Jason Pickar

Resume

Jason — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:19:00 +0000

Goal:
To bring my humor and ideas to an innovative agency striving for original, award winning work.

Relevant work:
Copywriter, Tribal DDB (May 2007 - Present)
Diageo, Philips, Clean & Clear, SciFi Channel

Copywriter, MRM Worldwide (June 2006 - May 2007)
Wendy’s, Nikon, Exxon-Mobil, Kohl’s

Copywriter – Intern, McCann Erickson (Summer 2005)
Intel, Biscuits & Bath (dog day care)

Somewhat-relevant work:
Store Manager, Hold The Carbs (Summer 2004)
Opened/Closed store, took inventory, sold low-carb food

Tour Guide, Queen’s University (2003-2006)
Led guided tours of the school’s campus

Irrelevant work:
Reality Show Cameraman, “BillionAyre” (A week in May 2006)
Was cameraman for the pilot of a failed reality show starring “Bodog.net” founder Calvin Ayre

Swim Instructor, JCC Camp (Summers 2000-2003)
Taught kids how to swim

Speedo Salesman, Speedo Store (Summer 2003)
Sold bathing suits

Education:
B.A.(Honors) Film Studies, Queen’s University in Kingston, ON

Awards:

Philips - Second Puberty, World Bronze Medal - New York New Media Festival 2008

Stunningnikon.com/dslr, World Silver Medal - New York Interactive & Alternative Media Festival 2007
“F is for Cookie”, Official Selection - Swansea Bay International Film Festival

Participant Trophy, “Little League” baseball

Stuff I can do:
Final Cut Pro, Film and light for 16mm/video, standup comedy, improv comedy, write

This blog is no longer…

Jason — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:08:54 +0000

I’m keeping the archive up for, well, archival purposes. If you’re bored, check out the new site I’m Not Bored Anymore Dot Com

Portfolio

Jason — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:06:37 +0000

I’m going to just let the work speak for itself. If you like what you see, feel free to contact me.

So here’s the deal, I’m a copywriter at Tribal DDB, was a copywriter at MRM, I do standup comedy, and have a bit of a rap career. What more could you want?

My brand experience includes alcohol, entertainment, quick service restaurants, skincare, electronics, fashion and industrial lubricants. I wouldn’t normally mention that last one, but I like how it reads. Industrial Lubricants. There’s a certain magic to it…

Alright here’s some of my favorite work:

Philips - Second Puberty

Stunning Nikon - D80 [Link is currently broken, I’m working on getting a copy to host on my site]

Clean & Clear - Blackhead Eraser

Wendy’s Bureau for Better Value

(sorry, this one takes a little while to load. It will, and I like to think it’s worth the wait.)

Proposition 3-17

Ban Valentine’s Day

Banners:

Ketel One
Guinness - Alive Inside
Baileys - Get Together, Summer
SciFi.com - Battlestar Galactica
Smirnoff Ice

Print:
You can check out some of my print work here.

I was but a young copywriting intern at McCann Erickson when I did this print work in the summer of 2005. That is, of course, with the exception of my “butter” campaign. That was done in Canada with a talented illustrator during Winter 2006 - you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get work done in the Great White North during the Winter Olympics. As a side note, I don’t think Curling has been given a fair shake down here.

Other fun stuff:
I also wrote some fun :30 spots in my summer 2005 internship that you can find on the animator’s site (thanks Rohit!)

Since I studied film, I have a lot of work that I had a hand in, from writing to directing and acting. You can get a sense of one facet of my humor with F is For Cookie

Verizon Advertises Speed of Broadband…Delivers Movie After 24 Hours?!

Jason — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:52:07 +0000

R/GA just finished work on their newest Verizon Broadband project Action Hero. In it, you can upload a picture of yourself and direct your own movie from a series of choices. Unlike most Oddcast picture uploads (like Elf Yourself), however, your picture is turned into a 3D map and you actually look like you belong in the CGI film. Wow…cool. There is no doubt in my mind that R/GA will win many an award for this work.

Then what’s my issue? The site and strategy are clearly about the SPEED of Verizon Broadband. And I get my movie until 24 hours from now. Wait, what?! I expect things immediately when im surfing my interwebs - not 24 hours from now!! Their explanation? It usually takes months for a Hollywood production to render a film - and that’s great for a Hollywood production, but the metaphor doesn’t work for the ‘give it to me now’ Internet culture. By the time I get this movie I won’t care anymore - I’ll have already surfed to dozens of other sites and forgotten about how ’speedy’ Verizon Broadband is. All I’ll remember is that it took forever.

UPDATE: Half an hour after I completed my film, I was sent an email saying it was ready. I don’t know why they said 24 hours, and it certainly turned me off, but this gets my seal of approval.

New Look, and Where Have I Been?

Jason — Mon, 07 May 2007 15:41:51 +0000

Hope you all enjoy the new, fancier jasonpickar.com

Where have I been, you may ask? I’ve been helping my brother with his new endeavor: The Monkey Goes. Soon it will be filled with loads of video and other humorous content.

As for this site…updates will be coming a little less often. Keep your eyes peeled, though. This blog is not dead.

The AOL brand managers must really like Yahoo!

Jason — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:00:36 +0000

An homage to a well designed site? Maybe, I’m more of a google guy myself so I can’t really say. But you would think the designer would have made a few more cosmetic changes, no?

BoingBoing via Consumerist

Marketing Research: Don’t believe the hype (hoo-oo-yea-a-ha-ha)

Jason — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:24:12 +0000

Last week, MediaPost printed results from some Gen-Y research. There’s a sweet sweet list of the top 15 brands according to 100 of the most trend-forward individuals. Wow…100 people! And they’re trendsetters so I have to believe them! First of all, here are 15 of the top brands (note, this was before the whole Jet Blue fiasco, but I’m still down with Jet Blue. Sure I may have to wait a long long LONG time, but hey - DirecTV!):

1. Apple
2. Trader Joe’s
3. Jet Blue
4. In-N-Out Burger
5. Ben & Jerry’s
6. Whole Foods
7. Adidas
8. American Apparel
9. Target
10. H & M clothing stores
11. Levi’s
12. Volkswagen
13. Converse
14. Vitamin Water
15. Red Stripe Jamaican beer

Alright, cool I can accept most of these. Sure, Levi’s seems out of place but OK. Now, lets look in depth at one specific case: Trader Joe’s. Now, as a part of Generation Y (Really? Generation Y? That’s the best we could do? REALLY?!), I’m down with Joe’s because I can always get food that I can’t really find anywhere else, I feel like I’m supporting smaller distributors, and all in all the quality of the food is pretty damn high. The chance to support smaller companies and farms follows that pesky cultural trend toward a Greener lifestyle - makes sense, right?

Apparently not. Apparently, I’m supposed to like Trader Joe’s because “the company has a dorky newsletter and makes their employees wear silly Hawaiian shirts.” WHAT?! I don’t go grocery shopping because of HAWAIIAN SHIRTS! Are they kidding? I can just imagine the interviewer - “You like Trader Joe’s? They wear Hawaiian shirts, do you like that?” Come on, give me a break.

Ever since I watched that video about “coolhunting” in both my sociology and marketing communications classes back in college, I’ve been skeptical about the results of Marketing Research. Well, not just because of that video, but work with me here. They were finding the cool trendsetters, you know, like the guy that stopped who was wearing a gasmask. I kid you not, he was an example of a trendsetter. Because gasmasks have been really trendy recently. Well, maybe in…no, I’m gonna hold back from making an Iraq joke.)

What’s the point? Yes, these brands are popular. Many are popular because of the culture within their corporation that then leads to better customer experiences. We shouldn’t look at research and then claim that “they also responded to brands that they saw as ‘dorky’ but ‘totally themselves.’” Let’s use our brains here - it’s not that brands are dorky (hawaiian shirts are dorky? Oh crap…) The brands listed strive for authenticity: that uber-important buzzword that means the brands aren’t bullshitting the consumers, or at least aren’t appearing to. They’re looking at cultural trends and entrenching themselves within different cultural groups - and that’s great.

Come on MediaPost, don’t believe the hype (hooo-wa-yea-yea-ha or however that should truly be spelled). (Yeeeeeeeeya booooyeeeeee.)

The Nats: It warms my heart

Jason — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:37:36 +0000

Since I was born and raised in the DC Metro area, it makes me smile when I hear about a DC franchise like the Washington Nationals doing something right. Of course, something had to go wrong first.

Apparently, the opening day at RFK could have gone smoother. Aside from complaints about the team itself, the main issue was the extremely long lines at concessions, and the conspicuous lack of hot dogs. What kind of ballpark doesn’t have enough hot dogs? Knee-jerk answer: not a good one. But apparently, after an email complaint to Nationals President Stan Kasten, one lucky guy not only got a few gift certificates as an apology, but also a visit by the man himself

“The biggest surprise, though, came last Friday night when Mr. Kasten himself came by our seats to apologize in person. That’s the big deal here. It’s not often you see the President of the team in the upper deck visiting people who’ve written him, and that gives me an awful lot of hope for the franchise in the long run, even if this year’s 2-7 start doesn’t.” [**NOTE TO SELF: get a style sheet with a better looking blockquote]

Aaaahhhh…going above and beyond. It should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind each step of the way. Kudos, Stan Kasten - you just earned your team a lifelong fan. The other guy, that is. Not me - I’m more of a football/hockey guy myself.

RSS and A Confession

Jason — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:04:59 +0000

I’m about to make a really big confession, one that may hurt my indie-web cred. This is kind of hard for me to deal with, but here we go: I don’t use an RSS feed. There, I said it. I don’t RSS. Is that a crime? Should I feel ashamed that I read blogs the old fashioned way? When I am scouring the interwebs for entertainment and information, I don’t want to go to a boring, gray page with a long trail of articles that I should be reading because I subscribed to the feeds - it’s just not my style.

Personally, I like thinking “hey, I wonder what Tyler Durden is reporting”, immersing my self in the celeblog gossip, and then moving on to a different mindset, like Gizmodo or Seth Godin. I know that RSS is the cool thing to do, that I don’t need to go all over the web to read sites that I like - but there’s something to be said for deeply scouring the updates in one subject, and then moving on to another whenever I feel like it. I find this far more enjoyable than scrolling down a long page of mish-mashed information.

RSS keeps you locked in to reading a few blogs that you like - I’m not locked down, I can read whatever I want, whenever I want. That may just be my two cents, but I’m sure there are others out there who feel the same way.

Goodbye Good Music, NetRadio, Pandora

Jason — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:40:04 +0000

Pandora (in case you have been living under a rock) lets you input a band, artist, or song you like and creates a personalized Internet Radio station based on your preferences. You can constantly give it feedback and tell it if you like or don’t like a certain song. Thanks to Pandora, I have found many new artists and have gone to concerts that I would not have known about - all good things for the music industry, right? Apparently not.

Gizmodo interviewed Tim Westergreen, the co-founder of Pandora, asking his opinion of the new royalty rate hike that promises to put many many independant radio stations (both online and on-the-air) out of business.

He brings up some excellent points. Point the first:

…higher rates mean more money for artists. The reality is that the few Internet radio companies that opt to continue (and it will be VERY FEW) will be forced to license directly from labels. In this scenario, the artist share of the revenue will shrink to almost nothing as the monies will go directly to the label and be subject to the usual artist royalty rate (post-recoupment) of single digit percentages. So not only will this eliminate the vast majority of online stations that are the ONLY source of indie music exposure, it will take what little revenue is left from the artists.

Interesting, the RIAA so rarely seems like it wants to needlessly suck money from groups that were already paying to publicize and popularize artists. Point the second:

…contrary to any statements by SoundExchange or RIAA representatives, Internet radio is not a highly profitable business nor will it be. For most (including Pandora), it’s still a money-loser at the old rates that we are working as hard as we can (15 full time sales people are on the job) to turn profitable in a year or two. The growth figures put out by JP Morgan (recently revised downward from $500M to $150M) don’t mean profitability—they mean more revenue which comes with greater costs. It’s a thin margin business at best. No one’s profiteering here.

There is something very broken about an industry front-group seeking to hurt its members while looking at the short-term gain of a few more bucks. This affects every radio station, including internet and college radio. It just seems like foolishness - let’s hope companies like Pandora find a way to survive.