Cliff Freeman and Partners' work for Fox Sports, including the "Russia/Turkey/China/India" campaign directed by Partizan's Traktor captured the Grand Prix at Cannes this year and was generally showered with garlands up and down the award show promenade. The agency's Fox Sports "Utah/New York/San Antonio/Los Angeles" campaign, directed by Propaganda's Kuntz & Macguire (see page 40), featuring the antics of Alan and Jerome was similarly lauded. Freeman was also recognized for Fox Sport Net "Milk/Baby" and Church's Chicken. The agency, which made its name with work for Staples and Little Caesars has maintained its winning ways, topping this list in 1999, with Outpost.com and Fox Sports "Feet," and landing in the top five last year with Budget Rent-a-Car.

While the agency is known for startling its audience out of a tube-induced stupor with bolts of pain and comedy, what's notable is how relevant on how many levels those jolts are made; how soundly conceived messages are made so real with production grace notes. The beauty of Budget Rent-a-Car "Propulsion," for example lies not just in the way the protagonist flies into the electric wires with more sizzle than you might ever expect, (although his airborne flailings are indeed beautiful). It also lies in the moment before that happens, when the airport employee is shouting directions at the jet-packed traveler, whose face is etched with the look of someone trying to apply normal coping skills to a completely out-of-control situation, just like you do.

The originality and the consistency of such work has been the true benchmark of success for founder Cliff Freeman, who, as the creator of the "Where's the Beef?" campaign knows something about striking culturally eternal gold with a big idea. "I didn't want to be one of those people who did this one thing. I've been in the business a while and I know that there is a lot of good fortune involved in these things. You can hit on something and it can be very successful but the true measure is when you put together a body of work over many many years. I think that is something to be proud of and the agency has done that."

The veracity of that claim stares back with mute eloquence from the faces of a legion of Lions and naked hermaphrodites in the lobby of the agency's tasteful Manhattan offices; if there was any more award hardware around, they'd need a guy in an orange apron. To the touchy and frequently tiresome subject of acquiring awards, See "freeman" on pg 56> <"freeman" from pg 38 Freeman adds a frank and final word. "When I started the agency (in December 1987) I had won a lot of major awards already. It was important to me personally for all the obvious reasons but I felt instinctively, from an agency point of view, winning awards and representing a certain quality and level of creativity was probably the only way the agency could represent something unique and distinctive and saleable. I almost took that as a tool of how the agency would be positioned as an agency of leading edge creative. And along the way I learned to do other things...."

And while the agency has been known to dip successfully into the tickle trunk, success has meant putting a premium on freshness. On this, Freeman and creative director Eric Silver and head of production Clair Grupp are in agreement. "We keep experimenting," says Silver, pointing to a new Fox Sports Hockey campaign that isn't just different from the agency's other work, but different categorically. The darkly weird spots feature a zealous Red Wings fan who, in moments of solitude conjures fantastical hockey matches between strange hymenopteric creatures, seen only by him (and the viewer). The spots were directed by stop motion specialists The Quay Brothers, with effects from The Mill, London and edited by Tom Scherma at Mad River New York.

"I think we've done consistently great work but the challenge is to mix it up so we don't start treading on the same formulas," says Silver. "I think agencies started to copy us and I think we started to copy ourselves so it's incumbent on us to try different things. My goal is that you don't know it's a Cliff Freeman commercial. We want to challenge viewers and I think we want to challenge our clients."

Freeman sums up the quest for original work as nothing short of an agency prime directive. "I think the one reason for being for the agency is just this notion of trying to come up with something that hasn't been done," he says. "Not something so radical that people can't relate to it - because also key to our work is a great sense of humanity that, no matter what, when you're looking at it you understand the emotions. The Fox (Hockey) campaign manifests itself in the same way - that fanaticism and how it all lives inside your head - that is very basic stuff. It requires very special clients who can understand how this sort of work plays with people and why it's so powerful."

Translating humanity to screen has been another agency strength. "The thing is, we are salesmen, we are trying to sell a product," says Freeman. "And I think our work has a logic and simplicity to it which is critical when you have 30 seconds on TV. I used to say and still believe that the rarest thing in this business is not even the great idea, it's the great idea manifested, the great idea produced. That is the great separating place - somehow knowing how to get something on film that is also great."

Enter Grupp's production department, which works, she says, closely with a group of very driven creatives. Grupp joined the agency in 1999 and focused immediately on fostering teamwork and communication between creative and production players and cultivating "creative producers." She's also a big proponent of the new ideas ethos. "I encourage people not to lock into something, but to really keep an open mind in terms of the process and how they're planning the production," says Grupp, who acknowledges that nailing an idea perfectly requires walking a fine line. "One thing we do well is just when people thought they knew what the agency was known for, coming out with something new and fresh, but without trying too hard. That's a tricky balance because you can try too hard, with your casting or just try too hard to make something so different that it fails." The process of bringing the Fox Sports "Turkey/Russia/India/China" campaign to a satisfying conclusion was a case in point. Traktor's creative and resource-heavy approach was key, she says. "We've worked with Traktor a lot over the past year or so and one of their strengths is their resources. I'm a big resource person. From the beginning of the process we looked at tons of footage from around the world and from different sports to see what was out there that we were going for. Traktor is incredible in that process. Their treatments are very creatively written and they get into all the details down to specific costume ideas and how it all relates to the concept." The production traveled to South Africa, which Grupp says offered sufficiently wide casting options. "Where Traktor succeeded was in pushing it as far as they could but keeping it true to the feeling that it could have really taken place. It wasn't trying too hard."