The Work That Made Me: Dave Schiff
Dave Schiff began his advertising career at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, during the rise and establishment of that shop as the world’s preeminent creative agency. Over the course of 10 years, he became an executive creative director, overseeing 250MM in business, and creating award-winning work for brands like MINI, Molson, IKEA, Under Armour, and Coca-Cola. With Coke Zero, he engineered the most successful new product launch for Coke in 25 years, with seven straight years of double-digit growth quarter over quarter.
In 2012 Dave left CPB to found Made, in Boulder, Colorado, where he helped Clayton Homes, a Berkshire company, go from a largely unknown seller of manufactured homes to one of the biggest homebuilders in the country across all home categories.
His work on Lyft tripled rides in one year, enabling the quirky ride-hailing start-up to become a dominant player in the category, on par with Uber. He led a successful relaunch of Firefox, allowing the browser to reclaim lost share from Chrome, and with the help of Dwayne Johnson, propelled Under Armour’s Freedom from its roots in philanthropy to the radar of pop culture.
Dave joined Standard Practice in 2024, where he is a co-owner, strategist, and creative director. He has led the agency’s recent work on the global Under Armour brand, including the development of a new strategy and positioning. In addition, he helped international cybersecurity firm Proof Point leverage its human-centric approach to cybersecurity and spearheaded a campaign announcing Clayton Homes as the first homebuilder with net-zero-ready capability in every home it makes.
Dave lives in the woods and detests writing about himself in the third person, as he has done so profusely here.
LBB> The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Dave> When I was seven years old, there was a PSA where a Native American travels through pristine wilderness, eventually arriving at a highway littered with trash people had thrown from their cars. At the end, a single tear streams down his cheek.
There are obvious reasons the ad became controversial as it aged, but seven year-old me was horrified in precisely the way the creators intended. After seeing it, I would’ve sooner thrown a puppy out the window than a bag of trash. Not sure that was a KPI but if so, they nailed it.
LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Dave> In 1998, I started seeing ads that Errol Morris did for Miller High Life.
They were simple, insight-driven spots, and the writing was brilliant. From that point forward, I would stop whatever I was doing when one of those commercials came on. I would pause phone calls, turn off music, and plead with roommates to shut the fuck up, so I could hear every word.
The irony is, that work didn’t inspire me to get into advertising; if anything it made me more scared. It would never have occurred to me that I might make something like that.
LBB> The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Dave> There is nothing I periodically rewatch or reread. I have lists of things that I want to rewatch and reread, because I know I could experience them over and over and come away with something different each time. But there’s so much new stuff coming out, it’s hard to look back. In fact, as I’m writing this, I’m realising I’ll never get to those lists. Not ever. Which makes me wonder, what else am I lying to myself about?
LBB> My first professional project…
Dave> The first real ad I ever did, literally the first idea I ever wrote down in my sketchbook, was for IKEA. And I was so scared that I read the brief like scripture. Buried somewhere in the middle was a fact that stood out to me. When IKEA makes something, they don’t start with design. They start with the price. Literally just the number. And they do crazy stuff to hit that number–like repurposing cold war munitions parts because, look, when you turn them upside down, they make pretty cool lampshades.
So I sketched a billboard that was just a giant IKEA price tag, with an actual piece of IKEA furniture hanging off it. The campaign won the Grand Obie that year, but it’s not exactly a mind-blowing concept. If anything, it was visual plagiarism of a single sentence cherry-picked from the brief.
LBB> The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Dave> A few things leap to mind, but I’m not gonna mention them specifically. This is a hard business, and when I see work like that out in the world, it feels bad to spend much time revelling in it. Mostly, I think, what did they do wrong, and what can I learn from it. It’s more fun to identify one thing that might’ve salvaged it.
Usually it’s something simple, but glaringly obvious in hindsight. Anyone who thinks they’re above making something really bad hasn’t made enough stuff yet. Every great creative I know has made something terrible. But they never make the same mistake twice.
LBB> The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Dave> I remember seeing AirBnB’s campaign from a few years ago, with the line, “Don’t go there. Live there.” As a guy who loves words, I can’t think of five words that are accomplishing more than those. Think about it. You turn the prospect of staying in a stranger’s home, with weird family pictures and weird cutlery and weird invisible particulate matter on every surface, and you position it as the one thing that eludes even the wealthiest traveller–the perspective of being a local.
With one line of copy. I will readily admit to wishing I had written it.
LBB> The creative project that changed my career…
Dave> Leading the launch of Coke Zero.
After back-to-back disasters with New Coke and C2, retailers were mad. The beverage industry predicted we’d be gone in six months. Instead we had double-digit growth, quarter over quarter, for seven years straight.
It was the most successful new product launch in 25-years for Coke, and the work that anchored it all was the result of a simple question we asked ourselves: What would actually happen if Coke Zero tasted exactly like Coke?
The truth is, it would cannibalise sales, and there would be infighting, and, maybe, as we immortalised in more than a dozen commercials, the Coke side of the business would try to bring legal action against the Coke Zero side. It was the first time the company pulled back the curtain, and made itself vulnerable. It wasn’t manufactured happiness. It was a refreshing sip of reality. And it did the trick.
LBB> The work that I’m proudest of…
Dave> Coke Zero and Lyft are up there. And Under Armour Freedom. But the answer is a brand you’ve probably never heard of.
Ten years ago, a guy named Kevin Clayton read me a few letters he kept in his desk drawer. At the time Clayton was the biggest builder of manufactured homes (aka mobile homes) in the country.
In essence, the letters all said the same thing: “My childhood home kept us all warm and happy. It didn’t matter that people made fun of us, it was a wonderful home to grow up in.” When we asked what the goal for the work was, Kevin said he wanted to keep getting the letters, but without the part where people were made fun of.
The work not only stood up for Clayton’s current customer, but gave people who might never consider a Clayton home permission to look. It also helped Clayton grow into one of the largest homebuilders in the country, across every category of home. It’s not a glamorous example. But for lack of a better phrase, it felt like it meant something.
Standard Practice's recent work for Clayton Homes, 'A Simple Ask'
LBB> I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Dave> I led the disastrous Super Bowl outing for GroupOn in 2011. I don’t cringe about the spots themselves, or the execution. The outpouring of sanctimony was expected, and the Conan O’Brien parodies were funny. But we couldn’t defend ourselves, because we didn’t do our strategic homework. That’s what makes me cringe. I broke a rule I didn’t yet know: Never be disruptive for disruption’s sake.
There has to be a great strategy in play, and a legitimate role for the product. When you don’t have that, you’re just throwing grenades. In this case, GroupOn subscriptions actually went up, but the brand image took a big hit. And while I learned from the mistake, it came at the expense of a client.
LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Dave> I have something very specific in mind, which I can’t say. So I’ll say this: Many years ago I did a campaign to help launch Under Armour in basketball. What I learned back then, that’s still true today, is that Under Armour is nothing like Nike or Adidas.
Haters will say, ‘Of course it’s not, those brands are awesome!’, or something like that. But the fact that there are haters in the first place tells you the most important thing: there’s something there, something real, that’s not for everyone. And that something could be pretty compelling in a category dominated by pre-approved pop-culture darlings.
To clarify, this is me saying I’m excited by things I can’t talk about with you, but am currently talking about with Under Armour.
