While one wonders how the judicial system may have suffered for lack of the hilarious new legal arguments he might have made, Eric Silver decided early on that being in law sucked, and he has since found happiness in advertising.sboards||19991101ilver was made VP/creative director at New York's Cliff Freeman and Partners early this year after stints at a number of shops including Weiden & Kennedy, which he says schooled him in the ways of good creative. His two years at Freeman mark his longest-standing and most prolific gig yet.

Says Silver of his role at the agency: "One of the things I said to (Freeman) when I started was I wanted to be encouraged to fail, at which point he kind of looked at me blankly." But Silver explains that strange request as a desire to pursue original ad ideas. "It's so refreshing to see a great commercial - it's rare to see something that comes in through the back door. That's been my agenda - to try different things."

That approach caused Silver's name to get a liberal bandying about on this year's award circuit, with campaigns being cited at Cannes, the AICP show, the Clios and D&AD, among others. Silver was creative director and writer on the Outpost.com campaign, which won just about every award in adland, including Gold at Cannes 99. He was creative director on Fox Sports.com "Feet," which won Silver at Cannes and the Advertising Excellence Award for single spot at AICP, with the campaign winning a number of other citations. Silver also gets writing credit for the Hollywood Video TV spot "Don," which captured Gold at Cannes, with the campaign gathering hardware wherever it went.

Silver recently applied his comedic touch and contrarian philosophy to a new campaign for Budget Rent a Car. Silver creative directed and co-wrote a new pool of five spots, directed by Propaganda's Dante Ariola, who was also responsible for delivering the strange vision in Ground Zero's "Knowledge" spots for ESPN.

The new spots focus on a group of people brainstorming ways to make Budget a better company. While the feasible ideas - services that Budget actually provides - are presented, inevitably one person takes the exercise too far, suggesting a strangely attractive yet untenable alternative. In one spot, one of the brainstormers tries to better Budget's Fast Break service, which facilitates speedy movement of people from airport to car seat. In answer to "How can we do it faster," the idea is posited: "What if we give them jet propulsion packs?" The scenario is played out with disastrous results and the group comes back to the original plan. Three of the spots began airing at the end of October, and the rest will break early in the new year. The spots were co-written by Steve Doppelt and art directed by Jason Gaboriau.

Creating spots that are intended to move rental cars but that involve people getting electrocuted while flying into overhead wires in jet packs fits with Silver's approach to ad making - one that's been encouraged at Cliff Freeman, where Silver landed in 1997 after an eventful career climb.