Radio commercials: Stay for the ride.

Most radio spots are either boring or obnoxious. I don’t know who to blame for this (although I have my theories*) but for most of us, listening to radio commercials has become a cue to change the station.

When I write for radio, and it’s not an easy task, I try to paint a scene that will give my audience pause and reason to stay along for the ride. That “painting of a scene” is often done with sound-design: the music, sound effects, voice-over and sound cues structured so as to build a unique experience. (And I think that’s ultimately the key, fancy sound effects or strict monologue: deliver a memorable experience.)

When writing radio for Del Sol Medical Center’s new ER campaign, I wanted the experience to be: hero saves the day … and I really wanted that to be something you felt. Well, heroes need a crisis, an event of such magnitude that it takes a special quality to overcome it. So my thinking went like this: If the hero is going to be believed to be a hero, the crisis needs to be believed to be a crisis … and what better way to do that than experience the crisis unraveling in our very presence? Here is that crisis, along with the rest of the spot:

Things to notice: I matched each word from the campaign’s “negative slogan” — Unexpected. Unplanned. Unthinkable. — with sound effects that built-up the tension of the scene.

Things you can’t see: Finding prerecorded music that fits the mood and cues you want to hit can be a daunting task. Big props to M. Brewer for combing through hundreds of tracks to find me ten very usable ones.

Copywriter: R. Vega

Director: R. Vega

Creative Director: M. Correa

Agency: Sanders\Wingo

* Some reasons why people might hate radio spots: 1. Boring, 2. Fake … you don’t believe it, 3. Obnoxious voice talent ≠ funny (although, I suppose being obnoxious can be an asset for certain companies; see: Robbins Brothers), 4. Traffic department schedules ridiculously long commercial breaks, 5. Radio spots written and produced by no-talent radio stations (“If you buy air-time, we’ll make your [suck-ass] commercial for you.”), 6. Not relevant (Bad media placement), 7. Unimaginative, 8. Jingles

Telling a story …

… using six words and a logo … and two billboards.

First billboard:

Driving by the freeway, "What the ... ?!"

A quarter mile later, second billboard:

"Oh ... Oh!"

Objective: With an increasingly saturated market, establish the Del Sol Emergency Room/Emergency Department as the top of mind name in the region.

Strategy: Give the Del Sol ER a distinct identity that both speaks of its large scope of services while portraying the hospital as an enabler … a place that in a crisis takes you from where you are, to where you want to be.

Copywriter: R. Vega

Graphic Designer: L. Alvarez

Creative Director: M. Correa

Agency: Sanders\Wingo

Telling a story …

… using 11 words and a picture.

Rosario Z. 150 lbs. lighter. Never felt closer to her daughter.

I read somewhere that in advertising, men should write for men and that, more importantly, women should write for women. Well, I thought that was a bunch of bull shit, at least for me … I mean, a writer is supposed to think like other people, at least well enough to see what they see.

The ads for this campaign all have a little tag within the photo with a small story about the (fictional) patient in them. The majority of bariatric patients are female and I thought this would be a great opportunity to explore the desires of an overweight single mom (I made her single in my head … don’t ask me why … probably to raise the stakes, to need to seek her dream more clearly). And in the end I figured that what was most important was to capture a scene of accessible joy … and then to make the source of that joy the very thing that is labored for and for which sacrifices are made. So for Rosario, the single mom of my eleven-word story, it was about achieving an unadulterated relationship with her daughter. That’s what I wanted people to experience.

What you can’t see: The Del Sol Bariatric Center liked the ad so much they made it into over-sized posters, sales sheets and even a banner.

Copywriter: R. Vega

Graphic Designers: L. Alvarez and A. Armijo

Creative Director: Memo Correa

Agency: Sanders\Wingo

Because it’s green week …

… green logos and concepts from the recycle bin.

We created these logos for El Paso Electric’s energy efficiency/green energy initiative. However, with a change in their administration, the project was put on hold indefinitely. “Tomorrow Friendly” was later salvaged as a headline for an El Paso Electric banner promoting energy efficiency home products but the rest of these ideas never made it to print or broadcast, except here.

Tomorrow Friendly still has a lot of unrealized potential.

This idea served as an alternate to Tomorrow Friendly. If it had survived, I wanted to explore using the New Mexico sun as a power grid. It was not to be.

With Switch to Smart I wanted to lead El Paso Electric's green campaign with a bit of tude.

A Switch to Smart alternate logo for New Mexico.

Objective: With “green” being as overused and powerless as it now is, we were charged with creating new vehicles to talk about energy conservation and the company’s future renewable energy initiatives.

Things you can’t see: The variant Texas and New Mexico logos were done at the client’s request. Even though the company is based in Texas, El Paso Electic wanted to let New Mexico consumers know that they were actively involved in making their state a better place … I liked the thinking behind this, particularly because El Paso Electric recognized that 1. green energy is a public relations issue and 2. New Mexicans and Texans generally don’t like being clumped together … a lot of companies that hold monopolies don’t seem to have this kind of attention to their unique sets of consumers and it was just nice to work for one that did.

Copywriter: R. Vega

Illustrator: C. Lopez

Creative Director: E. Zaragoza

Agency: Sanders\Wingo

Asked to do the impossible …

The assignment: We were given a document, filled with words from top to bottom, describing everything that had to fit into a 30 second, no-sound video.  The video was to play at a large bio-medical industry conference — in a continuous loop with other 30 second videos from other Texas cities — on a large flat screen monitor.

The catch: No photography budget. No photography archive (we had just acquired the client). Four day turnaround. And like I said, lots and lots of information.

The solution:

Things to notice: By design (and for efficiency), we animated this piece using four Illustrator files: 1. Logo with bi-national theme, 2. Map of El Paso highlighting key assets, 3. Horizontal slide with key themes and bullet points, 4. Logo with contact information.

Things you can’t see: I wanted the panning from one important city location to the next to run along the major highway … there just wasn’t enough time to test the idea, much less to execute it fully. I find myself always wanting to make the things I work on better but at some point you just have to let go.

Copywriter: R. Vega

Illustrator: C. Lopez

Flash Animator: T. Lopez

Creative Director: M. Correa

Agency: Sanders\Wingo

Most people drew flowers.

Most of my day-to-day work at Sanders\Wingo was serious stuff  but every once-in-a-while we got to do work of a different variety: fun!

Fun as in haha, jokes-on-you fun. Fun as in the stuff agencies with beer clients get to do every single day. Fun with an allowance to be inappropriate … which from time to time can be very pleasing.

Anyway, one of our designers got pregnant and was due in September. The office got a bunch of baby clothes and asked everyone to grab a garment and draw something on it. Most people drew flowers. This is what I did:

They were going to wait a few years … or not.

Baby Spot (Del Sol Medical Center)

Re-edited as a 15 second bookend here, this was one of the first commercials I wrote at Sanders\Wingo for our client, Del Sol Medical Center. Babies are hard to screw up — at least on camera … parenting is a whole other matter — so all I wanted to do was keep it sincere and heart warming without going over the top.

Copywriter: R. Vega

Creative Director: M. Correa

Agency: Sanders\Wingo

Before I was in advertising — Part II

Sunday Ferrari

This is the other ad I created when I was in the restaurant business.

Before I was in advertising — Part I

Daddy Melt!

Before I was in advertising, I was in the restaurant business.

The business owners had recently purchased some ads and ad space from a local newspaper. They said they’d take care of production. Well, what they produced looked like it was made on MS Word. So I asked them to let me make the next two ads. They agreed. This is one of those ads.

I didn’t know what I was doing but it’s not that bad.

And now, a poem

Postmodern Reiteration

Dear Tommy,

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

We’re sorry your mom is dead.

Sincerely yours,

The 3^rd Grade Class

~R. Vega

June 17, 2002