible for picking the ones that were not only the best ones to respond to as far as getting the “response” out there, but also people who had followers and whatnot. Besides that whole team, there was Isaiah on his little set with a teleprompter and then me and Craig on our laptops and our CDs [creative directors] there, too, on their laptops.

When it all started, either Craig or I or someone joked something like, “Welcome to the hardest work we’ll ever do for maybe a bronze pencil.” It was a ton of fun, but it was the same thing as the initial ad, where we had no idea that people enjoyed it so much until after the fact! [Laughter.] We really didn’t know until we got back to work the next day. We just didn’t know as it was going on. We didn’t know that people were talking about it. That it was getting so much attention.

We were basically locked in a tiny little set with Isaiah and just typing as fast as we could for two days. That was even more shocking! I’ll never forget the next day coming into the agency. People were being so kind and congratulatory and then we were going online and seeing the buzz the campaign had gotten. It was flattering and humbling, but more than all of that, it was wildly, wildly surprising.

Tuten: Tell me: what’s your favorite work that was never, ever produced?

Kallman: That was never produced? Oh my God. I think every creative has like a handful that come to mind immediately. Hopefully Craig or I will be able to use the really good ideas again . . . for some other client down the road.

Tuten: So that’s what you want to do? You want to write TV commercial scripts instead of ads?

Kallman: Yeah. A couple were bigger, event-style things. Those are the types of ideas that would be shot down for reasons beyond creativity—like for their expense. Sometimes the client loves an idea, but the expense of executing the idea ultimately kills the idea. The realities of expense always come into play. Still, there’s not a creative in the world—there’s not a good creative in the world—who doesn’t have, like, five ads that pop straight to the top of their mind. Actually, that are always on their mind, that they love—that they keep on their mind as the best things ever that never got made.

Tuten: You worked so closely with Craig. Do you miss him? I was wondering if you did because he’s someone you worked so closely with.

Kallman: Of course I do. I MISS CRAIG. Put that in the book really bold. It’s rare for anyone to have partners for five or six years at any level. And Craig was my first real partner. We were fortunate enough to produce a ton of work, and good work. When I think about it, it was like we spent forever together. We basically lived together in LA the whole time we were at Chiat New York. And especially our three years in Portland, I think I spent over a year and a half of it with him in LA, so—yeah. I miss my friend.

Tuten: Do you ever feel like you need to just call him up and just run through some ideas with him?

Kallman: Actually, the first ideas that I CD’ed [creatively directed] at Gerry’s place, at Barton F. Graf 9000—it was like two days before the presentation and I sent him the work. Obviously, I wish I could do that every time. I was so excited about it, and a little bit nervous since it was my first work as a creative director.

It was the first time in my life that I was getting to make a call like that. I got to make the final decision. I was just excited to hear his opinion about what he thought of the work. Would he say, “Oh, it sucks. Is there only one good script out of all of these?” and that kind of thing. Obviously, I always trust that guy’s opinion.

Tuten: But just the one time?

Kallman: That’s the only time. It was right before my first presentation. It was half nervousness, half excitement, half “where’s Craig?” [Laughter.]

Tuten: Some people might have thought that you and he would open your own shop together.

Kallman: Oh God! That would have been fun. I’m having a lot of fun now, too. I wish Craig came out here with us, with Gerry. Portland was a fabulous time.

Tuten: What things in the industry surprise you most?

Kallman: What doesn’t surprise me? You know what doesn’t surprise me are people’s acceptance and excitement and enthusiasm and focus on all things digital. But what blows my mind is a lot of the enthusiastic people are saying, “This is a great new world and a whole new skill set to learn”—[to the exclusion of traditional forms of advertising].
Think about it. When the radio was developed, print ads did not disappear. When television was introduced, radio ads did not disappear. It’s the same with television today. Whichever media being used, it’s just another skill set, another tool to learn. I didn’t work in advertising when these other media forms were introduced, so I don’t really know how the industry reacted when TV came along. But I’m pretty sure that they didn’t say “Hey, we have this great new medium. Forget everything you know about how to use the old ones because they are dead now.”

I feel like people should be excited about new media and wanting to learn about working on digital, social, and interactive as much as possible, but that doesn’t have to mean abandoning the skills needed to execute a print ad or a thirty-second TV commercial because no matter what anyone’s good at or likes doing, I’ll bet my life that in ten years I will still be watching live sports on TV every night, and those live sports will still have timeouts and there will still be television commercials or advertisements of some sort. So the whole excitement and rage about digital advertising and interactive advertising, it surprises me how separate it is in some people’s minds. Do you know what I mean? And even the fact that the One Club has the One Show and then the next night has the One Show Interactive. To me, that’s bizarre. They’re all ads. They’re all competing creativity.

Tuten: They’re all one.

Kallman: In advertising, I think it’s kind of appalling that there’s two different awards shows for interactive and non-interactive work. I think it should be the same show. It seems to be a bit of rivalry or whatever. People who do one thing think the other isn’t relevant. That’s always been confusing to me.

Tuten: If you had a magic, fairy wand and you could change one thing about advertising, what would it be? Is that what it would be?

Kallman: Well, I would change people’s mindset. There will be more and more digital and interactive advertising in the future. I’m sure there will be. And, other mediums might digress some, but “traditional advertising” on TV isn’t dead just because there’s something new to learn and advertise with, if that makes sense. So, yeah, that mindset has always been really confusing to me. It just doesn’t make sense.

Tuten: Eric, if you were going to write an autobiography, what would it be called?

Kallman: “I Was Born at a Young Age.” That would be the first line. That would be the first line of the first chapter. I don’t know [laughter]. I don’t think I would write an autobiography. I’m actually afraid to answer your question because I feel like it could come off like I’m a real a-hole. I work a lot. Maybe that would be the same thing. What would my wife call the book? “My Husband Works a Lot.”

Tuten: “Just Keep Working.”

Kallman: Yeah, yeah. “I Worked a Lot: The Life of Eric Kallman.”

Tuten: So in all of the long hours that you work, what’s your favorite beverage of choice to keep you going?

Kallman: I can’t do the coffee too late because that’s just crazy even though I do. I was a big, big Diet Coke man forever, and then I started working with Gerry. Gerry loves Coke Zero. Like he has a deep-rooted passion for it, and I was like, “Really?” And then I made a big, a big life choice. So now I’m a Coke Zero guy. Caffeine works.

Tuten: It does. Is there a brand that you’re longing to produce work for?

Kallman: One that hasn’t had famous ads done for it yet?

Tuten: Or maybe that has had famous ads, but you just want to work on that work or build that brand.

Kallman: When I was coming out of school, the first Skittles campaign, the first of the new work that was done by Gerry Graf had just come out. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that is what I want to do.” And if you ever look at my early portfolio, my student portfolio was almost like a Skittles ad for everything. It was like a Skittles ad for shoe polish, a Skittles PSA [public service announcement] about don’t hurt your children. Everything I did was maybe along those lines, that tone, that style. And so basically I am a schmuck who was lucky enough to get my way in to the business and get to work on stuff I wanted to work on right away. Lucky.

Coming out of school I was like, “I want to work on that campaign, I want to work on that campaign.” And then I was lucky enough to work on that campaign. Since then, I’m a big believer of working for people whose work you like, not necessarily on a certain product or at a certain agency. Does that make sense?

If you’re lucky enough to get to work with the people whose work you respect and like the most, you’ll learn the most. And I think you’ll probably have the greatest chance that they’ll like your work the most, too, if that makes sense. When I finished ad school, I looked for a job, and I was a little anal. And I made an A, B, C, and D list of all the agencies that I wanted to work for, with like the A list being, “I would love to work there,” and then B, C, D. Well, when I mailed out my portfolio, I mailed it out to the A list first and two weeks later to the B list and then one week later to the C list. Like that, in my mind, I’m thinking that it would maybe get it in front of the people I wanted to work for the most the earliest. I would let them decide if they like my work or not and could use my services or not first.

And here’s my long-winded point because everything I’ve had to say has been long-winded today. I thought for sure that the D list, my last choice of places, would be the people who might actually offer me a job. And I thought my A-list people would be the people who liked my work the least because, in my mind, they were the best people.

As it turns out, advertising is really not about being the best or worst. The whole industry is subjective. If you work for someone whose work you like the most, there’s the greatest chance that they like your work or style or work or tone the most as well. In finding that match of views and interests, you’ll not only learn the most, you’ll get the most work produced. You’ll also be working for the people who you like the most. So the biggest, surprising thing when I came out of school was that I got the strongest response to my book from the people that I wanted to work for the most, and not just in one instance. I got to talk to the four or five people whose work I admired the most, I got the jobs I wanted the most at the agencies I respected the most. I was lucky. I got to work with people like Craig and Gerry from the very beginning.

Tuten: You are. You were lucky. And you still are, but hardworking, too.

Kallman: I’m very lucky, yes. I’ll be the first to tell you that, but, yeah, I work hard, too. Yeah, I work hard. Luck and hard work.