As SHOOT celebrates a milestone, its 65th year of publication, we continue a recently launched series of interviews and features that will run throughout the summer on SHOOTonline and in SHOOT’s newsletters and special custom email blast in which industry executives, creatives and artists reflect on the changes they’ve seen over the decades, as well as essential dynamics that have endured. These folks–from different sectors of the business–will also share their visions and aspirations for the future.
Perhaps most importantly, this special SHOOT coverage enables us to look back on the industry’s history, learn from it, and plum relevant lessons that will help us now and beyond. Mark Twain once famously said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” Twain’s insight underscores the importance of the past and its role in helping us better shape today and tomorrow.
Such perspectives are invaluable yet sadly often not properly considered as society’s tendency at times is to overlook history and its significance. Additionally, the new generation navigating our industry sometimes isn’t aware of the relevant history, having not experienced it firsthand. Hopefully helping to close those gaps will be SHOOT’s 65th Anniversary coverage which seeks to provide historical context and to benefit from its relevance to the present and what may lie ahead.
This week we connect with Brendan Gaul who was recently appointed global chief entertainment officer of McCann, bringing with him the original entertainment company, Traverse32, from IPG Mediabrands. This move signals McCann’s focus on building brands through all flavors of creativity, using long-form entertainment storytelling to create deeper connections with audiences. Gaul reports directly to Daryl Lee, global CEO of McCann and McCann Worldgroup.
Gaul, who will continue to serve as global president of Traverse32, brings a proven history of developing entertainment properties. The recent Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Film win for The Final Copy of Ilon Specht, produced in partnership with McCann and Breakwater Studios, exemplifies this success. The film, which also garnered a Gold, Silver, and Bronze Lion, demonstrates the power of culturally resonant stories that brands can authentically tell. This marks the second Grand Prix for Gaul, highlighting his effectiveness in producing hits for brands.
Gaul’s return to McCann marks a homecoming. Gaul started his career at McCann in 2002 as an art director. He left McCann in 2005 to build branded content units in J3, UM and IPG Mediabrands before launching Traverse32 in 2020 as a pure original content company working with brands. Recent original properties have included Dear Santa, a film and then TV series for the U.S. Postal Service, which won Best Documentary Premiere at The Heartland Film Festival and Best Feature Film at TribecaX, and 5B, a documentary about the first AIDS ward in San Francisco set up by nurses, for Johnson & Johnson, holding a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score and gaining inclusion in the permanent collection at MoMA in NYC. Traverse32 has multiple projects in development with top Hollywood players like Imagine Entertainment, Breakwater Studios, Blink49 and Helium, and is represented by CAA.
Gaul has been working closely with McCann this past year, highlighted by his instrumental role in producing the Ilon Specht documentary for McCann and L’Oreal Paris.
Here are reflections and observations from Gaul in response to several questions posed by SHOOT:
SHOOT: How has your business model evolved over the years? What principles and beliefs have remained constant to help shape your company/agency/organization? What dynamics have changed, causing you and your company to adapt–and how have you adapted?
GAUL: For many years we were creating work that looked like a film or series but was advertising. The talent deals and the agreements with creative partners and distributors were set up in the way that traditional work from brands is built. What that means is that after the talent contract is over–the content needs to come down, that the creative partners don’t participate in the success of the work and that after a media plan is over, the work disappears. We are creating and managing real IP with brands and partners.
We have evolved our way of working and set up systems to create work that is considered programming by distributors, festivals and studios. Our creative partners participate in the success of the work, and we repositioned the role of the brand and the agency as the support mechanism that supports a director or talent in creating their best work vs executing an idea without creative control.
SHOOT: What lessons have you learned over the course of your career that remain vital to you today? What new or recent lessons have you found particularly significant?
GAUL: No matter how strong your plan is, there will be changes and there will be adjustments. The best work comes when you leave space for the project to evolve and let the art tell you what it needs to be. Is it more important to stick to the plan or to make an adjustment that will make the work that much better? I am a big believer that, if you have a positive intention, things will work out better than you would have planned them.
I’ve planned to take films to a certain film festival, and we don’t get in. We then get into a festival that we never thought we could have and have a bigger premiere than expected. Or I’ve had my heart set on an actor, and they pass on the opportunity only to be replaced by someone that is even better. Leave space in your plan to say yes to what presents itself.
SHOOT: What industry developments over the years–and/or recently–have had the greatest positive influence on you and your company, agency, organization? Whose work has had the greatest positive influence on you?
GAUL: You can’t create a diamond without pressure. The pressure that is being caused by the consolidation of media companies and the maturation of streaming subscriptions on the content marketplace is creating real opportunity for brands to play a bigger role in traditional programming. Their financial contribution can help to alleviate some of that pressure but it can’t just be about financing.
Algorithms and best practices from platforms are creating a sea of sameness around product advertising and we are being optimized to the point that everything looks the same. Brand is the key differentiator. We must invest in brands and refocus on what brands stand for- that should drive everything from product portfolio to what content is created. Brands exist to create products or experiences that enhance consumers lives. Without a renaissance of brand building, we are destined to live in a world of private label products and communications that are only slightly different than one another.
SHOOT: What changes in the business do you love and why? And, what changes in the business do you dislike and why?
GAUL: I love and welcome any change that helps to bring focus to what we are here to do–connect brands to consumers through best-in-class storytelling. I despise when our industry focuses on some trend or something that is ultimately a distraction. We spend so much time chasing something that often becomes irrelevant or obsolete. We need to stay focused on the work and how that work will move consumers towards brands and how that work will move those brands forward in their goals. I think about MCN’s (Multi Channel Networks) and the Metaverse as examples of the industry distractions I’m referencing.
SHOOT: What do you look back on as among your greatest accomplishments professionally?
GAUL: I think the greatest accomplishment has to be winning the Grand Prix for Film at this year’s Lions for The Final Copy of Ilon Specht with L’Oreal Paris and director Ben Proudfoot. To win in the Film category is a big deal! This is a category that traditionally awards work that feels more traditionally like a spot. I think it’s a signal that the industry must pay attention to and reward long form work from brands. When I started making branded content there weren’t categories in shows to submit it to. Now it’s winning the categories where it previously wasn’t welcomed. But the true achievement is finally getting recognition for the radical trailblazer that Ilon Specht was. We all know the line “Because I’m Worth It” but we didn’t know the truth behind that line and the anger that prompted her to write this four-word feminist manifesto. The Grand Prix win elevates her story and puts it into our industry’s canon of great work.
SHOOT: What prompted you to get into the advertising/filmmaking business to begin with?
GAUL: I always wanted to be a filmmaker. I moved to NYC in 1993 to attend film school at Pratt. I got a retail job to pay the rent and quickly became fascinated by the “theater of retail” and began working to help build consumer experiences for new brands that were launching at the time like A|X Armani Exchange and SEPHORA. I got laid off after September 11th and wound up having a conversation with a sr. creative director at McCann. He said, “You understand brands and what drives a consumer to buy something, and you went to film school, let’s see if you can make a TV commercial.” It’s now come full circle, and I am creating successful film and TV projects for brands. I’ve been at IPG for 23 years and am thrilled to return to McCann leading Entertainment globally.
SHOOT: Looking towards the future, what are the most pressing questions for which you are still seeking answers as you seek to meaningfully evolve your career and your company? Responses can span such sectors as the economy, business, creative, technological, media and/or any other area you deem relevant.
GAUL: The future is unclear. The state of our business and the norms around it continue to shift. That creates great opportunity to rethink and rebuild the way brands, directors & producers, and distributors relate to one another. We can redefine and reclaim the meaning of partnership, that currently has been reduced to shorthand for a transaction. We can set up new systems where there is real value exchange, creative integrity is championed, and the result is better and more entertaining work that audiences love. That love transfers to the brand and product sales.
SHOOT: What’s your fondest industry remembrance? Your most profound remembrance? Your funniest remembrance?
GAUL: I have had the opportunity to do a lot of things and create many incredible memories in my career but my fondest must be when our film 5B, that we created with Johnson & Johnson, had a red-carpet premiere at the Festival de Cannes in 2019. It was the first brand funded feature to ever be an official selection at the festival, but the most powerful thing was that the nurses that created ward 5B at SF General in 1983, the first dedicated AIDS ward in the world, and who are the subjects of our film, were finally being recognized. They walked alongside celebrities like Julianne Moore, Priyanka Chopra-Jonas, Miles Teller and others up those famous steps at Cannes in front of a global audience and press. The festival organizers coordinated it so that they walked to the song “California Dreamin’” which made it even more magical. It’s a reminder that when you are working in documentary you must be focused on protecting and celebrating the subject at every turn. If you find the truth in their story and protect it, that’s when it becomes a win for the brand.
SHOOT: When did you start reading SHOOT and what were you doing then? How has SHOOT been useful to you during your career?
GAUL: I started reading SHOOT as an art director at McCann in 2003. We all aspired to have our work featured in SHOOT one day. SHOOT is the place to discover work that I am jealous of- the work that I wish I made. It’s a great barometer for what is happening in the industry and what “the best” looks like.
————————————————————————————–
Publishers note:
Thank you to Brendan Gaul for contributing to our ongoing series of 65th Anniversary articles which you will see over the next few months.
If you’d like to see the other features in the SHOOT 65th Anniversary Series, please click on links below:
We kicked off with a series of standalone articles…
Matt Miller, AICP president and CEO
Dave Rolfe, global head of production for WPP/Hogarth
Luke Ricci, president of RSA US
Frank Scherma, president, RadicalMedia
Bonnie Goldfarb, co-founder/EP, harvest films
Jeffrey A. Greenbaum, partner, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz (FKKS)
We followed up with two features focusing on a cross-section of execs from various industry segments:
Click Here for SHOOT’s 65th Anniversary Reflections: Then, Now and Looking Ahead, Part 1
Click Here for SHOOT’s 65th Anniversary Reflections: Then, Now and Looking Ahead, Part 2
And, here’s a fun look back at some of the content and Ads relating to our 50th & 40th Anniversaries:
Click Here to see a feature series we published in the months leading up to our 50th Anniversary Issue which includes interviews with Lee Clow, Robert Greenberg, Bob Giraldi, Larry Bridges, Rich Silverstein, Stephen Dickstein, Phil Geier, Joe Pytka, Bryan Buckley, Joe Sedelmaier, Dan Wieden, Susan Credle, Noam Murro, Tony Granger, Kevin Roddy, Kristi VandenBosch, David Lubars, Jon Kamen, Stefan Sonnenfeld, Tom Kuntz and Lance Acord.
Click Here to see the SHOOT 50th Anniversary Issue published in Nov. 2010.
Click Here to see SHOOT House Ads leading up to our 40th Anniversary Issue published in Nov. 2000. A big hit at the time, they are still fun to look at. The Ads featured Cheryl Berman, Alex Bogusky, Texas East, Nitza From, Lyle Greenfield, Matt Miller, Tom Mooney, Barbara Mullins, David Perry, Joe Pytka, and Scott Ross.
Click Here to see Industry Ads from the SHOOT 40th Anniversary Issue published in Nov. 2000
Click Here for our special 65th Anniversary Retro Ad Rates.
