Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve Isaacs.
Steve, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’d say it started on my 18th birthday when I got in the car and drove from Cupertino, CA down to Disneyland and got a job as a Jungle Cruise skipper. That was my big intro to the exciting world of “show business” Since then, it’s been a long and windy road from music school at MI in Hollywood, to being an MTV VJ in New York in the early ’90s, to playing “Tommy” in “The Who’s Tommy” on the national Broadway tour, to putting out albums with two rock bands — Skycycle and then The Panic Channel with the guys from Jane’s Addiction, to two decades in entertainment business advertising.
It’s all kind of bonkers and makes no logical sense.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an smooth path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Are there any smooth roads? I kinda think that the only times you really learn anything are in those moments of resistance. Most of my struggles were a product of my own impatience and lack of self-awareness, things I think I had to mature a bit to figure out. Also, at a certain point, I had to realize that getting sober was the best way for me to live a productive life, hopefully one that I could be proud of.
My road has been circuitous and indirect, so working as a creative director has been kind of a weirdly logical aggregation of all the other career paths I’ve experienced. Writing songs helped me figure out creative visualization and follow-through, being in the “Tommy” musical gave me deep respect for creative people of all kinds of disciplines, playing in bands gave me great insight into teamwork and the power of the collective, and having record label deals showed me the existential misery of when art slams up against commerce and kicks your aspirations in the gut.
Whenever there was a setback, I’ve found that there’s always some open door or some still, small voice that whispers in your ear to clue you to an alternate path or way through. Sometimes those little “what if” voices can lead to a whole new adventure that can span years and change your whole life’s sphere of experience.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Legion Creative?
Currently, I’m the Executive Vice President of Creative at Legion Creative, an advertising agency that focuses primarily on the entertainment business. I collaborate with an amazing group of thinkers and designers and we come up with campaigns for movies and television. I specialize in “integrated” or “360” campaigns, that span digital, social, AV, and the print/poster part of the campaign. In the 20 years, I’ve been doing this, I progressively gravitated toward seeing the bigger picture and working to build campaigns where the pieces can lock in together to create a greater whole, or at least that’s the goal. At the end of the day, I always geek out about working on the entertainment side of things, I’m a huge movie and tv guy.
On the side, I’ve got some ongoing illustration projects, I draw all the card designs for “Cinephile: A Card Game” — it’s like the ultimate card game for film nerds, and we also released “A is for Auteur” an alphabet book for the kids… of film nerds. Also, I’ve got an online shop called Haunted Waterpark where to sell the T-shirts and art prints I create.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Not sure if I really know what success is. The older I get, the more I feel that real “success” is like George Bailey at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” where he realizes he’s been a pretty good guy to the people in his life, and his success was a product of making their lives a little better.
As far as “success” from a business or life experience perspective, it’s about being adaptable, and always giving yourself the permission to reinvent. You could argue that my career is a case study in too much reinvention, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. You only live once. Looking back, it feels like I’ve lived a number of lives, but it still feels like it’s not enough. I’ll always want more.
Contact Info:
- Website: steveisaacs.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveisaacs/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/steveisaacs
- Other: https://hauntedwaterpark.com/
Image Credits
Legion Creative
F. Scott Schafer
