“After I was cut from the Michigan State basketball team three years in a row,” Smith said, “I thought, ‘OK, I think I need to make this advertising thing happen.’”ĪBCs of advertising: “I went to New York, Detroit, Chicago, anywhere I could go to get a job interview.” At Chicago’s Burrell Advertising (now Burrell Communications), one of the largest multicultural marketing firms in the world, Smith forgot the name of the person he was supposed to see. Michigan State has one of the nation’s most successful men’s basketball programs. He majored in advertising but still entertained his childhood dream of becoming a professional basketball player. “He had a big house and if it wasn’t for Endora, it seemed like a pretty easy gig.”įallback plan: Smith attended Michigan State from 1981 to 1984. “Darrin’s wife was beautiful,” Smith said. The only drawback was having an evil witch - Endora - for a mother-in-law. In the show, Stephens marries a witch, Samantha. “I couldn’t speak or write or do anything, from a very young age, without being corrected on the right way to do it by my mom, in a healthy way.”īecoming “Bewitched”: Branding and advertising was an early career idea, Smith said, that he got from “Bewitched,” a sitcom that ran from 1964 to 1972 about New York ad exec Darrin Stephens. “It stayed in my head that I could do that too.” His mother, Evelyn, was a teacher and his language guide. “It was the first time that I could remember of a black person owning something in Muskegon,” Smith said. Parental influence: Smith, born in Muskegon, Mich., points to the determination of his father, James, to leave factory work and run his own business, eventually acquiring a restaurant franchise. ![]() Combined, the businesses have nearly 90 employees. ![]() The venture operates out of offices in Los Angeles and Santa Ana, where DGWB has occupied the town’s historic city hall. Partners Mike Weisman, Ed Collins and Jon Gothold have taken on the jobs of CEO, president and executive creative director, respectively. Smith is chairman and chief creative officer of the new firm. His businesses will operate as part of a larger company called simply Amusement Park, formed with longtime executives from DGWB Advertising & Communications. Since 2011, Smith has been chief executive and chief creative officer of Amusement Park Entertainment, which he founded with advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group, to develop “branded entertainment” - industry lingo for making the product or brand the centerpiece of an app, game, event, television show or movie, rather than creating an ad that viewers can ignore.Īnother gig: Smith has added more traditional advertising and marketing back into his playbook. The gig: Advertising veteran Jimmy Smith, 53, has orchestrated award-winning work for brands including Nike and Gatorade, the latter involving the adoption of the more edgy “G” in packaging and marketing the sports drink.
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