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THE LAST 5 YEARS

For the past five years I have been the founder and CEO of thehappycorp global and it’s sub-companies and projects. My responsibilities include pitching new business, managing the creative on the company’s projects, creating relationships with other like-minded firms and talent. I am a regular speaker and attendee to creative industry events; recently being appointed the President of the Art Directors Club and serving on the Marketing Advisory Board of the MoMA, I am connected to trends in the marketing and creative space.

As the director of lvhrd I am in constant with cultural leaders and creative talent around the world.

EARLY CAREER

In 1996 I took an internship for the summer working for a company called AGENCY.com. The company was located within the Time/Life building across from Radio City Music Hall. At the time it was a 17 person company filling a small corner of the publishing company’s midtown offices. I was hired at 20 years old to be a designer. My pay was $15/hr which was comparable to any summer job that I had previously. I quickly proved my design and web coding capabilities on a number of projects and was quickly promoted to design the Lucent Technologies website, and to do the art direction for the British Airways Pitch, which the firm won.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
I graduated from Syracuse University’s School of Visual and Performing Arts in May of 1997. My degree was in Art Media Studies with a focus on Computer Graphics. The degree required an understanding of computer programming, which was accomplished through required courses in the Engineering Schools CS dept. I took classes in Pascal, and C++. My Computer Graphics course work involved using Alias Wavefront Power Animator Software, which in it’s curret iteration is called MAYA to deliver 3d modeling and Animation Projects, as well as video courses, studio lighting and design.

FIRST JOB : K2 DESIGN
After graduation in 1997 I moved to NYC to work for a digital agency called K2 design. I was hired as an Art Director. As an Art Director I was responsible for the Art Direction and design for many of the firm accounts, including Sumitomo Bank, HP, NCR, Lexis-Nexis, Waterhouse Securities, amongst others. The company went public during my tenure and endured many management changes including major layoffs of which I was spared. I was promoted to Senior Art Director and was later recruited to be the first digital creative director at JWT.

CORPORATE LIFE : JWT

In 1999, at age 24, I was recruited to work for Kevin Wassong at JWT. I was the first creative director to join the digital sub-unit of the oldest advertising agency in the world. My task was to deliver creative solutions to the wide range of clients that the firm managed communications for. I was responsible for hiring a team of Art Directors, Writers, Designers, and Coders to deliver award winning work for clients. As an Associate Creative Director, I was challenged to shift the firms thinking towards the then over-hyped internet. During my time there I managed to created an award winning campaign for Debeers which included the launch of the DeBeers Design Your Own engagement ring program. I and my writing partner Garth Horn created a television commercial under the supervision of Eddie Evangelista and (). The work was recognized with the Best Digital Marketer of the Year Award by Adweek. Other milestones included my creative supervision of the Pitch for IPlanet, the Sun/Netscape alliance. I made a television commercial using Macromedia flash, and recording an account person’s voice over after landing, which helped seal the deal. After which I earned my position as partner, the youngest partner to date at the firm. After working there for just a year I was recruited to TBWA\Chiat\Day to work for Carl Johnson.

TBWA\Chiat\Day the boom

In 2000, I received a phone call at my desk at 10 pm. I answered to an unforgettable set of words that went something like… ‘ Your there, I thought that you would be’. It was Brent Hodkins, a soldier of fortune working under Carl Johnson’s thumb as a digerati evangelist for the firm. It was his task to get TBWA\Chiat\Day ready for digital marketing work. The firm had already held and lost leaders in the space, and needed new blood.

The courting process ended when TBWA\Chiat\Day bought the domain name ‘dougjaeger.com’. Carl and his team threatened to hold the domain hostage until I was an employee of the firm. I conceded due to flattery and frustration from my former position. While at TBWA\ I was thrown headfirst into the toughest and most prestigious accounts. I was invited to work on the launch of Orbitz.com, ABSOLUT VODKA, A&E, the SCIFI Channel, and Doctors W/O Borders. During my time at TBWA\ I won more than 15 international awards, judged award shows, spoke at leading conferences, and had the opportunity to attend the global agencies Square Root conference in Spain, where I was amongst the top 200 talented people in the entire network.

With extensive world travel, and top tear client exposure, I was asked to help develop the agency’s internal planning and ideation tool, called Disruption. I was hired to design the logo and identity system for the methodology, launch and design the cover for the book ‘Beyond Disruption’ and deliver intranet tools for the sharing of knowledge including a printed 100 page manual that was distributed to the network’s global offices.

After 2 years at the agency under the supervision of Carl Johnson, the agency decided to spin off it’s Digital and CRM services to launch a new global offering to extend off of it’s European roots called Tequila\. My staff was then absorbed into the new division and I was left to start a new creative practice around Disruption.

Under the new management of Shona Seifert, an expat of Ogilvy, my writing/creative partner Johnny Vulkan and I began to define projects outside traditional advertising for the agency. Johnny and I began to engage in design projects, product innovation assignments, as well as brand story telling initiatives. In late 2003 we left TBWA to launch thehappycorp global.

MY FAMILY

I was born on the north shore of Long Island, the son of Paul and Susan Jaeger. Paul was a self motivated man who earned a GED, and put himself though college at night to earn a degree in sales and marketing from Baruch College. He used the degree to propel himself through the ranks at 3M, where he earned a collection of management awards working with the manufacturing conglomerates commutations infrastructure products. He since retired from 3M choosing to spend his early retirement as a Real Estate Agent in Northern New Jersey. Susan is the proud recipient of a masters in education from Columbia Teachers college in Manhattan, who taught in the New York Public School System until my birth, and continued her passion for teaching as a substitute during my and my brother’s school years. She is currently an office manager for a plant management technology sales office in Parssipany New Jersey.