“Funke is like water. If there’s a way through, he’ll find it.”
— a colleague, years ago. I’ve never been given a better one.
I make ideas for brands, and I’ve been doing it for about thirty years — in Johannesburg, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Sydney. These days from Newport Beach, California.
I started at TBWA Hunt Lascaris in South Africa, where I led the creative team on the campaign to elect Nelson Mandela. Every piece had to carry its message in thirteen official languages at once — poster, radio, all of it. The most complicated brief I’ve ever been handed, and the simplest.
Lee Clow saw my work and asked me to move to Los Angeles to run Infiniti at TBWA. Apple, Sony PlayStation and Harman Kardon came with it. The Q45 launch took Best of Show at the Dandys; the PowerBook work was Adweek’s Best Spot of the Year.
Then eleven years at Saatchi & Saatchi, under a motto — Nothing is Impossible — that turned out to be less of a slogan than I’d expected.
I led the $220 million launch of the Toyota Tundra into a category that had already rejected Toyota twice, with a truck that cost $1,500 more than its rivals. Sales rose 146% while the category fell 12%. Conquest of domestic buyers tripled. The Big Three changed how they advertised.
I launched the Sienna as a music video, during the largest safety recall in Toyota’s history, off a single YouTube banner, and watched sales rise 145% in a segment that was shrinking.
I ran Toyota’s first true total-market launch across four agencies representing four very different parts of American culture. Camry closed that year as the best-selling car model in America.
And I helped make Toyota the best-selling car brand in America.
As Chief Creative Officer of Garage Team Mazda, I led the worldwide repositioning of a brand that was losing share at an alarming rate. We reached 13.7 million engaged people in six weeks, ran at four times Mazda’s own engagement benchmarks, and the business posted month-over-month gains from 4.5% to 40.7% — including Mazda’s best November since 1994. Kelley Blue Book named them Top Performance Brand. We made Garage Team Mazda the creative centre of excellence for Mazda globally and won more awards than the agency had in its history — and more than any single agency in the history of the OC AAF awards.
Along the way: eight Super Bowls, over 130 awards for creativity and effectiveness, creative teams of up to 85 people, and one piece of work now sitting permanently in the California Science Center.
What I enjoy hasn’t changed since the start. Find the one true thing about a brand. Then find a way to prove it that nobody has tried.
Today I’m a partner at Fixer, where I work with founders, CMOs and boards on positioning, differentiation and brand strategy.