Just like taxes, herpes and COVID 19, we at Area 821 have been here all along. Sometimes dormant. Sometimes in your face. Always being that Special Sauce. That Magic Faerie Dust. That Little Extra Something.
Join us on a video journey through our past.
The Teens (and Twenties) are pretty exciting all on their own. Who are we to pile on? We decided our brand is best getting back to the basics. You know, copy. Story first. What better way to show that graphically than that eye candy known as Courier, a serif typeface? We run this package a lot on Sunday Morning News shows (right after those spots for ADM) and professional bowling tournaments on ESPN The Ocho.
Incidentally we are currently in legal proceedings, trying to convince Disney that our version of their Fox 21 Studios package was a rip-off of an idea we had way before we saw theirs. Really.
We call the recently-post Millennium as our Pretentious Phase. Back then, we were all about The Art. Atmosphere. And Gaussian blurs. We are not saying that James Shamus at Focus Features owes us a residual, but I mean, come on.
Right?
We ran this package a lot on PBS when we were sponsoring This Old Britcom (British Sitcom). Also right before Frontline. And right after reruns of Caillou.
Grunge. Plaid. Rehab. You know, The Good Old Days. We were digging Chris Cornell and Alice in Chains back then. (Not Pearl Jam, though. Those posers.) We had our finger on the pulse of the Youth. And our Doc Martins on the throat of the Man.
We ran this on Portland Public Access, The Mosh Pit Network (before they were bought by The Other Man aka MTV) and reruns of Blossom.
Ah the 80's. Disco finally sucked. Roger Moore was wearing Spanx. And that little box was telling everyone what was up. Not the Boob Tube. The home computer with its 2-bit color monitor.
We wanted in. So we focussed on the bits and bytes of the Robot Box. We bought into the promise that only sixteen floppy installer discs could deliver.
We stuck this beauty on every WarGames VHS and Breakfast Club LaserDisc.
We even had a printed still that we managed to slip inside one of Madonna's CD's, but we keep that on the down low. She used that incident to renegotiate her contract termination with Sire records. (We still get death threats from Bernie Sire's widow, Esmerelda.) I knew we should have stuck with Duran Duran.
OR: The Never-Ending Hangover (from the Sixties).
Priorities of the Day: NOT Being Uptight; Feeling Groovy after your EST seminar, and allowing your spirit animal to manifest in your hairstyle (be it on your head, upper lip or chest).
If you were a creative agency, the best way to hold off the effects of Stagflation and runaway gas prices at the pump, was to be swallowed up by a soul-crushing, monolithic corporate tax dodge known as a conglomerate. At the top were Transamerica, ITT and Gulf + Western. Our midwestern parent, DWCI was what you might call lower tier.
Diversified Western Capital Industries included: Electrical outlets for the home; Natural gas; Poultry farms and Medical lubricants.
Chett (Chester) Blackborne Weaver, our CEO, thought we would provide profitable inroads into Blacksploitation and Disco among other cultural phenomenon, and help drive up their stock price.
Surprise. We didn't.
This is when we made our first foray into filmmaking, teaming up with American International on the 1973 almost-hit, Sucka Punch Rum Drunk, starring Richard Roundtree and Pam Grier. And that can't miss (except it did) pairing of Leif Garrett and Linda Blair, (with the comedic mime-ings of Shields and Yarnell) in Disco Feevah.