Fred Davis Handling Convention Creative
Ira Teinowitz of Ad Age, writes an interesting behind the scenes piece featuring Fred Davis, who has assumed the role as the RNC Convention’s head of creative.
Davis, a longtime Republican media consultant and the founder of Strategic Perception, has become known for his attention to high quality television production.
Davis has handled media work for the 2004 presidential and does work for several statewide candidates and issue campaigns aside from non-political work in entertainment, corporate and new media. According to Davis’ bio:
SPI was hired to help reinvigorate the sinking Corker campaign just five and a half weeks before the general election. Senator Corker’s victory was the sole shining light for the national Republican Party in 2006.
Davis also worked as one of the top creative/media consultants for the George W. Bush presidential re-election campaign of 2004, filming the President and First Lady in the White House residence and on the road campaigning. SPI won both the Gold and Silver Pollie Awards for this presidential work. He’s handled the media for winning U.S. Senate campaigns for Elizabeth Dole, Chuck Grassley, Jim Inhofe and more. Davis served as Chief Creative Consultant on the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain and is now working on 2008 Senate reelection campaigns for Dole, Inhofe, Lamar Alexander and John Cornyn. Also, the branding for Bono’s ONE Campaign, the effort to end worldwide extreme poverty.
Davis is also the only known political media strategist who has based his consulting operation out of Hollywood.
Davis’ work is interesting, in that he portrays a unique production style in his TV ads. Some recognizable traits are large indistinctive backgrounds, different shoot locations, blur lenses (or post-production blur effect), and distinctive brightening and shadow effects. He’s been also employing the newly popular cut-out still photography effect in his spots for McCain, which is a production effect I plan on writing about in this space this week.
