Vancouver-based director Phil Brown has come aboard the Radke Films roster for representation. Brown, notorious for his controversial ads like ‘Dead Chicken’ (for Fong’s Fresh Poultry) and more recently ‘Lawnmower Man’ and ‘Bathtime’ (for Vancouver’s Canine Equipment), will be repped by Radke across Canada, except for Vancouver, where he will continue receiving his boards through Rave.

Brown joins Radke from the Toronto chapter of the New York-based The Artists’ Company. Brown says he really appreciates Radke’s policies on getting its directors work.

‘Radke is a fairly aggressive production company and that is where I want to be,’ says Brown. ‘I am fairly aggressive in what I want to do and I feel Radke is the best production company at the moment. They have a good reputation.’

Brown believes Radke can help to get his name and reel to the right people, and not just in Canada.

‘My ambitions are not just the local market, but international,’ he admits. ‘I wanted a company that is more of a presence in Canada. I just wanted to go a little more heavyweight.’

Radke’s head of sales, Jamie Phair, says the company is excited to have a director like Brown on the team, calling his approach to directing commercials ‘unique and fresh.’ He goes on to say that Brown has the ability to find a detail in a board which can be exploited – and it is often a detail the creative people who wrote it didn’t intend to emphasize.

‘Any board I send him, he can pull that vision out,’ says Phair. ‘I could receive a board that looks a little too simple to pass onto Phil [but] he will look at it and find what is different about it. I think the key is there is his creative background [Brown worked as an art director in Scotland and North America]. It’s like having a third creative member on a project.’

‘Weirdness’ is what Brown believes he brings with him to Radke. He also thinks he will bring a bit of European flavor to the Radke stew, with his anti-mainstream style of commercial-making.

‘I feel my specialty is more of a quirky visual narrative, with a slight leaning toward the ‘sick’ side,’ says Brown. ‘That is where I want to be. The stuff I do is unique to me, in that I’m not trying to emulate anyone, certainly not in North America, and I feel now North American spots are more and more being influenced by what is going on in Europe. That is where I feel I can add something.’

The ‘sick’ side of Brown’s commercial-making prowess was exhibited in his Canine Equipment ‘Very Bad Dog Gear’ spots. The two spots have generated their share of controversy and publicity for the director.

The ads depict a crafty pooch finding ingenious ways to off its owner (who happens to be a black man). The dog, presumably, kills his master in each of the spots, first by knocking an electric radio into his bathtub, and then with a wayward lawnmower.

It seems the controversy never ends for the Canine Equipment spots, and the director says some people are finding issues in places within the ads where they were never intended.

In the case of ‘Lawnmower Man,’ the black owner is shown doing yard work. ‘I got a call from a magazine and [the reporter] asked, ‘Did you have issues with the black guy doing the gardening?’ ‘ he laughs.

‘It’s a politically incorrect spot as it is, but it just didn’t ever occur to me that there was a ‘black’ guy in the spot. But hey, if you are going to do a spot that offends people, you had better make sure it offends everybody.’

Brown is astonished by the longevity of the ads, which were filmed last May, and says he still receives e-mails and calls about them.

And the publicity the ads have generated has reached advertising folks internationally. Brown says he has received feedback on the spots from the u.s., Czechoslovakia and Germany (where they are apparently very popular).

‘It’s been really positive,’ says Brown. ‘It just goes to show that if you take a few risks, instead of doing your bland, insipid advertising, it pays off.’