Dark Days One: Welcome Juan Camilo

This is Part One of a short series of posts I hope to make that will fill those of you who are interested (read: the flack at Omnicom who’s assigned to read my blog, making sure I don’t spill the beans on anything of any real import) in on what’s been happening in monkeyville for the last month. I’ll try to work through it all as sequentially as possible. I’ve fried a few brain cells in the last month; it might be difficult.

Production calendars are a staple of the ad jungle; they tell us what’s coming up, what’s going on and where we need to be– hopefully months in advance. And, as a Creative Director who’s been pigeonholed as a broadcast guy, production calendars are my friend as the process tends to be long, involved, time intensive and massively expensive. I want to know what needs to be done and by when, as I need to throw bodies into the breach as needed, making sure our agency-side magic is pulled off as seamlessly as possible. Any little hiccup in the process can create an avalanche of shit downstream.

So, when the Labor Day Holidays passed and one of the writers on one of my teams, Chava, failed to return from holiday without warning– and as my many production calendars began to coalesce into a giant blob of ink centering on the following few weeks– I was left scrambling to find a replacement.

So, welcome Juan Camilo Moore. I hired Juan Camilo (or J.C. to me– as opposed to J.D., a Writer/ACD on another of my teams) direct from University, grabbing him even before he’d completed his Senior year. I felt bad about keeping him from earning his degree for about fifteen seconds because, one second later, we formulated a plan whereby he’ll spend a few half-days doing coursework to finish out the semester and will transfer his credits to a Uni closer to the office thereafter. So congratulations S.M.U., you’ve just gained a future graduate who’s destined for great things.

J.C. comes to the team with tremendous potential, boundless energy and the benefit of having worked within my group for the past two summers as an intern.

The only downside is both of my groups are broadcast production heavy– and we’re in the middle of the heaviest part of our schedule– and, as a Junior, he’ll need to do some serious, sink or swim, on the job training.

Fortunately, he’s partnered with Jose (who’s recently celebrated a milestone birthday), in whom I place a tremendous amount of faith– not only in his innate ability as a creative but also in his expanding depths as a manager (and mentor)– having worked with him previously when we were assigned to the PepsiCo business.

So that’s the bedrock of the “Dark Days” story; everything else (over)flows from there. Stay tuned. Good times.

To lighten things up a bit, I’ve added a new track to “Music for Monkeys” (right sidebar) sitting at #58: Röyksopp’s “Remind Me.” The track is from 2001 but has gained recent acclaim as the backing track to a Geico “Caveman” spot here in the US. If you like it, say so– I’ve got several hours worth of their music in my iTunes and can add more.

Email Article Saturday, October 21st, 2006 at 01:42pm Mack Simpson

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