The Joys of Creative Autonomy with Kit Fries

Kit Fries recently completed his first decade of decadence at Blue Chip, where he provides creative direction for White Castle, Lamb Weston, Brown-Forman, Panera Bread and Emerald Nuts.

A Missouri native, Kit has settled in the Milwaukee area after stints in Chicago and NYC. An avid collector of gig posters, he’s constantly running out of wall space and enjoys writing about himself in third person.

LBB> How did you hone your craft?

Kit> My first job out of the University of Missouri was as a radio copywriter for eight Cumulus stations in Mid-Missouri.

Looking back, I couldn’t have scripted a better way to start a career in advertising. I certainly didn’t know that at the time, nor would I have cared. I was confident I’d soon be writing bits for ‘Late Night with Conan O’Brien’.

That still hasn’t happened. Maybe he reads Little Black Book? But there were three things during my radio days that proved to be invaluable across my career in advertising.

The first was damn near complete and total creative autonomy. Radio production was a value-add for buying airtime on our stations. As long as I hit the key talking points provided by the clients, I could usually wrap up that message in whatever creative blanket I wanted.

Not only was I the copywriter, but I’d also produce the spots and often voice them. I had a vertical creative monopoly. If I felt like working on my Christopher Walken voice to promote the local gentlemen’s club or deliver the nightly specials at the dive bar down the street as Yoda, peppering Lucasfilm IP sound effects in the background, I did so with small-market impunity.

Second – and this was probably the most important takeaway – I learned how to write tight. Writing a :30 TV spot is tough, but you can lean on the visuals to do a lot of heavy lifting. Not on radio. Have to deliver a phone number? Promote the website? Mention a street address? 30 seconds becomes 15 real quick.

The third takeaway was about client relationships. Sometimes they would waive their option to a creative consultation, but often I’d get a verbal creative brief directly from the local jeweller or restaurateur. It was a great experience, and a rare one at that stage of my career. It helped me learn how to build relationships, all while finding my creative voice.

LBB> Do you like to start every project as a blank sheet or are you constantly collecting possible inspiration or references for future projects?

Kit> The latter. There is no blank sheet. Not after they clip your cord. From that moment on, everything stays with you to some extent.

In ‘The Creative Act’ Rick Rubin refers to it as the vessel and the filter. The world fills us (the vessel) with thoughts and feelings and relationships and dreams.

Even though we have many shared experiences, we each filter them in different ways. All that life becomes our source material for creativity.

For me, it can be very direct, like cribbing a visual device from a favorite film (‘Rushmore’ dir. Wes Anderson) to employ in a TV spot. It can also be abstract. Subconsciously summoning a rainy-day memory from my childhood if I need to write a manifesto to sell soup. It’s the emotional rolodex inside of us that will always separate actual intelligence from artificial.

There is no replication for human experience.

This is why constantly refreshing your cache with new interactions and experiences is vital to future creativity. Heed Anthony Bourdain’s advice and try new things. Eat. Travel. Talk to strangers. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Not because you’re doing research on the hard seltzer account you just landed, but because life fuels creative thinking.

And it’s up to you to decide which of those time capsules of inspiration you’re willing to burst for inspiration at work, or for other creative interests.

That’s the beauty of it. Life leads you to creativity but you’re totally in control.

LBB> Would you consider yourself an introvert or extravert – or something else? Why?

Kit> In my 20s and 30s, my needle leaned extravert, both professionally and personally. Throughout school I performed as a stage and commercial actor. In my post-grad years when I got into radio copywriting, I also spent time as a sports broadcaster. After moving from Missouri to Chicago, I met my wife Carla while we were taking improv classes at The Second City.

But over the years I’ve presented myself in an increasingly introverted manner, especially professionally. Somewhere along the way I discovered the incredible value of listening. To not just read the room, but to re-read it and underline the key passages. It continues to help me learn from my colleagues and to better understand the needs of my clients.

Across 25 years in advertising, I’ve found that there’s often no correlation between the loudest voice in the room and the smartest. But if you’re able to walk into a briefing or log onto a call and absorb the entirety of it – from the “how was your weekend” pleasantries, to the conflicting viewpoints shared and debated, to the eventual path of alignment – you’ll leave having learned a lot about the project and the people.

Eventually if the opportunity to rise into a leadership position presents itself – no matter how or when that happens across your timeline – you’ll be better equipped to make confident, sound decisions based on experience, not emotion.

LBB> Overall, what do you make of the industry’s creative output right now? What’s exciting you about it or frustrating you?

Kit> There’s a lot of cool shit going on out there.

As a proud x-ennial, I appreciate the overlap of eras. We used to wait years or even decades to watch seismic shifts occur. Analogue giving way to digital, or cable bending to streaming. But sea change has flooded the industry post-covid.

Whether it’s evolving tech, world events, the gloaming of the Greatest Generation or the consistently fleeting trends of social media, it’s easy for creative to get caught in those crosswinds. It can be both exhausting and exhilarating.

Here's one small example. When I watched the most recent Super Bowl with my 12-year-old, the ads with aging A-listers washed over him like tap water. But each time a YouTuber showed up in a spot, even in a non-speaking background role, he shot up in his seat, pointing at the screen like Leo in the OUATIH meme. It reminded me that we’re midstream in one of those massive cultural resets. In this case, the notion of celebrity.

Celebrity endorsement has always been dog-eared in the global brand playbook, and we continue to watch the tenets of ‘star power’ redefined in real-time.

On one hand, access to the old guard becomes more attainable for brands that want to play in the nostalgia space. A few years ago at Blue Chip, we were able to partner with ‘90s rap icon Coolio (incredibly kind, RIP) into a successful campaign for our friends at White Castle.

On the other hand, last December we tapped the cult of reality TV, with Bravo’s ‘Real Housewives’ encouraging consumers to leave their (Emerald) nuts out for Santa.

That evolution of celebrity in advertising isn’t isolated or simply spurred by a changing of the generational guard. It’s a byproduct of the way the world consumes media. It affects where we travel for TV production. It changes how we source talent and speak to different audiences. It’s all connected and it’s not about to slow down.

BTW, my son has no idea who Leo is, but he knows the meme.