According to Google, there are
three Chuck Paganos in the world.
The writer in his more saturated days
(1) Chuck Pagano, the former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, (2) Chuck Pagano, the Chief Technology Officer at ESPN, and (3) Chuck Pagano, the stunningly handsome creative director who once fell asleep on the couch while watching the Indianapolis Colts on ESPN. That Chuck Pagano was born in Brooklyn before Brooklyn was cool.* He was raised in Jersey, which, let’s be honest, was never cool.** Moved to Boston, where he did his first ad: graffiti on a billboard that landed him in jail for the night.*** He's a little too fond of the asterisk. He likes to write in the third person, but I’m capable of seamlessly switching to first person mid-sentence. (Seamlessly may be a strong word.) I’m an exceptional parallel parker. I once wrote a cover story for the NY Press about dads in Manhattan. I was once a foot model. Okay, that’s not entirely true, but I do have beautiful feet. I can be funny, but know when to be serious. Can you believe the tragedy going on with those people in that faraway place overseas? What else...? Oh, right: I’m a creative director by trade, but a writer at heart. Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked on everything from banks to beers to donuts—sampling quite a bit of the latter two along the way. I like long copy ads and longer walks on the beach. I dislike commercials featuring people or animals with Scottish accents unless they’re commercials for Scotland. Or maybe Skittles. I don’t think award-winning ads and ads that move product and build brands have to be mutually exclusive. I think sneaking out to see a movie now and then is a good thing. Unless it stars Shia LaBeouf. Or Anne Hathaway. I think it’s okay to call in your lunch order to the edit house before heading over there. I don’t believe clients are the enemy. I believe a happy creative is a better creative. I can’t believe this has turned into a brand manifesto for myself. Cue Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”...
In summation: prophet, soul rebel, rastaman, wildman, lady’s man, island man. Oh, wait. That was Bono’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction speech for Bob Marley.
Me? I’m Chuck Pagano, Chief Technology Officer at ESPN. Wait, that’s not me either. Damn you, Google!****
* I was going to say BKLYN to further build my street cred, but in all honesty, that abbreviation drives me bananas. Shouldn’t it be BRKLN? Who made the decision to keep the Y over the R? The Y is superfluous. Sounds the same with or without it. But the R? Without the R, it’s Booklyn, which I don’t even need to Google to know it’s some sort of artisanal hipster bookstore café co-op. (These are the types of things that keep all three Chuck Paganos up at night. Mainly the Chuck Pagano who’s writing this, but since we all sleep in the same bedroom, the other two are usually up as well.)
** Springsteen aside.
*** An early attempt at guerrilla marketing.
**** Yikes, that’s a lot of asterisks. I should probably be using a dagger or obelisk or something with a circumflex. Whatever that is. Anyway, you may have noticed this bio is just a longer version of my LinkedIn bio. Did you expect me to have two bios? No one has two bios. Unless… Unless, there were two sides to you, say, a normal side who was a respected doctor in Victorian London by day and an evil side who only came out at night, to act upon his depraved desires and release his inner demons upon the city. You know, someone like Johnny Depp. So yes, in that situation, I can see how it might make sense to have two separate bios.