Bonus Works
Projects & Classic Campaigns
The impossible underdog story of how baseball’s greatest character – Casey Stengel –
took helm of history’s worst baseball team –the 1962 New York Mets – and resurrected
millions of heartbroken fans to save New York City baseball forever.
Mark is represented by Renaissance Literary & Talent (TV series) and D4EO Literary Agency (book.)
Watch the treatment video!
The tale isn't recounted, it's re-lived, taking audiences through the
mind-blowing moments in real-time as if experienced live.
"Amazin'!" and “How the Worst Was Won" are based on the true, inspirational story of how the prayers of a city abandoned by the Dodgers and Giants were answered through a series of small miracles that united millions of New Yorkers in ways never thought possible. The tale isn’t recounted, it’s re-lived, taking audiences through the mind-blowing moments in real-time as if experienced live.
In 1957, New York was devastated by the abandonment of their beloved Dodgers and Giants, selling out to the west coast by cold-hearted owners, O’Malley and Stoneham. Five years later, scheming for the riches of only one team per city, baseball owners collude to cripple the Mets franchise by fixing the draft and ensuring the Mets get only horrendous players at outrageous prices. In just their first season, the Mets appear doomed.
Until baseball’s greatest manager and legendary showman, Casey Stengel, agrees to lead this
bumbling squad of castoffs. At 72, saving the Mets, his reputation, and the hearts of millions of mourning New Yorkers, becomes the greatest challenge of his already storied life – biographically manifested through flashbacks contrasting the events of ‘62.
Not only must Casey outsmart the conspiring owners, but also the Goliath Yankees who cruelly fired him the year before for being too old. Now as a martyr, revenge is at hand – IF he can leverage his ”Stengelese” and hilarious wit to miraculously generate enough attendance from a zany “new breed” of fans and keep the franchise alive.
Cursed luck and oddities abound – two pitchers with identical first and last names, players being traded for themselves, opening day on Friday the 13th and struck by a blizzard, team getting stuck in elevators, 9 games into season and already 9 1/2 games out, season ending on a triple play, never once winning on a Thursday, and so much more.
Beyond the hilarity, the story goes deeper to reveal rare levels of human conflict, faith, and perseverance illustrating valuable life lessons for those young or old – especially the rewards of carpe diem.
Exhaustively researched for detail and authenticity, there has never been an underdog tale like this. Irresistibly original with countless legendary moments, the odyssey has to be experienced to be believed!
.png){kind=logo}
Doritos "Crash The Super Bowl" – Fans Call The Play
Years before QR codes debuted, Mark proposed the world's first interactive Super Bowl TV ads for Doritos. Part 1 airs in the game's first half, featuring a URL/text code enabling viewers to vote for a football play to run in Part 2 of the commercial, airing in the SECOND half. Targeting young male audiences, Mark scripted, designed all, integrated Doritos assets, created the animation, and voiced all characters.
.png)
.png)
Watch Part 1
Watch Part 2
Voice Over Artist
Once a popular radio personality ("Mark After Dark") for rock station, 95.9 "The Fox", Mark offers – in addition to his creative and marketing prowess – voice overs for commercials, radio spots, sporting events, YouTube channels, podcasts, audio books, and more.
VO Demo Reel
Role-Playing Video Game Drives Best Months In Dice's History
First-of-its-kind role playing video game for tech folks. Driven specifically by behavioral and preference insights of techies to drive the most relevancy possible Demand and results were so outstanding the experience remained live for years.
Winner of 20+
awards including
Cannes Gold Lion
Watch Case Study
Historic Dice Results
• 220% registration increase
• 182% site traffic increase
• 1 million new job apps generated
• 3 of 4 users shared experience
Get Playful Revenge On Your Boss
• Fire hilariously humiliating weapons
• Jelly donut bazookas
• Pizza launchers
• Head shrinking guns and more!
Choreography of video, actors, animation, music, and sound f/x
Choose a weapon...
Then swing away!
Pizza launcher weapon
Jelly donut bazooka
Lightning gun
Email capture, drive to site, replay and share
The Heineken Headline Hoax
Groundbreaking social campaign enabled users to hoax friends into believing the friend was embarrassed on a major website. Campaign set record levels of awareness, engagement, and viral/share activity for the brand.
Winner of 17 industry awards,
including 8 Gold
Users initiate hoax at site
Choose headline & customize email to friend
Email links to incriminating (fake) public page
Clicking story reveals hoax and chance to make own!
Display ads garnered such heavy response the site traffic crashed the servers.
Digital Marketing & Television "Firsts"
From his days pioneering interactive advertising for Modem Media/Digitas through owning his own agency, Spitfire Interactive, Mark's ferociously creative passion to transform "can't be done" ideas into reality has resulted in many newsworthy "firsts".
Television Commercial "Easter Eggs" – DVR Reversing
Hidden messages in spots rewarded those who paid more attention to the ads, discovering subtle background clues that unlocked secret websites holding incentives like free music, exclusive videos, and concert tickets.
Typing in hidden URL unlocked hidden sites offering brand incentives and content.
Networked Display Gaming Banner Ads – "Head 2 Head Trivia"
First-ever social networking ads enabled different users across the web's hottest news, music, and entertainment media properties, to join together in the ad and play games of Heinken trivia to win music downloads, concert tickets, and more.
Superior CTR & Engagement
• Played by 1mm+ users over 4 months
• Average time engaged: 5+ mins
• 4.2% CTR – highest in brand history
• 38% shared with friend
Site-based experience matching up consumers all over the country in newsworthy brand engagement. Distributed through networked ads, instantly matching hundreds of thousands of consumers together in live gaming experiences.
User 1 sees ad on major web property
User 2 sees identical ad on different web property
Both are matched in seconds
They compete in 5 question trivia
Winner gets incentives and talks fun smack
Banners click-thru to site to play others, win more, and invite friends into the fold
First Live Simulcast In A Display Ad
After Mark led the creation of humanaction™ ad networking technology, the natural progression would be a simultaneous live broadcast to millions of ad placements all over the web. Groundbreaking experience starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and culminated the two year global video ad campaign Mark cast, directed, and edited.
First Social Networking Ad
A year before Facebook or twitter launched, Mark understood the power of social networking and created a live ad where disgruntled workers could playfully vent their frustrations in an ad for the world to see.
Winner of 22 industry awards,
including 11 Gold
Hundreds of thousands of users ranted wildly inside the ads for 2 years
When users weren't venting inside the display ads, they went to the website where the rants thrived 24/7.
Campaign was so successful, next iteration enabled users to upload their video rants instead of only typing.
Comedic Internal Corporate Videos
Within a creative powerhouse agency like Modem Media, the bar to entertain employees was always extremely high. Celebrated as uplifting morale boosters, Mark scripted, cast, directed, edited, and built the sets for every video, directing scores of employees with zero acting experience along the way. Every video was a frantic rush job, each made in 13 days or less from script to showing.
"The Codfather"
"The Godfather" spoof to help welcome new Modem CEO, Marc Particelli, and "humanize" him to employees. Video was created in 12 days, finishing hours before it was shown in the Modem Media headquarters. Yes, those are real fish being thrown and used as weapons!
"When Parakeets Crash"
Back in '01-'02, the bubble burst and Modem went through extensive layoffs. Those who remained now had to work the jobs of 2 or 3 people, further growing the stress and worry. Morale was disastrously low. Absolute rock bottom.
Sometimes however, the best way to get through tough situations is to flat-out make fun of them. Hence this video which was created to humorously contrast Modem's glory day '90's with the tough, frugal times of 2002. In the end, hopefully boosting morale and optimism throughout.
As an analogy, it uses the true story of a bird truck that crashed on I-95 near Westport, CT and accidentally set free about a hundred parakeets (happened in early 90's).
Because the parakeets were indigenous to tropical climates, "experts" predicted the parakeets would soon die off, especially in the winter months. Instead, the birds shocked everyone by not only surviving, but FLOURISHING in countless numbers. Today, they're squawking and gawking their brains out up and down the Connecticut coast. They somehow found a way.
And so could Modem. Like those parakeets who crashed, Modem could persevere through the toughest conditions and flourish. And that was the video's message.
Oh, coffee machine joke...So many costs got cut, including the folks hired to make/maintain coffee. So employees were left to do it themselves and the ensuing weeks of "coffee machine" confusion got so crazy and messy that the help was soon forced back.
"Modem Star Trek"
December, 2002. With 13 days before Modem's 15 year anniversary party, a video was requested to help celebrate. This was the result.
A video within a video where the Enterprise travels back in time to battle Digitasian spies and discover Modem Media's secrets to superior digital marketing. Of course in doing so, the Enterprise's main view screen provides a nice backdrop for highlights of employees, past Modem work and company videos dating back to '97.
This is the original version that was never shown. At just over 40 minutes, it has longer battle scenes, more work samples and features a greater amount of employee interviews. As with most of these videos, Managing Director, Dave Lynch, would roll his eyes at the length and force me to cut stuff before the company meeting. In this case, the Star Trek version that was shown was about 10 minutes shorter than this.
To answer a question...a highlight from an earlier video has us spoofing Modem Founder, Doug Ahlers' many speeches of equating "1 to 1" marketing with the customer-centric practices of local apparel shop, "Mitchell's." To help with the spoof, we brought in the head of "Mitchell's" and family friend, Bill Mitchell, to berate Doug's speech. I was asked a lot if that was really Bill Mitchell and now to clarify, it was.
Shown at the LOFT bar on Washington Street, Norwalk, CT to a very loosened up Modem audience (to say the least). Folks were SCREAMING and goin' wild.
"Parakeets II – Attack Of The C.L.O.W.N.S."
Last week of June, 2004 and the same drill...There's a company meeting in less than 2 weeks and suddenly there needs to be a video. I thought I had passed the torch on these things after Trek, but got pulled in for "one last one." So another rush job was under way...
Wasn't sure where to start, but remembered the "Digitasians as clowns" thing had resonated well with employees since being introduced in "When Parakeets Crash". So, in wanting to boost morale, it was time to create the ultimate battle between the heroes of Modem and the clowns of Digitas, winner take all.
By far, this was the most difficult Modem video to pull off. It had 3 times as many employee actors as usual, and each actor needed an hour before and after shoots for costumes/make-up. There were also multiple sets that had to be built from scratch, actors doing stunts, choreographed fight scenes, dummies built and thrown off the Modem roof, indoor/outdoor shots, securing/working with many props and almost all of it edited to music and sound f/x.
As always though, the toughest part was getting even a few employees in the same room at the same time; everyone's schedules were insane. But somehow, my incredibly helpful co-worker, Adrienne Durkin, worked her scheduling magic to get 45 minutes here and 30 minutes there and we got the scenes done. BARELY. Final touches were still being edited as the company meeting began.
Some more notes...
First off, Jeff Kroll and Rob Silk should've won academy awards for their portrayals of the lead Digitasian clown and kidnapped Modem victim respectively. All employee actors did amazing jobs, but those two guys required the most amount of filming/make-up time and were incredibly committed to nailing their roles. These videos were supposed to be ridiculous fun, but every now and then some employees showed some true acting talent. And when I was struggling to finish editing the night before the showing, it was Kroll who arrived at 2:30 a.m. with Red Bull mixed with whatever else to get me through. And it worked!
Meanwhile, we all love him dearly, but Rob Powers was a filming disaster. Every line required a hundred takes. I remember Joe Salvati (Underdog) and I getting SO frustrated with Powers in a McDonald's parking lot because he only had 1 freaking line and it took almost 15 minutes to film! We had to do it over and over and over...My blood's starting to boil just remembering!
Speaking of of McDonald's...Looking for a connection to clowns, Ronald McDonald seemed a natural and therefore a McDonald's franchise became the natural place for a Digitasian headquarters. We illegally filmed at two separate McDonald's locations and, unfortunately, were caught both times and chased through the parking lots by McDonald's employees screaming about how they called the cops. But we got away with all the footage.. Hats off to Erica Lyons, Laura Hurwitz, Dana Cobb, Powers, and Salvati who had the gumption to get in costumes and go through it all.
The end outdoor scenes...Filmed in BRUTAL, 100 degree heat on the Friday before July 4th weekend. The whipped cream fight was disgusting as it immediately melted and hardened into people's hair, clothes, etc. The heat was absolute torture and many can remember a red-faced Tom Deitelbaum – inside his all-rubber "Robin" outfit – gushing sweat and trying not to pass out. Everyone was begging to leave and get started on their holiday weekend, but – even while cursing Galley's name – they sucked it up, stayed under the relentless temps for 2 hours and got it all filmed.
You'll notice the end dance/celebration scene is a little extended time-wise. That was deliberate. For when this scene came on at the meeting, all characters (in costume) suddenly jumped out in real-life and began dancing with their on-screen counterparts. The tune was cranked and soon all the characters turned and started dancing with all the employees in the audience. Instantly, 200 people were up clapping and wildly dancing with each other. The whole place was rockin' and as the video ended, the heroes/clowns led a parade of employees out the door and straight to the favored company bar – the Black Duck Cafe – to celebrate.
Was an amazing finish -- and start to the night! But the most incredible note? Just 2 days after this video was shown it was announced we were bought by Digitas! WHOA!
"Wingman In The Muddle"
By 2006, Modem wanted to showcase themselves as an agency that understood how to manage brands through multichannel customer relationship trends (brands collaborating with consumers, user generated content, etc.) For brands, there was a lot of clutter out there and they needed a proven guide to break through it all. With Modem, they could have...A Wingman In The Muddle. Video was so successfully received, it was shown around the globe for two years at client meetings, road shows, media events, and company meetings.
TV Clips and Creations
"Archie Bunker's Misperceptions"
When it comes to the Archie Bunker character, most remember him for his bigotry. However, it was Archie's many hilarious misinterpretations, mispronunciations, and unfounded explanations that especially differentiated and gave depth to the character. All so naturally delivered in ways demonstrating the true genius behind Norman Lear's writing and Carroll O'Connor's acting chops. 38 minutes of clips are taken from the first 5 season of "All In The Family."
"Legends Throw Deep"
For an ESPN-related celebration in New York City, I was asked to put together a 20+ minute highlight reel of classic football/sport highlights mixed with classic fight/victory movie clips. All to connote a sense of "victory against overwhelming odds" – a key theme of the meeting. This was the result. Was shown on an enormous, professional theater screen to 500+ revelers who gave it a standing ovation.