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The Brand Development Company was created in 2003 but didn't really come to life until earlier this year when a strange package arrived from Czechoslovakia. In it were three one-liter bottles, valued at about $300 each, of absinthe, a greenish, mouthwash-like "spirit" that, turns out, tastes worse the more you drink.
This particular project -- creating an ad for Rolling Stone -- was special because absinthe is illegal in the U.S. (illegal to sell but not illegal to consume) and our involvement with it was our first collaboration under the expanded Brand Development Company banner.
Being professionals in the field of marketing communications, Steve, Carroll and I
were each rather accustomed to strange packages arriving from strange places,
often in the middle of the night, sometimes delivered by strangers hiding behind cheap sunglasses and spray-on tans.
Nevertheless, we wondered if this absinthe project was an omen,
good or bad.
Although no one uttered a word of concern to the other, none of us leapt to offer a shipping address to the Czechs.
Eventually it was decided, as a matter of sheer practicality, that the package should be sent straight to Carroll since we'd be shooting in his studio as soon as it arrived.
Steve and I were
glad to have Carroll volunteer his address but it didn't go unnoticed he'd given the Czechs his
home address --not the studio address-- where his housekeeper --not Carroll-- would be answering the door.
Long story made short: The box arrived. We shot the absinthe. We created the ad.
None of us went to jail.
Not even the nanny.
For thirty minutes, late on a Thursday night, the three of us sat on folding chairs in the cavernous studio in 'lil old Spartanburg, South Carolina, sampling Czechoslavakian absinthe shipped straight to Carroll's house from Czechoslavakia, wondering how many other guys got started this way.
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