Squeamish Beware

For a memorable ad, turn to Gyro Advertising - unless you're prone to motion sickness.

"I don't know if our work is better or worse than anyone else's--I just know it's different, and that's the reason big corporations will talk to us: They've never seen anything like it." That's how Steven Grasse, the 30-year-old CEO and worldwide creative director at Gyro Advertising, Philadelphia, explains the success of his five-year-old company, which he says has earned the reputation of being a "creative-only alternative resource."

The "alternative" moniker came into play after Grasse created some unsettling work for clothing company Zipperhead. First he launched a print ad featuring mass-murderer Charles Manson.

"The ad came out, we had tons of national print and all of a sudden every one of our corporate clients dropped us," he notes.

But that's also when MTV came calling, along with CAA and Mademoiselle magazine. Grasse realized he had stumbled on a fertile and previously unmined area in advertising.

"We realized every major corporation in America is trying to reach 18-to-34-year-olds, doesn't have a clue how to do it and is very eager to talk to someone like us."

"Freak Show," the Zipperhead :30 he directed, ran nationally on MTV last year. By Grasse's own admission, it was an "extreme S&M kind of thing." The spot begins with a voiceover saying, "I'm not what you would call a civilized man," followed by a quick-cut montage of what he describes as "freaks, people with multiple body piercing, tattoos." He didn't have to leave his own backyard to find them; they are all Gyro employees.

Do clients always give him this sort of a free rein? Yes, he says. "Not that we demand that, but no one would hire us [otherwise]. You know what you're going to get by looking at our reel.

"If you want something typical please don't call me, because I'll make your life difficult," he warns.

With 25 people on staff and annual billings of $30 million, Grasse says Gyro is turning out the way he envisioned it would. It was all in the grand design he mapped out for his life while an advertising major at Syracuse.

"I had a plan to start an agency when I was 25 and, before that, to go to the Far East to gain experience and be able to do a lot of TV shoots right away as opposed to waiting."

Kenyon and Eckhardt, Bangkok; Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong; and Saatchi & Saatchi, New Zealand were places where Grasse got his chance to shoot spots as fast as he could turn out the ideas. "What's interesting about working in those countries is you learn much more how to do things quickly and low-bud-get," he points out. In those countries, he says, covering up low production values with good ideas is the operating code, and he has embedded this dictum into the creative policy at Gyro.

Grasse has also formed some strong opinions on the testing of concepts. In the Far East there was none--Grasse would just "come up with an idea, go into a client and the next day shoot, as opposed to America where it goes through so many focus groups it gets watered down and destroyed." To combat this he tries to maintain a creative approach in Gyro's work, one that is less scientific, more emotional.

Grasse recently directed a campaign for Highball Magazine, a publication he created that bills itself as "the definitive guide to booze, cars and girls." He shot the commercial early this summer through Philadelphia-based production company Picturetube, where he signed as a music video director in June.

The spot, now running in four markets on local cable (Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Minneapolis), features a girl who consumes 10 martinis during the course of the ad, and literally loses her shirt by the spot's end. "It's very politically incorrect, which is what we specialize in," Grasse says.

Right-wing conservatives and left-wing feminists are not likely express outrage at the ad, only because they'll probably never see it. The model from the shoot did, however, and according to Grasse, she's still not talking to him. "I think she saw the final product and said, 'My God, what have I done?'"

But according to Anthony Lukas, president and executive producer of Picturetube, she shouldn't have expected anything less than the customary Grasse touch of the unexpected. "Steven has an extremely creative flair," he says. "He looks at 'creating' from a different angle. It's close to being insane. Everything is as far from normal as possible."