By JOSEPH KELLARD
The folks at Michelob beer wanted to make a splash with their Amber Bock rollout, so naturally they bought ad time during the Super Bowl. And to craft their message, they turned to a young Oceanside High School graduate, Matt Herr.
A member of OHS's class of 1999 and a writer for DDB, an advertising agency in New York, Herr wrote the script for the Michelob ad that was seen by tens of millions of viewers who watched Super Bowl XXXIX on Feb. 6.
"Doing a commercial like this is like the pinnacle of recognition in advertising," Herr said from his Manhattan office last week. "If you get a Super Bowl commercial, it's a big deal."
The ad was the latest in Michelob's ongoing campaign to promote the return of its Amber Bock beer. Herr had to create a new commercial that followed the same format and "rich and smooth" theme of past spots.
The commercial opens with a guy bringing his date to his posh pad and asking her if she'd like to hear some music to set a romantic mood. "And you expect a smooth, enticing song, but a dance song plays and he starts dancing for her, quite badly," Herr said, "and the words 'rich but not smooth' are [superimposed on the screen]." For the "smooth but not rich" segment, Herr has another guy play smooth R&B music on a radio for his date, but the camera pulls back to reveal that they're in the electronics store where he works, and his manager asks him why he brought his date there.
Herr was at a friend's house in Forest Hills when his ad aired during a second-quarter commercial break. "I called everyone I knew and told them to watch," he said.
The Super Bowl telecast proved a big event for both Herr and DDB. It had been a few years since the agency had created a Super Bowl commercial, but DDB also produced two Pepsi spots in addition to Herr's commercial. After Michelob approached DDB with its Amber Bock ads last year, the agency, which hired Herr in April, gave the 23-year-old a shot at producing a script and dialogue for the beer company. "If a company feels so strongly about your idea that they want to invest $2.4 million in it, it's quite an honor," Herr said.
He said he works many long hours and gets heavy doses of constructive criticism, all of which come with the job's territory. For the Amber Bock commercial, Herr and the colleagues who collaborated with him wrote 30 scripts before the spot was Super Bowl-ready. "They keep killing the idea, and you keep coming back hoping you land it just right," he said about his job. "It's a very rigorous process, but at the same time it's a lot of fun. The reward in the end, like a Super Bowl commercial, is what you always hope for."
In addition to Michelob, Herr works on ads for Bud Light, Subaru and Diet Pepsi. He is currently working on commercials that will air during the World Poker Tournament on ESPN.
Herr's creative juices have flowed for as long as he can remember, since he picked up pens and pencils to doodle and draw in his elementary school years. Art classes were naturally his favorite, and among his more notable projects were the designs of the covers of his yearbooks at School 2, the middle school and OHS.
"I pursued art strongly throughout the years," Herr said. "In high school I really started to concentrate on it, taking three or four art classes to fulfill my courses." When recalling those days, he credits his photography teacher Nancy Nigro and painting teacher Karen Handrakis with pushing him to "think differently."
Among the many friends and family members watching Fox's broadcast of Herr's Michelob commercial was his mother, Barbara, who remembered her son as a budding artist. "Matt was always very serious about and very critical of his work, and would only show what he though was worthy of being seen. ... Even now with his work, he doesn't tell us about it until he gets the go-ahead on a project."
After graduating from OHS, Herr studied at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he majored in graphic arts and design. His first job was with the J. Walter Thompson agency, where he contributed to the "diamonds are forever" print ads for Diamonds Trading Company.
Looking five to 10 years down the road, Herr envisions himself a creative director. For now, however, he's quite content to work for an agency that he says gladly puts talent above age. "At 23, I never thought I'd be shooting Super Bowl commercials," he said. "It's one of those things I dreamed about in college but didn't think I would achieve until I was 40."
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