fwiw, an article on Gap's advert extraordinaire. note the source.
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Advertising Creator: Lisa Prisco
Vice-president and creative director, Gap
Age: Unavailable
Birthplace: Unavailable
Education: Unavailable
Previous Job: Production artist, Gap
By Michael Colton
Issue Date: November 1999
brillscontent.com
Thanks to Lisa Prisco, we know that khakis swing and that everybody wears cords. But we don't know much about Lisa Prisco.
Responsible for the Gap's effective series of recent ad campaigns, Prisco is quite shy. She would not pose for a photo nor grant an interview for this story. "We prefer to highlight the work, not the individual," says a company spokeswoman.
Building upon the successful khakis campaigns of the last two years—which featured energetic dancers in styles ranging from soul to country to go-go—the current Gap campaign stars motionless young singers modeling vests, corduroys, and leather jackets and pants. The spots are "advertising as an independent form of entertainment," says Randall Rothenberg, an Advertising Age columnist. And they've also sold a lot of clothes: Gap's net income for the six months ending July 31, 1999, was about $400 million, up 46 percent from the same period in 1998.
There are other creative geniuses with industrywide influence—such as TBWA/Chiat/Day's Lee Clow, who gave us Apple Computer's "Think different" campaign and the Taco Bell chihuahua. Advertising Age editor Scott Donaton describes Clow as a "mythical figure." But as Donny Deutsch, chairman and CEO of the Deutsch advertising agency, says, the Gap's is "the campaign of the moment."
Proving the power of Prisco's creative foresight, virtually everything involved with recent Gap ads has been bestowed with coolness. The 1998 "Khakis Swing" ad is often credited with advancing the swing-dancing craze and promoting a new stop-motion special visual effect, and the unknown singer Macy Gray lent her distinctive voice to a Gap ad nearly a year before being dubbed the Next Big Thing by The New Yorker. Billy Poveda, president of Oil Factory Inc., a production company employed by the Gap, says that the intimate nature of the Gap's in-house ad agency—where Prisco serves only one client—is crucial to her success. "I think the closer [that] artists can get to each other, the better the product will be," says Poveda. "And Lisa's an artist." |
