The Work That Made Me: Justin Bajan
Justin Bajan is co-founder and creative director at Virginia-based agency Familiar Creatures. Justin started Familiar Creatures in 2018 with former Martin Agency colleague, Dustin Artz. Since opening their doors, the agency has given challenger brands like Duke’s Mayonnaise and Crunch Fitness the strategy and creative they need to gain consistent attention, convert customers and achieve meaningful business results.
Prior to Familiar Creatures, Justin has almost two decades of experience writing and creative directing culturally relevant and award-winning work at places like GSD&M, Mullen/Lowe, Hill Holliday, David&Goliath, The Martin Agency and Arnold Worldwide. He’s worked on long-running campaigns featuring the Geico’s Gecko and Progressive’s Flo. Justin won a One Show Gold Pencil for his work on Kia's 2012 Super Bowl commercial and a Titanium Cannes Lion for his work on Benjamin Moore.
LBB> The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Justin> Many come to mind. Budweiser Frogs, 'Wassupp', Monster 'When I Grow Up'.
But the one I go back to from time to time is the MTV promos with Donal Logue as the taxi driver. They never seemed to really be about anything but they felt so real and visceral. And way less 'addy' than anything on TV at the time. My constant mission since I started as a copywriter was how do I write the way people talk? Those videos did such a great job of that.
LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Justin> My mom. She could tell that I liked to write, liked to make people laugh, liked to be 'creative', so she said I should major in advertising. So I picked a college that had advertising and never really looked back. She was diagnosed with cancer as I was about to take my first job at Mullen. I fortunately had the chance to share some of my work with her before she passed. Thanks mom!
LBB> The creative work (film/album/game/ad/album/book/poem etc) that I keep revisiting…
Justin> Seinfeld, the show, will always be a well that I draw inspo from. Especially seasons one to six. The timing. The characters. The writing. It’s timeless. A slightly cooler answer would be 'Kid A' by Radiohead. It dropped into my brain as it was almost done developing in high school and has remained there ever since. Every song feels like a movie.
LBB> My first professional project…
Justin> A print campaign for a first-of-its-kind dry erasable paint called Ideapaint. Me and my partner were the only juniors at Mullen and we were fortunate to sell something through. It was fun to make and fun to see the reprints throughout the office. Kids, ask your parents what reprints were.
LBB> The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Justin> Microsoft Teams.
LBB> The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that still makes me jealous…
Justin> I’m going to cheat and say the entire Skittles and Starburst run at Chiat/Day NY. You can share any one of those ads today and people will still laugh. I’m obsessed with the concept of timelessness in comedy and I would have loved to have been a part of that work.
LBB> The creative project that changed my career…
Justin> Probably the Super Bowl spot I made for Kia Motors. It’s what got me an interview at The Martin Agency where I eventually met my future co-founder. It was also cool that it got greenlit by Kia on my birthday, and then two days later my first baby was born. The biggest of all shoutouts go to my amazing wife who spent almost entire days with a newborn while I toiled on what kind of sandwich should two lumberjacks be sawing inside of a racetrack.
LBB> The work that I’m proudest of…
Justin> You mean which baby do I like the most? Sure, that’s easy… The work we did for Kernel Season’s comes to mind. We were able to capture a kind of unhinged joy you don’t really see in advertising very much. It allowed us to work with Ben&Dave, a dream team I’ve always wanted to work with and led to us working together again on Crunch Fitness.
It was astounding what we were able to pull off with such a small budget and I’m really proud of the silly headlines, banners and activations we were able to sell through as well.
LBB> I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Justin> Yes, Ideapaint was the first real ad I ever produced but the first work I did was in-store display work for Panera Bread. While I did learn a lot about the tactical world of QSR, the actual output was not a 'true reflection' of my personality and taste level. That being said, I would love to work on Panera Bread again, because the brand has really evolved since I started on them way back then.
LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Justin> 'Welcome to Duke’s' Country for Duke’s Mayo. It puts such a loud and unabashed exclamation point on the three plus years we’ve had with Duke’s as their AOR and I hope a sign of more to come.
