The Fred/Alan Archive

Photography by Elena Seibert

Hand coloring by Candy Kugel

Self Promotion
Press
The Real Fred Allen

Lifetime
Mosaic Records
MTV: Music Television
Myers's Rum
Nickelodeon
Nick-at-Nite
TV Heaven 41
VH-1:
Video Hits One

CHRONOLOGY
1983
Alan Goodman
& Fred Seibert
open a production and consulting company in New York City.

1988
Re-invented as America’s first advertising agency specializing in people under 35. Nominations and wins of every creative advertising award.

1989
Fred/Alan opens Chauncey Street Productions with producer Albie Hecht.

1992
Fred/Alan Closes.

.....
The Fred/Alan Archive is updated sporadically. It's mostly written by Fred Seibert, unless otherwise noted. Please blame him for all inaccuracies or embarrassments.

Hey, it worked for cable TV. Myers’s Rum Video Network, 1987.

Illustrated by Joey Ahlbum

In 1986 music videos were still the coolest thing on earth and our friend Steve Dessau thought there was a way to make some money with them. Edgar Bronfman Jr. had just taken over his family’s liquor business and was obsessed with music (he’s now the CEO of the Warner Music Group). He was frustrated that liquor couldn’t use television to sell its wares and that he couldn’t take advantage of his favorite entertainment trend.

Who better to sell an idea to him than the only credible MTV guys who weren’t working at MTV (us)?

Partnering with Steve’s company, we convinced Edgar Jr. that the Myers’s Rum Video Network could be his own “network” at the “video nightclubs” that were springing up around the country. It kind of worked.

Myers’s Rum Video Network IDs from fredseibert on Vimeo

Animation by Joey Ahlbum, Charlex, Alan Goodman, and Marv Newland/International Rocketship. Logo designed by Arlen Schumer/Dynamic Duo Studios.

Business card designed by Kathy Seibert Carey

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Dec
23rd

Tue

“While you were busy looking for youth…”

Fred/Alan 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. First step, a agency brochure!

It’s great fun doing good advertising, and we’d had a better run than many. Sure, we’d been critical to the building of MTV, VH-1, and Nickelodeon. And we did some awesome work for Swatch, Mosaic Records, Myers’s Rum, and Barq’s which had driven lots of business for them. It ought to be easy to wrap it all up and brag a little, yes?

Putting together a company hype is a drag, pure and simple. In person, we could speak passionately for hours telling you about what went into our work. But somehow, writing it down was somehow crass.

It began to dawn on us that maybe being an advertising agency wasn’t for us.

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