LA Special: Deutsch LA’s Pete Favat

Deutsch LA’s CCO and partner Pete Favat enthuses to Simon Wakelin about not feeling existential gloom, the benefits of a brand having an enemy and how the convergence of content, advertising and entertainment is re-igniting Los Angeles

Deutsch LA lies in the Playa Vista region of Los Angeles, an area steeped in Hollywood history. Martin Scorsese used soundstages here for his Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, while James Cameron filmed parts of Titanic and Avatar in the area, and Transformers, Iron Man and Star Trek were also lensed close by.

I sit pondering this filmic history while waiting in Deutsch for agency partner and CCO Pete Favat. We meet and I shake hands with an optimistic, upbeat chap.

Favat arrived at Deutsch back in 2013 after 14 years at Arnold in Boston. Ask why he left Boston for Los Angeles and Favat responds “A group of us owned an agency [Houston Herstek Favat] that was eventually acquired by Arnold back in 1999 so we impacted on Arnold in a big way,” he reveals. “I became Arnold’s chief creative officer not long afterwards, but felt that I was in the same place for a very long time, and if you stay somewhere too long you just become myopic.”

The discussion turns to his new life in Los Angeles, a place Favat first visited in his 20s. He admits the city tickled his fancy back then, but there were no real prospects for him at the time. “In the 80s and 90s it felt like the place to be but there were just no agencies out here,” he explains. “The general feeling was that if you moved to LA and didn’t take a job at Chiat, then you really weren’t doing anything of consequence.” 

We note how times have changed and how the advent of technology has shaped a new creative landscape, one giving rise to a vibrant community eager to shape the next big thing. The recent collision of Silicon Valley and Hollywood is evidenced by tech titan Google scooping up Frank Gehry’s celebrated Binoculars Building in Venice, plus a huge video production facility for subsidiary YouTube in a renovated Howard Hughes building less than a mile from Favat’s office space: “What we’re seeing here now is a convergence of many things,” notes Favat. “As the blurring of the lines between content, advertising and entertainment continues so does the reasoning to be here. Every city goes through its ebbs and flows, and right now Los Angeles feels like it’s happening again.”

On not hiring spark plugs

The conversation switches to Volkswagen, an account under the Arnold banner while Favat was CCO. The agency was behind the heralded Drivers Wanted campaign for the auto company before the account moved to Deutsch in 2009 – a move that immediately caught his attention: “After Deutsch won the VW account it made the agency legit in my mind,” he explains. “They were always a really good agency, and we’d go against them all the time. I knew [VW head of marketing] Tim Ellis very well, and he explained that the account had moved to Deutsch because of its strategic thinking. That really got me curious.

“Then [co-CEO] Eric Hirshberg left Deutsch, and I got a call from [CEO] Mike Sheldon who wanted to hire me. I really wanted to go and agonised over the decision, but the timing couldn’t have been worse,” he remembers. “Then I ran into Mike a couple of years later with [Deutsch partner/director of integrated production] Vic Palumbo and [partner/chief digital officer] Winston Binch. That night it was a done deal. Like everything in life, timing is crucial.”

Favat has been focussing on developing the agency’s culture since landing at Deutsch, discerning the right mix of creative energy to magnify its appeal, a challenge that he admits is still foremost in his mind. So what is his approach? “You don’t hire basic ‘spark plugs’ who simply allow things to run smoothly,” he outlines. “And you don’t hire anyone because they’re just like you – you should run like hell from that kind of proposition.

“We need to bring people into the agency who are not like us at all, because the more diversity that is embraced in our agency, the better it will become, and that’s true from a geographical, gender and creative standpoint.”

Your enemy is your friend

Going against the grain is also a tactic. “I really like hiring people who have never created advertising at all,” he adds. “I’ve done it a couple of times now where I’ve brought in writers and art directors who have never done a piece of advertising before, but just through conversations we’ve had I knew they were smart enough to be successful in the industry.”

Favat unveils a presentation to further illustrate his approach. Entitled ‘You Need an Enemy’, it’s a provocative outline, one that sometimes rubs clients up the wrong way. But that doesn’t bother Favat, as the message is as genuine as can be: “We all need an enemy to define us and brands are no different,” he posits with a wry grin. “Look at America. It always needs an enemy because no superpower exists without one. Look at the Bible. If there was no hell and no devil then, with all due respect, there would be no Bible – just a pamphlet that says, ‘God is Amazing!’

“Antagonism brings a healthy tension, and without that tension people don’t pay attention,” he observes. “Most people stay in the middle where it’s safe, where there are no polar extremes. Clients often say, ‘OK but can’t we just say how amazing our product is instead?’ But art needs resistance, and that creates engagement. If you want to be Superman then you need that villain. The enemy is all about duality. Identify the enemy, find that tension, and you’ll also find the idea.”

Favat believes that when advertising fails it does so because an agency has wasted its most precious resource – its creatives. “Creatives are better at expressing ideas than coming up with them,” he says. “Creatives are not great business people. I had my own agency and tanked it because I’m not a business-minded person. I always say the strategy is the idea. The problem is that many agencies are not starting off with any kind of strategy and expect creatives to come up with ideas. Unfortunately it’s a practice that has inverted the proposition. It’s all backwards.”

People can also quench creativity in the name of fear, allowing mediocrity to rule the day: “You’ll hear people say how great their meeting was, but if you ask what idea the client bought they’ll invariably say the safer one,” he continues. “In that case we didn’t have a great meeting. We actually had a terrible meeting because our best idea died. Many people operate this way. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a nice car, a big house and a cool boat so let’s go have a bad meeting!’ That’s also a big issue.”

Quizzed on his upbeat attitude and persona, Favat explain that life’s way too short for existential malaise. “Ride on the crest of the wave in the sun instead of twisting in the murky waters below,” he quips. “Don’t swim against the current, otherwise life’s going to be tough.” It’s an apt metaphor for life in California, a place where its attitude matches his own optimistic feelings on life and art.

“There is a, ‘Yeah, fuck, we’re gonna do it’ attitude to life out here in Los Angeles,” he explains. “Maybe the city’s attitude goes back to the pioneers, men placing their families in wagons and crossing Native American territory on their way to California. There were some ballsy-ass pirates that came out here back in the day. Maybe that spirit is still part of the zeitgeist. People still risk everything to get out here.”

Delving into Favat’s creative past, I ask what, in hindsight, is his favourite work. He brings up the much praised and highly controversial Truth anti-smoking campaign for the American Legacy Foundation [read about Ari Merkin’s Body Bags spot for this campaign on page 44] “The Truth campaign was one of the best of the 21st century,” he says. “Its strategy was very clear – the tobacco industry lied. There was so much to play with, and so many ways to be shockingly frank and honest. We weren’t looking for ideas because we already had the idea, just words from internal documents used against the industry. It was more about discovering the most compelling expression of that idea.”

Compelling expressions should soon be afoot in work for new client Sprint, leaving Favat to ponder how to do battle against rivals AT&T and Verizon. “Sprint’s new CEO [Marcelo Claure] is an amazing guy,” he reveals. “He’s a self-made billionaire with an entrepreneurial spirit. He’s done things his own way his whole life, and it’s that kind of fearlessness that people like to embrace. We will work tirelessly for him to bring the brand to the forefront of people’s minds.”

A band can be a brand

As for other upcoming propositions, Favat notes how Deutsch is making headway into the music industry, connecting with labels and artists through the agency’s music director Dave Rocco. “We’re working with Capitol Records right now, looking to brand their artists while examining the potential of Capitol creating acts for us to market and brand,” he outlines. “ It’s an exciting proposition. After all, Gene Simmons taught us all how a band can be a global brand.”