Jean-Michel Hoffman

Congrats on being chosen as one of the top 32 advertising and marketing professionals under 32. We selected people who really go above and beyond in their work. How do you think you approach your job differently than other people?

I approach my work with unyielding curiosity. As a creative strategist it's my job to explore every angle of a problem in order to get to a brief that's novel and inspiring. The more curious I am about a problem, the more likely I am to find some unique little nugget that can be the kernel of a great idea. But this curiosity doesn't end at briefing, it has to extend throughout a campaign. There are always new challenges that pop up and often times those are the moments where you discover you can do something that's never been done before. Most importantly, I always try to have fun and be optimistic, putting out positive vibes makes the work better.

What kind of accounts/projects are you working on these days?

My day-to-day is spent working on Sony PlayStation and new business. With PlayStation we're really fortunate to partner with a great brand with the opportunity to work on socially driven, digital and experiential projects. We're tackling a range of work - from helping them discover trends in social everyday, launching new franchises like Horizon Zero Dawn, to new hardware like PlayStation VR that is going to finally bring VR to the masses. It's a total blast to be working in a medium that is thriving—where my generation is choosing to spend their time. You have real engagement, real measurement, and unbound opportunity to learn from everything you do and apply it to future work.

What is it about where you currently work that really pushes you to be better?

Access. I love working at DigitasLBi San Francisco because it’s truly the creative incubator of a influential global company. My executive team in SF, especially our managing director Dave Marsey, my boss Miguel Diaz, and my creative director Brad Meyers are super supportive and have given me great visibility throughout our network. That's enabled me to tap into resources all over our network; be it research tools out of our Chicago office, data mining engines out of Boston, or simply people stationed around the world who are ready, willing and able to contribute to a project in a moment's notice. That might sound unwieldy, but I find it exhilarating. With great power, comes great responsibility—it pushes me to kick ass day after day.

In thinking over your career so far, what work had made you the proudest?

There are three campaigns that really stick out:

The first is Taco Bell’s Black Out to launch the brand’s mobile app. After presenting new campaigns for nearly 4-months, we finally sold in the idea that the day Taco Bell launched their mobile app they should disappear from the Internet and use the ensuing chaos to point people to a new way to interact with Taco Bell. It was a hard fought campaign to sell, but the risk was worth the reward because we were handsomely rewarded at Cannes and many other top industry award shows.

The second was for PlayStation. We noticed that PewDiePie's birthday was coming up so we decided to mail him a custom painted controller hidden in a birthday cake. He got the surprise gift and kind of flipped out in excitement. The project cost less than $5k in fee, baking supplies, etc. and netted us a few million views and tens of millions of impressions after trending on Facebook all day. That was scrappy value at its finest.

The third is a campaign we just launched to build awareness of PlayStation's new game Horizon Zero Dawn. The game is kind of crazy and takes place in a post-post apocalyptic world where robot dinosaurs rule the Earth. To bring this crazy reality into our own, we wanted to bring a character from the game to life. We worked with one of the best special effects houses in the world down in LA, Spectral Motion, to create a Hollywood film level costume. We shot a many short live action videos crafted for Facebook and Twitter and then debuted the characters at E3 this year. So far the campaign has garnered millions of views and been really well received by everyone at PlayStation. It's kick ass to be on set and have your lead client come up to you and tell you, "you should be really proud of yourself, I expected nothing less.”

We hear you work with the San Francisco Art Institute. Tell us more about that.

Yea! I love the SFAI. A couple years back a friend asked me to a be a co-member of their annual gala after-party committee. We helped organize and fundraise to put on the event and get attention for the graduating class of MFA student who had work on display. Having grown up in a family that is really connected to the art world, one of my favorite things to do is discover young artists and help get their careers started. SFAI has such a rich history of alumni and faculty, artists like Bruce Nauman and Mark Rothko, as well as contemporary artist like Barry McGee and Kehinde Wiley—it’s a great opportunity to be involved with the school.

Here’s a ridiculously clichéd interview question for you: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

That’s a tough one that I ask myself a lot because I’m the type of person that needs to see a path to my goals. I’d like to be at the helm of a creative agency that focuses on entertainment, art, music, and fashion. My biggest goal in the work that I do is to make an impact on culture. I feel like playing in those fields lends itself to creating trends amongst niche communities that tend to end up having a broader impact. What’s most clear to me is that those communities are also the most in tune with inauthenticity, so its really about developing real value exchange. I think the agency I run in the future will be less of an ad agency and more of an incubator for creative projects that just happen to have corporate patrons.

This might be tough, but here’s your chance to give a shout out to one person who has helped you get to where you are today. Go.

I’m going to cheat and choose my mom and dad, Fred and Winter Hoffman, after all they’re kind of a unit. There is a ying and yang nature to the way that they raised my sister and me. As I mentioned, my family is very involved in the art world because my dad is a longstanding LA art dealer, they kind of set the tone for my life—art, creativity, and free thinking were always valued—when they named me after the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. My dad inspired an entrepreneurial yet pragmatic spirit in me, leading me to believe that I could craft my own fortune, which led me to start a small record label and management company in college. My mom is a real free thinker, she always embraced the notion that I could do literally anything as long as I had the right set of tools and was having fun. So I was in acting and dance classes starting at 9 years old, travelling around to see art, music, and films—she convinced my dad to take me to Art Basel Miami when I was 16 years old. Without them and the foundation they gave me, I would not think the way I do and be the way I am.