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Who is Ed Evangelista and how did he get selected as a judge?
What kind of behavior can we expect from
Evangelista when dealing with contestants?
How does JWT feel about Evangelista’s
participation in the show?
What is American Inventor?
American Inventor is ABC’s newest prime time reality show,
down to four finalists.
From Pete Jones and the producers of American Idol, the show
encourages fledgling entrepreneurs to audition their inventions
in the hopes of being named the final million-dollar winner.
Why Simon Cowell, why
this type of show?
When asked if he considers himself a music man or an entrepreneur,
Cowell claimed that at heart he's a serial entrepreneur. “I've
always treated the music business as a business. Whether I'm
making TV shows or signing artists, you have to do it by the
head and not the heart—and I run my businesses that way.”
Simon Cowell helped launch the show after Peter Jones brought
the show to the U.S. instead of his native Britain because,
“When I think of invention, I always think of America…
There seems to be that spirit in America of inventions and inventors.”
How will the winner be
chosen?
According to Cowell, over 10,000 applications were received.
Four judges will whittle a group of 1,000 contestants down to
100, and then down to the final three. The American viewers
will vote for their favorite contestant, and the winner will
be announced live. The winner will receive a $1 million prize,
as well as manufacturing and retail agreements for their product.
Who are the judges?
The show will feature one judge from each of the worlds of finance,
business, marketing and advertising. Ed Evangelista, an executive
creative director at JWT, will appear as a judge along with:
Mary Lou Quinlan, founder and CEO of Just Ask a Woman, one of
the premier women's marketing companies in the U.S.; and Peter
Jones, one of the U.K.'s brightest young entrepreneurs and venture
capitalists.
Who is Ed Evangelista
and how did he get selected as a judge?
A driving force behind successful campaigns for the likes of
Smirnoff, Diamond Trading Company, Thermasilk and Rolex, Evangelista's
dynamic tough-guy-next-door persona is a sure bet to make him
the breakout star of American Inventor. When he found out about
the show, Evangelista agreed to sit down with producers, instantly
impressing them with his pull-no-punches charm. Even after producers
met with a who's who of Madison Avenue executives, they clearly
had a soft spot for Evangelista. Finally, when notoriously ornery
Cowell saw his audition interview, even he couldn’t deny
Evangelista’s star power, and it was a done deal.
What kind of behavior
can we expect from Evangelista when dealing with contestants?
“I wear my emotions on my sleeve. People know where I'm
coming from at all times. I look at it like I'm leading a platoon:
The worst thing you can have is chaos and indecisiveness. And
I bring that same approach to working on a brand: coming on
direct and very truthfully. Creatives are fragile, and you've
got to handle them gingerly,” he says. “Unfortunately,
I'm not the 'handle gingerly' type. Sometimes I might be too
harsh, and I realize that. But I think it helps the teams get
to a place quicker. You want to get it right the first time.”
How does JWT feel about
Evangelista’s participation in the show?
JWT Worldwide CEO Bob Jeffrey views Evangelista’s role
as a natural progression of the company’s groundbreaking
history of innovation. Jeffrey states: “For the past 141
years, JWT has pioneered some of the advertising industry’s
most significant developments. Now we are at the forefront of
the exploration of pop culture and its profound effect on trends
and consumer behavior. The creative innovation that JWT prides
itself on and the creative invention featured on American Inventor
are a logical partnership.”
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