Stephen Para is the chief creative officer of Share Creative, a social advertising agency based in NYC and London.
Desert Island Ads
What I’m about to show you is a list of ads I love, but would NOT bring to (what I imagine is) a remote, jungle island with cocktail service and nothing else. This is a perfect list. I’m surplus to requirements. What I would prefer to take would be a handful of poor ads that didn’t quite make it. I’d want to spend my sun tanned days (man, I really hope this is place isn’t in the North Atlantic) tinkering with those ads, trying to get them on this list. That sounds like fun.
Career Builder – Working With Monkeys
In one of the ads, there is a monkey lighting a cigar with a burning $100 bill. I’ve never asked the gang and Cramer-Krasselt if it was done in post or if they actually endangered a primate and the sound guy.
MTV and The Jukka Bros
Spank you very much MTV.
Miller Lite and Evil Beaver
I could watch this ad every single day for the rest of my life.
Little Caesars Delivery
This ad was to announce Little Caesars delivery and was one of the reasons why I got into advertising. Go back and watch any of the work from Cliff Freeman’s team. It still stands up.
ESPN’s John Clayton – This is SportsCenter
Some brands and agencies are so consistently good. Thank you W+K and ESPN.
Old Spice and Terry Crews
Everyone talks about Isaiah Mustafa’s Old Spice ads, and they are truly remarkable. But I think the Terry Crews ones are so frenetic and nuanced that I can’t stop studying them.
Miller Lite and Bob Uecker in the Wrong Seat
This ad made an impact on me when I was just a young, diaper wearing, beer drinker. Don’t work too hard to write the funny. Let the funny come to you…in the front row.
Time Magazine print ad
Restraint is hard. Elegance is difficult. Humanity is undefinable, and yet Time managed to do this for years.
Apple’s Think Different
I know this may be an ad so popular as to be on everyone’s desert island (Are there a lot of them? Who’s paying for all of this?), but this is a mantra I could listen to forever. This is the greatest rallying cry for geeks, freaks and weirdos and reminds me to be brave and feel grateful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs
