December 2008
9 posts
7 tags
The first 'oldies' television station: TV Heaven...
Fred/Alan IDs 1989 for TV Heaven 41 from fredseibert on Vimeo.
In 1988, a friend of ours bought a couple of failing UHF TV stations in the upper suburbs of Minnesota. He asked Fred/Alan to work our branding and programming philosphies on the station (linked together with common programming). We made them the first broadcaster* to use an “oldies television” approach and creative director Noel...
13 tags
The first cable TV brand: MTV: Music Television...
MTV IDs 1981-1983 from on Vimeo.
MTV’s network identity wasn’t a Fred/Alan project, but it might as well have been, since Fred and Alan began their professional television collaboration there.
(There’s more about the MTV logo on Fred’s personal site here.)
Fred Seibert began working as virtually the first employee of MTV: Music Television in May 1980 (under...
11 tags
Inventing TV 'brands': Fred/Alan Network IDs...
From the very first minute I went to work for Bob Pittman (he was 25, I was 27) at the Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company in May of 1980, he told me about the company’s plan for a television channel that would be exclusively rock videos and how he envisioned the TV equivalent of radio jingles: network identifications (‘IDs’) short, wacked out pieces of animation that would reveal...
6 tags
Our cabride through history.
A Cab Ride Through History [fronts here, backs here]
Publish at Scribd or explore others.
The cool thing about advertising is you get to do a lot of different kinds of work. The drag is that it’s the clients’ work and the agency, in the end, has to do what it’s told. So, when there’s a chance to do stuff with yourself as the client it’s a lot of fun.
We were...
10 tags
A belly dancing soul christmas.
We started having Christmas parties in 1985 because it was so damn hard to figure out which clients and hope-to-be-clients to give presents to, and exactly what to give them. We figured it would probably cost us the same to party and everyone would be happier anyhow. The first year we rented out the Museum of Radio & Television; everyone thought we were classy. Then a roller disco; they...
5 tags
Fred/Alan buys the New York Times.
Fred/Alan didn’t do too much advertising for itself (it was expensive), so we tried to make every one count.
The New York Times was, by far, the most influential publication in advertising. In the 1980s Phil Dougherty had a repuation as the most honest, authoritative columnist in the business, and any ad in the Times would guarantee sales for your client. Well,...
15 tags
"While you were busy looking for youth..."
Fred/Alan new business brochure.
…we were busy wondering what had happened to us.
By the late 1980s, Fred/Alan had morphed into a full service advertising agency, with writers, art directors, and account, production and media departments. Over 40 people.
We started trying to get some new accounts, the lifeblood of any agency. And not a skill we were particularly attuned to at the time....
5 tags
The movies we never made.
We originally started Fred/Alan to make TV shows and movies. Finally around 1985, somewhat stable as a business, we tried ‘getting into the movies’ with something other than a ticket. We’d always liked quickie teen movies and there was a popular spate of them happening right then so we took a flyer and somehow succeeded (we really had no idea what we were doing) in optioning the rights to one of...
2 tags
Fred/Alan Reunion, 2004
Jill Gershon was an account executive at Fred/Alan in the late 80s, and she kindly decided to put on a party for those of us she could locate. The result was a wonderful time for all (though Fred had to leave early due to a severe allergic reaction to Jill’s cats). We thought we’d commemorate the event with a small poster run for the attendees. Maybe it’ll inspire another get together.
We...