Profile: Dan Neri

The ads court controversy. One compares dog breeders to the Ku Klux Klan.Another shows women equipped with spraying cow udders. Another has underwear-clad beauties rubbing veggies on their bodies. And those are just a handful in a body of work spanning eight years.Their creator, Dan Neri, says the pro-bono ads for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are made "to get [PETA] noticed." And as the aforementioned "Veggie Love" ad can attest to -- its rejection from NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl 2009 resulted in more than 1 million hits on PETA's Web site over a two-day period -- mission accomplished."I don't set out to shock people, but I set out to surprise them," says the 41-year-old. "[I want to] create a dialogue."Neri, whose day job is art director at Deutsch, Los Angeles, began his work with PETA after noticing a woman wearing a fur coat on a warm day. (At the time, he was working at Earle Palmer Brown, his second stint at the agency). "I thought it was kind of obnoxious, so I made this joke: 'Imagine if someone killed her for her fur coat,'" he says. He pitched the idea to PETA for an anti-fur spot and the resulting ad showed a man clubbing a woman to steal her fur coat. But it never made it to air. PETA itself "banned" it -- not the first time it would keep one of its own ads off the air (a move consistent with the organization's strategy to create buzz with its controversial work). This time, though, the ad was deemed very much the wrong spot for the wrong time."It was finalized right before 9/11 and the country was not in the mood for violence," says Lisa Lange, svp of communications at PETA.Many of PETA's ads, however, have made it to air. Where they haven't made it is the Super Bowl. Over the last 10 years, PETA has submitted five spots. When NBC rejected Neri's "Veggie Love," an executive from network standards sent a letter to PETA -- quickly posted on its Web site -- noting the commercial "depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards," and listing the offensive imagery, including "rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin" and a fuzzy image of a woman pleasuring herself with broccoli.Neri says he actually wasn't sure the ad would be rejected-but he was glad it was. "I was a little afraid ... we might not get the story in the press," he admits. Neri did have an ad on this year's big game, "Date," for Taco Bell.Created at his previous job as cd at Draftfcb, it features a guy at a party who can't wait to call a girl he just met to highlight the chain's fast service.Guess which spot got the attention?Within two days of the spot being put on the PETA Web site, says Neri, there were "Veggie Love" parodies on late-night talk shows, including Jimmy Kimmel Live, worldwide press coverage and those more than 1 million hits. Plus, he says, 50 percent of users stayed on the site to watch videos that discussed the benefits of vegetarianism.At press time, Neri was finishing a spot addressing the use of exotic skins and furs in fashion. The PETA work, he says, has been "an interesting ride." So much so, that even he's uncomfortable with some of the work he's created. He points to a spot in PETA's 2008 "Animal birth control" campaign, "Wrong Meeting," in which a white-hooded man accidentally walks into an American Kennel Club meeting and decides he'd fit right it."I'm still afraid of that spot," Neri says. "It's a little mean." But the ad, like the others, he adds, is rooted in fact. The Kennel Club, he says, doesn't "believe in mutts. ... They believe in the sanctity of pure bloodlines, breeding to achieve a master race and all that stuff. It's [all there] on the American Kennel Club's home page." His pro-bono work, which includes efforts for breast cancer awareness, gives him a chance to apply his advertising skills to support worthy causes."My wife is a nurse and she always comes home with these wonderful stories about how she helps people," says Neri, "and I'm like, 'Today I made an ad.' Most of the time we're just selling toilet paper. People need it, but it gives me an opportunity to do things I feel are doing good."

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Profile: Dan Neri

Eleftheria Parpis

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Eleftheria Parpis