#sparkchamber 113020 — Marc Friedland

Sarah Vienot takes over the #sparkchamber today, honored and thrilled to have had the chance to chat with Communications and Invitation Innovator Marc Friedland of Couture Communications.

Marc’s client list is a veritable who’s who of Hollywood — Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Elton John to name a few. Marc’s invitations are beautifully crafted, and serve to set the stage for the event or celebration to come. If you are touring his website — and I highly recommend that you do — his creations really pull at your imagination. Notably, Marc has also designed the much-coveted winners envelopes for the Oscars [incidentally he did not design the envelopes the year of the big mix up in 2017.]

In addition to the jaw-droppingly gorgeous and wildly elaborate invitations Marc is known for, his firm also creates digital couture — the digital and virtual space is becoming very important during this pandemic — estate and event branding, beautiful keepsakes, and exquisite product and gift packaging.

Most recently, while sheltering in place, Marc launched a wonderful initiative aimed at keeping us all connected and feeling well-loved up during these strange times. It’s called #30ThankYous — an experiment in gratitude via good old-fashioned letter writing.

SV: So, a warm welcome to you Marc. Thank you so much for taking part and allowing us a peek into your thoughts on the creative process.

MF: My pleasure, Sarah, and I’m thrilled and honored to be here, chatting with you and sharing some of these insights with your followers and colleagues.

SV: You are a mixture of so many disciplines — part storyteller, part strategist, part designer — and all of these combined skills allow you to set the stage for an event or celebration but ultimately, it’s about human connection.

But your path to communications consigliere was not straightforward. How did you pivot from a potential career in the medical field to become this epic event myth maker?

MF: That’s a great question. It’s one of those great life journeys that just kind of serendipitously happened but I’m glad that it did and glad that I seized the opportunity. I had a deep sense of curiosity as a kid and I loved exploring what could be sent through the mail. I don’t know what it was about receiving mail or sending weird things through the mail, but I think it was the joy of coming home after school and finding a package waiting for me.

Cut to when I came out to California to get my Masters in Public Health and Behavioral Sciences, which is kind of weird that it’s full circle right now given everything that we are going through. In my final semester, I just wanted to do something fun, so I took a mixed-media art class as a way to take a break from some of the heavy intellectual academic studies. I loved art supplies, I loved drafting tables, I loved the rubbed down letters, the sets of markers that you would always see on architects’ or designers’ drafting tables. I just started making greeting cards. I would do cards like, “Thanks for dinner,” and it would have an Alka Seltzer packet on it. These were not even printed. If I found great quotes I would photocopy them, cut them out, and collage them onto the card. It was very Etsy, very Martha Stewart but before all of that, we’re talking 1984-86.

I then began going store-to-store, knocking on doors, showing people what I was making. They would place an order, and I would go back to my apartment and make them. It was literally a house of cards because I would go home, fulfill each order, and stack up all of the cards for distribution. 35 years later it still continues but it’s even more relevant. I evolved from greeting cards to invitations, next was event branding ,and then I expanded into curated experiences. The thread, and I think this is the most important thing, and this is the timeliness of this conversation, is the power of connection. People can say — oh it’s greeting cards, it’s graphic art, or it’s marketing, or it’s events and invitations. But really, the bigger picture is how to engage and celebrate relationships that mean the most, and connect with people in deep, meaningful, heartfelt ways, and that really is the core of what we do here. These things we make are just the tools that we use to help accomplish that overarching goal.

SV: Looking at your beautiful body of work, I would say that your invitations in particular are as much a form of celebration as the actual celebration. They are just magical!

MF: Thank you, and there’s a reason for that. A lot of what we’ve come to discover after doing this for so long, be it an invitation, a greeting card, marketing materials, or a curated experience, these creations have an emotional impact. It’s something that we call “Felt Perception,” so when somebody receives one of our invitations, or one of our pieces of communication, digital or what have you, it resonates on a level that is just beneath the cortical thinking brain — it hits you on an emotional level. It is visceral. It’s hard to quantify the qualitative experience that happens. What we do know is it makes an emotional impact by creating an emotional imprint. Long after the event, or people have received the piece, these communication artifacts trigger memories in a similar way to that of a song or a scent. That’s the power of design. That’s the power of emotional branding and things that have that kind of tactile, sensory, or emotive experience. That’s what transfers the magic. I feel so grateful and blessed to have the opportunity to do these things for our clients. And it’s not just individuals, it’s luxury brands and hotels, and a variety of folks who want to transcend the transactional nature of communications into experiential communications.

SV: Beautifully said, and this dovetails nicely into the first of four questions in our creative-process questionnaire.

1.] Where do ideas come from?

MF: I would have to answer that from the perspective of what we do is more than a business, it’s kind of my artistic expression. When you think about artists and creators, they get inspired from so many different things. Their passion and inspiration can come from anywhere. I think the inspiration piece is really closely attuned to intuition and my being a sensitive, curious kind of guy. What I mean by that is that I am a student of people’s interactions, and somehow, it’s understanding that primordial desire for connection. Using that longing for connection as the base for figuring out how to come up with ways through the mediums I work with to commemorate and celebrate those special occasions.

Empathy is a big part of it, and you infuse it with style, quirkiness and wit to create something unexpected and meaningful. When I first started out, wedding invitations had to be ecru with black engraving. But why? Those styles were created to give people a code of conduct, a set of standards. This left no room for individual expression or personality. It was an area that was ripe for personal expression to treat communications as something other than a perfunctory tool, where you go through a book and you say, ”Oh, that’s kind of nice,” but there’s no real emotional connection. Uncovering the emotional piece to all of this, and my own journey and self-discovery ,is a very big part of creating impactful communications.

SV: It’s like an alchemical process that allows you to really bring that personality forward in each of your projects, I think.

MF: Yes, the challenge obviously as a business, in a world that’s changed numerous times in 30-plus years, how to tell that story, and communicate that story in a meaningful, resonating way.

2.] What is the itch you are scratching?

We’re all sadly in a time that’s not filled with much joy. There’s a lot of separation and isolation right now. It’s impacted me deeply. Primarily because I get fueled by working on these kinds of projects and I recharge from creating these experiences or pieces for clients that bring them joy. It’s a very symbiotic relationship. It feels like a big pause button has been pressed in the world. Navigating my own journey during this pandemic is like an unmanned fire hose that’s going in all different directions — some days are good days; some are not so good. What’s really emerging for me in all of this is the longing for connection is more palpable now than ever before. The world has changed, and therefore, how brands and individuals celebrate, or how companies communicate is also going to change. Empathy is the new currency. Graciousness is the new way forward. I feel like the last 30-some-odd years has brought me to this point to be able to help companies or clients, insightfully, intuitively, creatively craft client or brand experiences or communications that very much have the spirit of connection, gratitude, and empathy embedded in it. If you take a step back and think about how miraculous the act of communication is — the fact that I could say something; that you receive that; I then get feedback that you received it the way in which I intended it. That loop, how that ever happens, is magical in my mind. What I hope to have the opportunity to explore is how to work with clients to create these really meaningful pieces of communication right now that foster a sense of connection, a sense of appreciation. That shines through some of the darkness and the challenges we’re all experiencing. And not necessarily from a marketing perspective, but from a human, heartfelt perspective.

That’s what I hope to accomplish. And the other piece of all of this is wanting to do it in collaboration. After 35 years of running the ship, I am open to new opportunities, new ideas, and new ways of doing things, as long as it has connection at its core.

3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?

I’m not an early bird, and I’m not technically a night owl, but sleep patterns are always kind of a little crazy, so it’s not necessarily well managed, that energy. As for the tortoise or the hare, that’s also another interesting question because what comes to mind first is that the ideas come somewhat at a hare’s pace but then the implementation is somewhat at a tortoise’s pace. And that’s not necessarily that they’re working together — the hare is on the tortoise’s back or vice versa. I guess you are witnessing my inner conflict and resistances.

4.] How do you know when you are done?

From a creative perspective, and after doing this for 35 years, this break really scared me because this is all I know. Am I done? I am not. I really love what I do. I might want to be able to do it differently, but I love the spirit of what I do. The tagline for our company is Marc the Moment, and I really feel that’s my purpose here, my gift. What I channel is the ability to help people mark their moments and I never want to stop being able to do that.