Ad Icon: Ari Merkin

Ari Merkin is a disruptive thinker whose time at the likes of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Fallon, and Cliff Freeman & Partners has led to some of the most groundbreaking work that the industry has seen. A member of the AAF Advertising Hall of Achievement, Merkin sits down with Simon Wakelin to discuss his tenure in adland and what it takes to deliver meaningful ads in the modern age…

Ari Merkin began his career as a copywriter in the Big Apple at Grace & Rothschild, an agency formed in 1986 by Roy Grace and Diane Rothschild following decades of groundbreaking work at DDB. “Sadly they’re both gone now – but Roy and Diane were ad legends, no doubt about it,” explains Merkin talking about his first experiences in advertising. “When you got their approval nothing else mattered. G&R created classic pieces of advertising, just the right balance of visuals and headline working together in harmony to create a story. You couldn’t hide behind a fancy layout or cool typeface. It was either a great idea or it wasn’t.”

After copywriting for a number of years, Merkin headed to Miami, accepting the position of creative writer before moving up to CD at Crispin Porter + Bogusky. “It took me a while to get the hang of being a creative director,” he confesses. “I got into the business to think up great work and loved the salesmanship that went into client meetings. It took years before I could think of myself as a creative leader.” But he soon found his footing, being involved in the creation of a batch of iconic ads rolled out by the agency over a number of years, one of the most notable being Lamp for IKEA, which was helmed by Spike Jonze and collected a host of awards around the world including the 2003 Film Grand Prix at Cannes. “That was a perfect storm of awesomeness,” he recalls. “Everybody involved made the idea better and Spike did such a masterful job making it feel far more cinematic than we could have ever imagined. Sometimes it all just comes together.”

A perfect storm and a smoking spot

Other work to hit the cultural zeitgeist included Body Bags for the American Legacy Foundation, a powerful spot that picked up awards at the Clios, One Show and ANDYs. Considered to be one of the most effective public service ads of all time, it shows 1,200 simulated body bags being dumped on the sidewalk outside the offices of Philip Morris, demonstrating the number of deaths attributed to smoking each day. “We literally had to work undercover in NYC,” recalls Merkin on creating the unforgettable ad. “At one point a horrified woman with a child walked past and asked what was going on. I explained the commercial to her, and she stared at me blankly for a moment and said, “My sister died of lung cancer. Mind if I carry one of the bags?” You couldn’t help feeling passionate about the cause. The shoot felt more like a protest and we thought we’d be shut down for sure.”

The time was a ripe period for Crispin Porter + Bogusky, creating ads that brought the agency to the forefront of everybody’s minds at the turn of the millennium. “It was like being a member of a 70-person rock band,” he says on his time at the shop. “If Grace & Rothschild was about the craft of advertising, CP+B was about turning the industry on its head. Alex [Bogusky] had great respect for classic work – but he was more than ready to toss it out the window if it got in the way of doing what was right for a brand. And he changed things. We changed things. Living in Miami, I thought the Crispin office was the coolest place you could possibly be.”

As long as you’ve got your Elf

A brief stint as ACD at Cliff Freeman & Partners followed his Crispin experience. “When you get a call from Cliff Freeman, you go,” he explains. “I felt like that kung fu guy completing his training at the Shaolin temple.”

ECD duties at Fallon NY came next for Merkin. His challenge became building a creative department from scratch. “I would stay at the office until two or three am every night, looking at the books of young creatives until we finally got the mix right,” he explains on shaping the agency’s culture. “It was such an amazing group; account, planning, media, everybody. I really loved that team. In 2004 we were just 35 people but, pound for pound, I think we were the best agency in the world that year.”

Under Merkin’s tutelage Fallon NY became one of the top 10 most-awarded agencies in the world, servicing clients such as Starbucks, Time and Virgin Mobile. A wry campaign for the latter, called For The Love Of Music, promoted Virgin Mobile’s ringtones without actually airing the ringtones and won Merkin unexpected honours as a director at the AICP Awards. The first spot Call Waiting, was directed by the creative team and produced in-house by Fallon, while the next five were turned over to the directing team of Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire. “It was a campaign where kids sing their phone conversations to camera while standing on the city street,” explains Merkin. “The client didn’t love the idea initially, so we called in some talented actors from Juilliard [drama school] and shot the first spot ourselves. Then Kuntz and Maguire came in and modelled the rest of the campaign from the original spot, adding their own magic. When showtime came around the first spot made the cut, and won.”

The co-founding of his own agency, Toy, in 2005 was a big step for the advertising journeyman. Joining forces with his former Fallon co-workers Anne Bologna and David Dabill, Merkin explains that they opened the agency after recognising that the industry was about to change. “At the time agencies were tacking on ‘engagement’ departments as if it was a box they had to check,” he says. “We thought an agency should have engagement at its core, making work that’s meant to be sought out and passed along – work as engaging as a new toy.”

Toy immediately took engagement to a whole new level creating ElfYourself for OfficeMax, an interactive viral phenomenon allowing visitors to upload images of themselves or their friends, and see them as dancing elves. The site received over 36 million visits in five weeks. The following season saw the campaign widen even further with viewership rising to over 193 million visits – an insane number that made it the biggest viral phenomenon of all time. The campaign entered modern consciousness in a way that has not been repeated, even The Today Show and Good Morning America creating their very own dancing holiday greeting for viewers to see.

“Elf was the first chance we really had to prove our engagement premise,” says Merkin, blown away by the success of the campaign. “We made a risky decision to put what little budget we had into production of content instead of media. For a while there the dancing elf didn’t even make the cut because I was determined to find a better name. Our project manager Amanda Sisk suggested ‘Elf Yourself’. 200 million visits later, I think I bought her a car or something.”

Success with Snoopy’s Super Bowl

Merkin shuttered Toy in 2010, rejoining Crispin as its ECD before finally forming Ari Merkin LLC, an independent content company for brands creating advertising, short films, and social and digital content. He immediately garnered success at Super Bowl 2014, joining with Passion Pictures to create National Anthem for MetLife featuring the Peanuts cartoon characters embracing the excitement and anticipation of the moment. “The game was taking place at MetLife Stadium, and MetLife had bought the slot just before kick off,” he explains. “We had under a week to present ideas, and thankfully Anthem was hands down the winner. Next thing we knew my tiny company was in production on a Super Bowl spot and I was getting invited to see the game from the suite at MetLife Stadium.”

Questioned on how advertising has changed since those early days in New York, Merkin answers that the era is different – but the message stays the same. “I find it simpler than it was even just a few years ago,” he answers, noting a level of transparency in branding that he feels is encouraging. “I never much liked advertising that doesn’t feel true to the brand and honest about what the product delivers. In that way it’s good to see brands connecting with people in ways that are more genuine today.”

Merkin also feels that interactions are effectively more organic in the modern age, with brands understanding that if they want people’s loyalty, they have to make it worth their while. “Our job has always been to create stuff that people want to do and see, regardless of medium. Great creative shops have done that for decades. We see opportunity in every available way to deliver a brand message. And when there’s an idea at the core holding it all together, campaigns can feel cohesive and simple.”

Supplying the demand for greatness

Quizzed on future challenges, Merkin remarks that being a director has great appeal, admitting it’s often more stressful for him not to direct. “It’s not that I wouldn’t trust other directors,” he says, currently repped as a director at Supply&Demand. “It’s just that I get really itchy to do it myself. Supply&Demand owner Tim Case has been pushing me to direct for years. I don’t know why I waited so long to take him up on his offer. Directing for brands is about having a vision and making sure the train stays on the tracks,” he goes on. “It’s also understanding how every brand has a voice of its own. You need to be able to capture that. I think that’s why I’ve been successful at selling ideas. I get clients. I get voice. I get brands. And at the end of the day, I’m just another creative guy looking to make something great.”