The Work That Made Me: John Kovacevich

John Kovacevich is a creative director and the founder of Agency SOS. He’s an alum of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, FCB, Duncan Channon, and others. He’s made campaigns for everything from cars to cat food, pants to pretzels, hamburgers to HR software.

LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…

John> As a child of the 70s, I consumed a LOT of commercials growing up, but it was a book that made me want to get into the industry: “Ogilvy on Advertising.”

I bought it when I was in high school when it first came out and I devoured it. David Ogilvy’s lessons from those pages still kick around my brain.

A few years later, when I was in college and it was time to get my first internship, there was really only one agency on the list: Ogilvy & Mather. (It was there I learned a big lesson about agency life: clients come and go. But that’s a story for another time. 😀) 

LBB> The creative work that I keep revisiting…

John> Ever fall in love with a song that you heard on a commercial?

One of my all-time favourites is the piano track on the Häagen-Dazs anthem spot from 2004.

The ad was made by Goodby Silverstein & Partners (years before I worked there). It was directed by Matthias Zentner. Music was written by Christoph Blaser and Steffan Kahles and produced by Largoland Musicproduction.

It’s a gorgeous spot. And it may be the most beautiful piece of ad music ever written. I loved it well before I worked in advertising… and many years before I dreamed that I’d work with the folks who made it.

When I started working at GS&P, I asked about it and they said that it was so popular when it was released, the agency got lots of calls from people who wanted to play the song at their wedding.

While I was there, I tracked down a longer two-minute version of the track. And one of my favourite things to do was to put it on repeat on my headphones when I was tasked with writing my own anthem spots. (None of them ever lived up to that one, but the track inspired many a writing session.)

The tradition continues today. Whenever it’s time to write an anthem spot, I say, “I think I’ll listen to my old friend.” and put it on. It's still great.

LBB> My first professional project…

John> My first professional project is still one of my all-time favourites. (And not just because future princess Meghan Markle was in the spot.)

It was at Goodby Silverstein & Partners for Tostitos. I probably wrote a million different concepts and scripts before we sold “Ponderences,” those little internal monologues we all do when we’re in the grocery store, considering what to buy.

Looking back, I’m especially grateful for the mentorship of the ACDs on that project: Marc Sobier and Hart Rusen. (I really didn’t know ANYTHING about commercial production before I got the gig at GS&P and they were infinitely patient, encouraging, and gracious.)

Plus, the spots were directed by wonderful Speck/Gordon! It was a pretty great “first ride”...and I naively thought all future projects would be as great. (Spoiler: they weren’t. )

LBB> The piece of work that still makes me jealous…

John> I know its influence is ubiquitous in ad land now, but I still remember how freakin’ DELIGHTED I was the first time I saw “Dumb Ways to Die” at Cannes Lions in 2013.

It was, and still is, the perfect combo of humour, animation, and music. It was catchy as hell (even after many repeat plays) and created characters that became valuable IP. Plus, I still can’t really believe that the agency sold a three-minute song as a way to promote train safety.

“Work that enters culture” is such a tired trope, but this legit did and deserved all the flowers it received. 

LBB> The creative project that changed my career…

John> I made a lot of work that I am proud of, but it was an “internal” project at Goodby Silverstein & Partners that probably did more to establish my reputation (and is still a thing that people ask me about, 15 years later.)

It was a weekly show we made for the agency called “Morning Announcements.” It was sort of a Daily Show / Weekend Update-esque send-up of agency culture and news. (We wrote up an oral history of it a few years back for the 10-year anniversary.)

It was a side-project that put me on the radar for others in the agency and opened up opportunities on briefs and clients I never would have gotten otherwise. It taught me a ton about production and crafting a joke and making an audience happy. It taught me about the value of content that creates community and builds culture. 

Plus, it was just… fun. A chance to be funny and entertain and not worry so much about “the rules” of creating content.

LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…

John> We had a chance to help Element[AL] Wines launch their first-of-its-kind aluminium wine bottle.

There are a lot of wonderful, environmental benefits to aluminium, but the brief wasn’t “sell the eco credentials” but rather, to make these sleek, silvery bottles a must-have accessory. We helped them come up with a launch campaign that owes more to fashion than vineyards–not your traditional wine campaign for not your traditional wine.

And it was so fun to see it come to live in connected TV, social, spectacular out-of-home, and print in iconic magazines like Vogue and Elle.