As Modernista co-founder Gary Koepke told Ad Age today, he and partner Lance Jensen made a lot of good albums together. The agency's work reflected the creative sensibilities of the shop's founders, particularly Mr. Jensen's storied flair for music and popular culture.
While at Arnold, Mr. Jensen created some of the industry's best known and loved spots for Volkswagen, spots such as "Milky Way" and "Da Da Da" that were driven by music and mood. And while many other agencies leaned heavily on comedy dialogue advertising, Modernista's work tended to the visual and the visceral. Here, a selection of some of the agency's notable work from its founding in 2000 to last year
Gap: Snowflakes
Modernista created the Gap's holiday campaign shortly after getting the account in 2000. "Kiss" and "Snowflake" were a departure from the "Everybody in" campaign that Gap had done previously in-house. The spots were directed by Dayton/Faris, who worked with Mr. Jensen on the famous Volkswagen "Milky Way" spot while he was at Arnold.
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Gap: Will Ferrell Forever in Blue Jeans
Modernista created notable Gap campaigns that featured celebrities from across the entertainment landscape, from Juliette Lewis to Daft Punk. Here, the agency showcases the musical talents and foretells the superstardom of a certain "Saturday Night Live" regular.
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Gap: Give a Little Bit
Shaggy and friends perform at Supertramp classic in this holiday campaign from 2001.
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Of course the product was sort of a ticking social and environmental time bomb, but over the course of its relationship with Hummer, Modernista! created some of the most memorable campaigns in auto advertising. The shop worked with a who's who of visual directors like Rupert Sanders, Fredrik Bond, the Snorri Brothers and Daniel Askill as well as storytellers like Scott Hicks and Noam Murro to create a wide range of influential and award-winning work. Some of the highlights are here.
Hummer: Monsters
A spot that basically plays up the destructive nature of the beast.
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Hummer: Big Race
A Rushmore-esque look at the go-cart race done Hummer style
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Hummer: Asteroids
A videogame classic and the Hummer H2 star in this spot from 2003.
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Hummer: City
Featuring the immortal line "Threaten men in a whole new way."
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Hummer: Glacier
In retrospect, a glacier is perhaps an ironically unfortunate place to shoot a Hummer spot. But the Snorri Brothers-directed spot does looks good.
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Napster: Own Nothing
The agency mined the music service's nefarious past in this 2005 campaign for Napster emphasizing the benefits of not owning music.
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TIAA-CREF: Somewhere
The agency lent some humanity to financial services company TIAA CREF with a series of ads scored with a rendition of "Somewhere," from West Side Story.
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Animal Planet: Anthem
The agency created this nature porn-fueled anthem spot in 2005
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Modernista: Modernista.com redesign
Perhaps one of the agency's most talked-about creations in recent years was its own site redesign. The shop earned kudos and criticism when it turned its own site -- which now consisted of a tiny HTML menu -- into a transparent window on the web.
