After a summer off, the podcast It’s Only Fucking Advertising (IOFA) is back for season two—kicking off with an in-depth, revealing and informative conversation with Eric Kallman.
IOFA was created by Rethink’s Aaron Starkman and Vapor Music’s Ted Rosnick last year. Rosnick is executive producer and audio director while Starkman serves as host and interviewer, speaking with some of the world’s most accomplished creatives about their work and the industry.
Starkman has a passion for advertising and tends to know all about his guests’ work. Rather than gushing however, he’s genuinely interested in learning how the work came to be, says Rosnick. “He’s very loose and I think he puts our guests at ease.”
Last year’s guest list included Alex Bogusky, Gerry Graf, Susan Credle, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein. “It’s kind of an intimate talk with two very good creative people, so they can relate on the same level and they are willing to share their stories with Aaron,” says Rosnick.
Kallman, too, is truly among the industry’s best. The founder and creative director of Erich & Kallman in San Francisco made his name with groundbreaking, unforgettable advertising for Skittles, followed by one of the biggest advertising ideas of all time: Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”
In the wide-ranging, open and honest 45-minute conversation, Kallman reviews his career from his earliest days pitching his book at TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York, to his brief encounters with Lee Clow, to his time at Wieden + Kennedy and how they got to punch a Koala—with PETA’s okay—in a CareerBuilder ad.
He also shares behind-the-scenes recollections of casting Isaiah Mustafa for Old Spice, writing famous campaign lines and coming up with the ground-breaking Old Spice Response campaign following the explosive success of the original TV spot.
Someone at Wieden noticed that comments on YouTube were speaking directly to Mustafa, says Kallman. “And he had the idea, ‘Why don’t we respond back?’ The people at Wieden literally just figured it out… [It was] this little assembly line, where we got on a little stage in Portland, and Craig and I sat there and they would kick a comment to our computer, we’d write the little response, it would go into the teleprompter, Isaiah would record it right then, and it would get shipped out to everybody.
“So that response campaign to me, that is like the most rewarding thing I ever worked on just because it was such a team thing and it was such a just-figure-it-out kind of thing.”
After producing seven episodes last year, Rosnick says they hope to scale up the podcast to one episode per month this season. IOFA is available now on Google Play, Spotify, ShoutEngine and other platforms, and will be up on iTunes soon.
.
