The Creative Path

After some initial doubt, Joe Wees follows his creative passion in movie advertising and settles into his dream job.

Around 100,000 years ago, a gene expressing creative cognizance permitted Homosapiens to outlive other hominids and thus began the evolution of artistry and ingenuity. Like dominos, each invention pushed humanity to the next nexus of discovery. Innovation then turned towards introspection—philosophers, thespians, and painters all acting in the interest of contemplating human existence. Then, when the soul-searching grew too frustrating, humans, inherently creatures of creation, were suddenly creatures of production ensnared in the chains of competitive enterprise.

The rise and grind of the 20th century has persuaded imagination that it has no place alongside ambition. A rhetoric that 22 years ago led current Senior Vice President of Creative Marketing at Universal Studios, Joe Wees, to believe he wasn’t creative.

Born the same year as the emergence of the compact disc, Wees grew up the youngest of three in Omaha, Nebraska. Enjoying all aspects of athletics and film, when the time to look into college came about, Wees explored degrees in sports marketing and discovered the University of Oregon.

“U of O had just really started their sports marketing program. It was like newish and it was the best in the country,” Wees explains.

Four years and a couple of internships later, Wees received a major in business with an emphasis on sports marketing and a minor in economics.

Following graduation, Wees migrated to Des Moines, Iowa and worked ticket sales for the Iowa Stars professional hockey team, an AAA affiliate to the Dallas Stars. Though excited to be an employed graduate back home in the Midwest, the position didn’t provide him the fulfillment to fund a lifetime career.

“I knew within two minutes it’s not what I wanted to do, but I hung out for over a year to just …learn management style, to learn commitment, all that stuff.”

Making a profit of $16,000 a year plus commissions didn’t beget the most ostenta- tious lifestyle, but the job’s value lay in its educational properties. Chasing his Hollywood-esque ambitions, Wees and his mother drove all his worldly belongings to Los Angeles that summer, where he slept on his uncle’s couch for six months. He applied for job after job, receiving rejection after rejection, a college graduate with a good GPA, good working experience, and he couldn’t get hired. Out of frustration and lack of knowing what else to do, he called his friend Dan Wolfe.

Wolfe ran an in-house editorial company through Universal Studios in Los Angeles, his team creating and organizing trailers and TV spots for movies. An internship under Wolfe’s division at Universal, cracked open the door to a realm of innovation Wees had always believed to be locked. Wees’ intinial thought: “I’m not creative.”

His friend Marc Schmuger provided simple advice that changed the scope of Wees’ life: “You don’t know how creative you are until you try.”

Taking the internship, now retriever of coffee and answerer of phones, he’d moreover been granted the chance to sit in edit bays, break down movies, and write copies endlessly. The internship gave him a space to learn the practical side of film while enhancing his knowledge of artistry. A relentless worker, Wees wrote piece after piece for higher-ups. This ambitious attitude garnered him an auspicious reputation, enticing Universal to welcome him back for a second summer.

During his two years, Wees spent substantial time with Wolfe. Good humor and kindness in abundance, inevitably Wolfe was sucked into Wees’ orbit, a friendship formed.

Later, Wolfe invited him to work as a coordinator on the creative team of home entertainment for Universal Studios the following Monday.

For the next six months he retrieved more coffees, coordinated meetings, and began doing dub requests whatever it took to pursue a future in creativity.

Leaving a meeting at one of Universal’s numerous office buildings, Wees was called over by an employee he identified from his internship, Scott Abraham. Pulling him into his office, Abraham stated that his assistant quit two minutes ago and offered Wees a job. Senior Vice President of Creative Advertising at the time, Abraham embodied everything Wees desired in his ambition as an artist in the modern world. In 2009, The Unborn, was released. Writing a copy, also called a tagline, for the film proved a challenge. Abraham and his advertising team ran in circles trying to come up with a phrase for the print campaign. Wees wracked his own brain, jumping at the chance to establish himself creatively. He analyzed the film: a woman is pregnant with an unborn evil entity that wants to be released upon the world.

“It wants to be born now.”

The copy was Wees’ first concrete piece of advertising published with Universal, laying the first brick of the road to his future career. Four years working under Abraham led him to two years with Jackson George, who’s eventual departure to Disney left room for Wees to explore his own creativity as a borderline creative executive.

“It left open an opportunity for me to kind of be my own person,” Wees says.

Wees’ first client, Jason Blum, created the film, The Purge, which opened at $34 million and is the beginning to a franchise now worth over $500 million. From then on, Wees worked on Blumhouse Productions’ films, including the recent end to the Halloween trilogy, Halloween Kills. Following Blum came Jordan Peele, legendary director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, as well as M. Night Shyamalan, creator of The Sixth Sense, Signs, Split, and the upcoming feature Knock at the Cabin. Additionally, Wees has had a finger in all of Illumination’s pies for the past decade––from Despicable Me to Minions: The Rise of Gru, all the way to Dr. Suess’ the Grinch and The Super Mario Bros movie trailer that just dropped, he now runs the full campaigns for the company.

“I started small and I just worked tirelessly to become good at what I did and just took on every challenge,” he says.

If someone asked Wees to handle a project, the only word in his vocabulary was yes. He climbed through the ranks at Universal, eventually earning the position of Senior Vice President of Creating Advertising.

Wees’ legacy is one crafted to thrive because of his ambition, not in spite of it. Taking a piece of art from a filmmaker with a specific vision and marketing it to an audience with specific expectations, while pleasing executives enforcing specific guidelines and still composing wholly original works is what sets Wees apart from others in his field.

Around 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens acquired a gene of creative expression that advanced them beyond other species of their family, propelling them to the next level of evolution. A little over 20 years ago, Joe Wees thought he wasn’t creative. Taking an internship in creative marketing anyways, he’s pursued a life of innovation in a century that sidelines imagination in favor of capital. Now holding one of the highest positions in his field, he constantly redraws the lines in the sand, dictating what’s allowed in the name of creation.

22 years ago, Wees decided to try, and in doing so discovered what many can only hope to stumble upon; his creativity is a contrivance of his legacy, not a predetermination of his worth.