The title was always Creative Director, It should have been Suggester, I suggested stuff for other people to do. When it failed, it was just a suggestion. When it worked, it was Ron’s idea. What a genius!
Ron Woodall was the Creative Director of Expo 86. After agency stints with McKim and JWT, he became a free agent in the mid-seventies and has subsequently booked onto an eclectic array of projects. Just a few of his distinctly memorable credits include: The Palmer Jarvis DDB (PJDDB) Resurrection, The Great A&W Root Bear, Expo 86, the Blue Jays launch, The ’72 Canada-Russia Series,
PJDDB. By 1992, the Strategy creative rankings had Palmer Jarvis (PJ) at 69th. Frank Palmer wanted a winner. He gave Ron the opportunity to be a creative mentor. Ron introduced an innovative methodology. In two years, PJ was 9th. By 5 years, PJ was Number One and stayed there for a decade.
The Great A&W Root Bear. The occasion was McDonald’s 1972 entry into the Canadian market. A&W needed an iconic distraction while planning a response. They liked Ron’s absurdist style. No agency here. Ron was their creative resource for ten years. Marketing named it a classic campaign. A&W recovered and prospered.
Expo 86. After a national search for a Creative Director, Ron was hired for the west coast’s highest profile creative job ever. His mandate was the “look, feel. and content of the fair”. Expo had rave reviews. Ron was credited with envisioning the prototype of future world’s fairs. It was Vancouver’s turning point. Hippie town became Lamborghini town. Ron was hired by the Australians as consulting creative director of Expo 88
in Brisbane. In all, he worked on World’s Fair projects for Vienna, Budapest, Seville, and Korea.
Labatt’s welcomed the Blue Jays in 1974. In 1970, Ron had created a Labatt’s campaign to launch the Vancouver Canucks. Now, recalling Peter Puck, he decided to explain baseball to Canada. Ron says It might have been a dud except for the brilliance of Arte Johnson.
The Bay liked Ron’s ironic style.”Timothy Eaton Week at the Bay,” “The World’s Greatest Department Store Salesman” and “The 300 Year Old Company Man”. His favourite was the 1972 Canada-Russia showdown. Hockey politics kept superstars off the team so Canada played without Bobby Hull. But Ron Woodall had Bobby Hull. Bobby’s line was “What, go to Russia and miss Bay Day?”
After Expo 86, the big silver geodesic dome became Science World, now a prime Vancouver attraction and landmark. For the two year transformation, Ron was hired as Creative Director, planner, and member of the board.
BC Tourism believed the 86 Spirit could be sustained. Ron’s assignment was to create events to touch on almost every community in the province. Music 91 would emerge as a colossal traveling roadshow. Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, John Denver, Tony Bennett, and over three dozen very big names performed on Ron’s immense staging concepts.
Ron sold visions of basic ideas, remarkably impacting so many projects. A Fraser River Historic Park. A German theme park. The Vancouver Opera. A National Capitol Ceremonial Route. Historic preservation projects. Even a Las Vegas casino makeover. There were many more advisory and creative roles. The three universities and Emily Carr. The latter a campaign to to achieve degree granting authority,
A Beaux Arts graduate, Ron’s original notion to spend life at the easel was never abandoned. He had developed a fascination with backcountry vernacular architecture which he regarded as abandoned sculpture. “Arrested decay,” he called it. Heritage Canada and the Canada Council endorsed the first books. “Magnificent Derelicts” and “Taken by the Wind” which had over 500 colour plates of the vanishing west. Art shows were sellouts. With magazine spreads in MacLean’s and TIME, Ron Woodall became known not as a marketer, but as a fine artist.
His Spiess Award came on the same day as his new hip Lifetime Achievement. He decided that meant it was time to move to the island where he has been for almost 25 years doing quite interesting other things. He calls himself a very old truck.
