San Francisco Boy

Know Your San Francisco Thirds

This Irish Spring-like billboard at Fourth Avenue and Geary Boulevard in San Francisco's Inner Richmond district touts the opening of a new Fresh & Easy grocery store at (presumably nearby) "3rd & Carroll".

Hmmm... where's Carroll? I wondered when I passed by recently.

A quick map check answered my native confusion. The agency behind the ad has its Thirds misplaced. A new F&E is opening on Third. Third Street—way, way across town in The City's Bayview district (B Pin on map below), almost 10 miles as the Google street mapping car zig zags.

Fresh idea! Keep the billboard, just sticker it with new directions. For less than two miles west, near 32nd Avenue and Clement Street, another Fresh & Easy opens for business soon (A Pin on map), unpublicized but convenient walking distance from my house.

Web Attack! Wallscape

Silicon Alley, Manhattan, June 2000: Admiring (or trembling before) the outdoor advertising I arranged for our Web Attack! eMarketing conference—The Internet Goes to Broadway!—produced by Michael Tchong's ICONOCAST. In my bag are 24"x36" event posters, a mite smaller than the six-story version.

Air rights and other legal matters between adjacent building owners almost scuttled the wallscape implementation.

Bryce 2 Print Display Ad

Maybe the best ad creative I ever conceptualized, wrote and placed sold the insanely cool 3D modeling capabilities of Bryce 3D software, developed and marketed by Carpinteria, California-based MetaTools (formerly HSC, later MetaCreations).

Love those adjective call-outs with late-'90s drop shadowing!

Small Print: Gorgeous Cambrian Pipeline main imagery courtesy ArtEffect Design Studio, Los Angeles.

Computer Associates Testimonial Sheets

Channeling my journalism chops, I wrote a product marketing customer profile series—Superior Solutions—to sell Computer Associates accounting and business software. CA's corporate tagline at the time: Software Superior by Design.

Sourcing a hockey puck proved the biggest challenge for the Knicks/Rangers piece; dining at Joyce Goldstein's fondly remembered Square One proved none at all. Spreadsheet-wise, SuperCalc once had a significant market share. Notice the classic Ogilvy on Advertising print ad layouts I asked designers to apply to Royal Court and Greenpeace pieces.

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