QUASIMODO
In 2016, after years of being the voice of Schweigert, "the official hotdog of the Minnesota Twins", I was called on to create some new radio for the Twins 2016 season. Things went so well for Schweigert at Target Field, they asked me to create new commercials when they became "the official hotdog of the Minnesota Vikings" and the brand new US Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis. We had some fun with sound design, thanks to Doug Dixon of Audio Ruckus Recording.
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Back in the late 90's, I was honored to meet the founder of Chipotle, Steve Ells, and to do the first man-on-the-street commercials for his, at that time, small chain. He wanted the work to be fun and a little edgy. I traveled to Denver (the only place that had Chipotles at that time) and interviewed lots of happy burrito eaters. It was a fun assignment. Special thanks to Dan Fogarty, who for bringing me in on the project.
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Working with Cynthia Henry, Anne Denato and Bahram Akradi of Life Time Fitness, I got to do a lot of fun work promoting their exceptional health and fitness centers. This spot was part of a series of commercials where Earl from the corner gas station (Scott Jorgenson) tries to encourage a customer (Melinda Kordich) to stop by more often. She has to remind him because Life Time has so much to offer her family in one place, she doesn't have to burn as much gas.
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Gary Bethke of G-Will Liquors (now of Essers) has a great sense of humor. But he told me the IRS wasn't as amused by their "Tax Evasion Sale", so they had to drop it. In reality, it was actually a "9% Off Sale", but that didn't have the same punch. In this spot "G-Will" (Wayne Evenson) ends up on trial, defending himself against the man (Allan Hamilton) in this spot. Their chemistry is hilarious.
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Bruce Thomson, now the CEO of SOLOS Pizza Cafe, was my first radio client when I started Quasimodo back in 1991. I worked with PROEX for the next 18 years, even after the film business had been replaced by digital and the portrait studios were what was keeping them afloat. Bruce set the tone for our radio commercials and he liked funny stuff. This spot is about their "Pose with a Live Bunny" event. As Jim Cada explains, it's a better choice than GETTING your child a bunny.
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Working with Amie Valentine (who sings the opening), we created the first radio spots for Mrs. Meyers, which was in fact named after the creator, Monica Nassif's, mom, Thelma. With Amie's jingle and the kindly motherly announcer, we wanted to create an approachable, nostalgic feel to this now iconic brand.
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I was fortunate enough to spend a decade creating all kinds of advertising for HealthPartners, so it's very hard to pick just one radio spot to represent all the work we did together. The highlight was introducing the "Proud" campaign (where Heather Small sings "What have you done today to make you feel proud?"). That was a big, bold statement. This, on the other hand, is a quiet little spot about HealthPartners Central Minnesota Clinics. If you want to hear more of my HealthPartners work, I'd be more than happy to share.
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This is actually a spot for City County Federal Credit Union, which merged with Wings back in 2011. (So I wasn't a able to find a logo for them). City County prided itself in being a credit union exclusively FOR the people of Minneapolis with a real connection to the city and state...and that included not off shoring their support and phone service. In this spot, the actors have fun with the perception of the MinnesOOOta accent, to humorous effect.
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Working with Pat Donohue, a Prairie Home Companion regular who wrote the music and sang my lyrics, this was meant to be the antithesis of every "my dog died, my wife left me" country song. In this version, Pat sings about all the things that DIDN'T go wrong for this lucky cowboy. As a result, he's the "least unhappy guy around". It was a fun collaboration.
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Tim and Val Doherty of Doherty Employer Services provide human resources outsourcing for businesses that don't want to get buried in the red tape of doing business. Things like payroll processing, benefits administration and (yawn) employment compliance. They have people who actually LIKE to do that kind of stuff. Borrowing from the similarly named Jeff Foxworthy routine, this is the story about what it's like to be a Red Tape Neck.
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This is not a radio commercial, but a PRANK PHONE CALL I did for the Aquasport dealer meeting in Florida. Steve Penn hired me to do these calls after hearing a series of prank calls I did as entertainment at the annual ARC Awards, an award show for direct mail. (SOMEONE has to congratulate them!) In this call, I riff on the company's tagline, "A story in every ride" by telling and unsuspecting boat dealer a fish story of my own. My thanks to Bill Murray for the funny voice. Oh and Billy Bass. For more prank calls, go to my Gary-on-the-Street page.
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