You may not know this, but not all of the Ideasicle Experts are creatives. We have PR people, planners, retail experts, and media people, all at the ready to bring their respective perspectives to any given idea project. One of our media experts is Mike Labella. I have always found Mike to be one of the most creative media people in the business. I asked him if he’d like to be featured on the blog and, after he sent me his story, I now know why he’s so creative.

Over to you, Mike…

I went into advertising to write beer commercials. As a child of the early 90s I witnessed what I still consider to be the pinnacle of advertising... the beer commercial. Real Men of Genius, the Bud Bowl and of course the frogs. Journalism school at Northeastern was the closest I could get to agency life. I took all 3 creative classes offered and devoured advertising culture. I read Adweek cover to cover in the library and held The Annual like the bible.

Then I graduated. Copywriting jobs weren’t dispersed on the way out the door, so I moved back home. I hustled to deliver pizzas to HR people with my resume on the inside of the box (how that didn’t work I still don’t understand) and then over beers a college ad friend mentioned they were hiring at Arnold’s media department.

Media? Well, I guess that’s a start. I interviewed, said I wanted to be a creative, but I knew Excel and would work 60 hours a week if needed. The media team took pity on me and my ill-fitting suit (HR recommended against me I would later find out) and my $22k a year dream was started.

One thing I learned at Arnold is that creative and media go hand in hand… if you let it. There are creative ways to examine research and highlight who the best person to buy a Talbots twin set is... or an underappreciated demographic who would become a Cruise aficionado if only exposed to certain aspects of life at sea. Media negotiations can bring forward a creative voice for a campaign. I’ve even been known to push through a copy line or 2 into my NPR reads…

Eventually I would start my own media focused agency (Uncovr Media) and creativity still is my differentiation; except now Ideasicle x brings so many more possibilities to my clients. I look for ways to work directly with many of them when my agency has a creative need. To be able to access 4 brilliant minds that have experience in pretty much every industry is invaluable. I even qualified as one of these minds for a naming project in a category I’m very familiar in and had a couple ideas make it to the final round. It wasn’t a beer commercial but honestly so much more fulfilling.

And now Mike’s company Uncovr and Ideasicle X are partnering so we can bring smart, creative media planning and buying to our clients on a project basis. Add this partnership to our partners, Conductor (broadcast production) and The Fantastical (all other production), and we’ve got big-idea firepower and a fairly full service agency without the overhead of traditional agencies.

Now Mike can do much more than NPR copy lines.

Will Burns is a Fractional Brand Consultant and the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post like this.