El Gaffney

Hey Sports Fans, Happy Monday

A little something we (W+K NY) cut together for ESPN from our 15 years of “This is SportsCenter” commercials. (Yes, it could have been a lot longer.) Hope you like it.

Tags: espn, sportscenter, youtube

ESPN Will Make My Penmanship Famous

First, I’d like to thank all of my teachers from pre-school through fourth grade, my parents, G-d and the guy that made banana-grip for pencils and pens. While I’m at it I’d also like to thank the guy, who invented the piano key necktie. He didn’t help me develop my handwriting per se, but he inspired a bit of this drive for perfection. And that perfectionism (word check? – yes, others have called it being anal), may have led to me needing an extra 30 minutes for all written homework and test including essays, it also led me here. To becoming the hand behind the man.

The man is Steve Braband. He is the face, body, voice, feet and everything else but the mind (not entirely at least) of our new campaign for ESPN’s SportsCenter. A quick history: ESPN came to us wanting to know how to communicate the news that SportsCenter is going live from 9AM-3PM weekdays. We worked with them to create a brief and most importantly figure out the right personality, attitude and tone to bring to this simple message. Our creative team’s idea wowed everyone. It was literally a personality…Steve.

They wanted to find and follow an ESPN employee just about 24/7 for two weeks leading up to SportsCenter going live and broadcast this employee live on ESPN during commercial breaks. It (IMHO) is less commercials or ads than it is content. This is quite possibly the work I’m most proud of being a part of (in crafting strategy more than copyhandwriting, believe it or not!) Here’s one of my favorites so far from Day 2 of following Steve. Gotta love the running clock he has to keep with him at all times. Sports version of Flava Flav!

So where does my talent come in? Come on – don’t tell me you missed it! Go back and peep that card at the end of the video. “More work for us. More better for you.” Yeah, more work for me, writing that and everything on the site, Steveislive.com, (going live tomorrow – sneak peek for my readers) and banners driving to it. And that tagline, “Live” and “9AM-3PM” is shown at the close of each spot we do!

Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m about to get a hyperbaric chamber to keep this hand in tact. Next up, making my sunglasses famous like the Aussie Spicoli’s.

Tags: creative, espn, sportscenter, wk