Call him Hep Dog, Hep C, Robbie Boom Boom, or Mr. Awesome. Just remember, when talking to Rob Heppler, have a sense of humor.
Rob’s got one. He might even have what you would call, a malignant sense of humor. This was evident in the exchange of emails that preceded the interview. See, Rob has a knack for communicating his own way, especially via email, and no matter how business-as-usual the email subject matter is meant to be. A couple of the casually absurd things attached in his emails was a Dropbox link for the film Troll Hunter, a photo of a diapered baby doing a keg stand, and the message, “Pakistan has Osama Bin Laden’s wife and kids in custody. He should have taken Antoine Dodson’s advice.”
I guess you got to have some sort of sense of humor to have done time for stabbing a man, nearly killing him, and then turning the experience into a story that has you now sitting in a room writing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tweets for nearly a grand a day. Rob’s story began in Massachusetts, his home state and place of mischief. He was sentenced to the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Concord for four to six years, doing four years of the sentence from 1998 to 2002. After that he wrote a story about prison sneaker culture that won him a free pair of shoes and got his foot in the door of some of streetwear’s elite.
From there, it’s a blur. There came his late podcast show Weeklydrop, a spot with The Hundreds with his own blog on their website, the Nike Lobster SB Dunk, the Coraline Dunk, higher education through the Wieden+Kennedy 12 program, and currently his status as the wanted man of the advertising industry; having worked for such companies and agencies as TBWA/Chiat/Day, Saatchi and Saatchi, Nike, Pitch, and Deutsch Inc. Self-described on his website as, “Raised on street culture and hardwired by technology,” Rob’s life is so much like a movie that it reeks of nacho cheese and butter drenched popcorn. He’s a character who makes us smile, laugh, and secretly wish shit worked out the same way for us.
For those who don’t know you, can you give a run down of yourself and who you are?
I’m just like you. I don’t know what I do. I am an ex-con that has some how fallen into advertising and street wear, and made the best of it. I guess.
So, what was your intro into this culture, as far as streetwear and everything?
Skateboarding. Skateboarding is usually everyone’s intro. I think everyone’s root to do stuff, is to get girls. Because why would someone do a kick flip? It doesn’t make you get over a curb better. It doesn’t do anything except show off and make girls think, “Wow, that’s awesome. I want to fuck him.” And then awesome clothes so you look good when you go to the high school dance and you’re not wearing a Red Sox jersey, you wear a Real skateboard t-shirt or…I don’t even know what was cool back then.
I went to jail in 1998 and they took away everything that you wear except for your sneakers cause it costs a lot of money to give inmates sneakers and they really stood out. So people that had Air Maxes, people that had Jordan’s, were like the bosses. When I got out I was just totally brainwashed by sneakers and I saw a contest on Sneaker Freaker that said write a story about sneakers and we will send you a free pair. So I wrote the story about sneakers in jail and it got published in all kinds of places and it got all kinds of notoriety on blogs and shit like that. And they said, “Tell us another story.”
I started a relationship with Kevin Ma and Yu Ming, and Freshness, and Adam at slamxhype, and David at highsnobiety. This is all when it was like highsnobiety.blogspot, hypebeast.blogspot, and I worked at a domain place and I was totally thinking I should just buy hypebeast.com. But I thought no one would want that. Anyways, I used to post for all them and at one point I had passwords for all of them, which was eh…in hindsight…I should have really fucked them over.
But anyway I wasn’t doing anything for myself. I mean, I had a couple blogs here and there but we started Weeklydrop which was a podcast and that got really crazy. People just flew us around everywhere, it was an excuse to talk to cool people, mentors, idols, celebrities, and interviewing is awesome because you don’t have to know anything. You just call people and say, “Hey, what’s up?.” Who’s better about talking about themselves then themselves? You got Jeff Staple who will talk for 6 hours about fucking…what’s that school he teaches at? Parsons? You show me one person that has taken Jeff Staples class that has been successful and I will give you…I don’t know…my Supreme collection.
So, Weeklydrop did awesome but it didn’t pay any money cause it was before anyone figured out how to make any money. I mean Hypebeast was getting hundreds of thousands hits a month and they weren’t making any money. Then the Complex media network came in and everybody started getting paid, but I had already said fuck you and see you later. I started working in a store locally, in Boston, called Concepts, because I got free gear and you could hang out with people everyday and you know, see the current shit and I could see samples and photos and things.
But I was there the day that they (Nike) said to Concepts, “You can have your own sneaker.” They hired tons of design places and they paid so much money to people to try to design their own SB and they all sucked. Everything was horrible. Then I came up with the Lobster dunk and everybody freaked out, Nike freaked out, and it was a dream come true. But then suddenly it was sort of bittersweet because I mean, it’s money and power and all this weird shit, and I saw it slowly being taken away from me. I knew if I wasn’t in a better place I was going to burn that store down. Literally.
That’s when I fell into the Wieden+Kennedy program, WK12. It’s a funny story cause everyone always says, “Well how did you learn about that?” I spoke at this blogger convention and they flew me out and there. They introduced all of us as like, the most influential people. It was me, Danny Chu, Brian Lan from Gizmodo, Josh Spear and Jeff Staple. And it was pretty cool. But then right after us, John Jay spoke, and the first thing he said was, “So, I was having dinner with Kanye West discussing Kobe Bryant’s relevancy in Japan…” And I asked, “Who the fuck is this guy?!” Then he showed a video of just everything that Wieden had ever done.
You didn’t know who John Jay was, prior?
Fuck no! Who knows who John Jay is, unless you are Kanye West or Hiroshi or Hiroki or Dan Wieden. So then I saw him, I was in the lobby with Bobby Hundreds, and we were changing the backgrounds on all the iMacs to pictures of me. John Jay walked by and I’m like, “Hey Johnny, I’m thinking about going to that little school you got.” He says, “How soon can you get to Portland?” And I’m like, “I’m never going to Portland. What the hell is there?” So, John Jay got me into Weiden and Kennedy 12, basically.
And then there, I got to meet everybody. And all it really does is that it teaches you the different roles, art director, copywriter, account people, and how to handle a brief, how to work, how to meet deadlines. Everyone says keep it simple and no egos and shit like that, but every single person has an ego, every single person wants to put in their reel, put it in their book, see their name on it, win an award. Wieden doesn’t display any awards. A lot of other places you walk in and there are awards everywhere.
Wieden is the greatest. They make you drink the Kool-aid and you think, “Oh, this place is the greatest.” Chiat might be the greatest, because they have Apple and so much money and if you watch a show and there’s five commercials in a break, four are probably from Chiat. And the other one is an Old Spice commercial. There are only twelve people in the program and its pretty illusive and everybody kind of wants you after it’s over. But you’re only as hot as your last dumb shit that you did so you got to get a job quick. A lot of people that I went with waited around a year and had trouble. They wanted to be a planner or a strategist. Good luck with that, cause I still don’t know what that does.
You know David Gensler right? We just put up an interview with him.
(laughs)
What’s your relationship with him?
I kept hearing his name. So, we interviewed him on Weeklydrop and most of our interviews are about twenty minutes to half an hour. His was 2 hours and I think he is a master brainwasher. I don’t even know what the term is. I can tell you that I was in Brooklyn and I had about twenty bucks and I said, “I think David Gensler lives around here. Let me call him.” I call him and he says, “My apartment just got robbed, can I meet you for coffee?” And I was like sure, but I didn’t know where he lived. Turned out he lived twenty steps from where I was standing.
He comes in this coffee place and he says, “Can you please buy me a cup of coffee? My laptop was stolen and my wallet was in my laptop.” And being a thief, and knowing how shit goes… it’s just, who keeps there wallet in there? It was just bizarre. And he lives in like a gated community too. But whatever. So, I buy him breakfast and he’s like, “Are you going to Magic this year?” And I said, “No, I have no money.” He gets on the phone. Blah blah blah. Gets off and says, “Alright Kevin Garnett is sending you to Magic. You’re staying at the…” It began with a V…not the Bellagio…the Venetian! That’s what he said. And I left and Sydney Lowe…I don’t know if you know who this Sydney Lowe character is? He takes photos. He’s very Asian.
Nope.
Well anyway, he’s who I was having breakfast with. And he goes “Dude were going to Magic! I can’t believe it!” I said, “Do you realize I had to just buy breakfast for this clown? I’m not going to believe it until I’m there.” Five weeks later I landed in Vegas, I hung out with Kevin Garnett, I saw Gensler in the corner with Kevin Garnett in his ear for like two hours, and it was all really weird. I have endless Gensler stories if you want to turn this into a Gensler session.
(Laughs) Nah, it’s not about Gensler but do you think the prison story opened up most of the doors for you?
I don’t want to say the Internet was just beginning, but it was beginning for us. Nerds always had the Internet, but as the internet got faster and easier to use, people used it for getting sneakers instead of just looking at porn. Have you heard of Crooks and Castles?
Yes.
There are a lot of brands out there that want to look like badasses and gangsters and things like that. I don’t know anybody in streetwear that’s ever been in a fight. I don’t think I act like a tough guy but I have an amazing story of horrible things that I’ve done. I think that’s what brought me in and got me into streetwear. Not your stereotypical, ”I want to dress like a blood or crip and look at my guns!” I’m just like, “Hey what’s up?” Make me laugh. Tell me funny stuff. And if it’s not funny, I’ll stab you. Kidding…that’s not a joke. But the jail story…yes. When people interview for job hiring, they can meet twenty people that went to Harvard and one person from jail, and you’re going to remember the person from jail.
What was the process of getting interviews for Weeklydrop?
At first I was writing for Sneaker Freaker and Sole Collector and other blogs, so I knew Dave White, Gabrielle Urist, Jeff Staple, The Hundreds and I would say, “Hey would you come on this?” But people like Lupe Fiasco and Bun B, they contacted us and they were like, “Hey, we would love to do this.” And rappers will do anything. Tomorrow I can get Jay-Z to do my voicemail but if you tell me to get George Clooney to do anything, I could never find any contact for a white person.
Let’s backtrack. When did the move to Massachusetts to California happen and exactly why?
March 12th 2008 I packed up and drove out to Portland, Oregon and I stayed there for about a year and a half. I went to WK12. I did that and then July or August of 2009, Chiat Day said, We’ll give you $90,000 to come down to California. So, I said alright. I came to California and slowly learned how advertising works. And when your awesome, it’s the awesomest shit ever. When you’re not, it’s bizarre. It’s constantly up and down. It’s tons of money until you don’t have any money, so you have to live like you’re in college while making a 150 grand a year.
Yeah. That sounds amazing. Was copywriting just the natural route for you?
I am definitely the worst writer ever. I just learned that “your” and “you’re”, are two different words. I’m not as good at Photoshop as I am with ideas, so I just chose the copywriter bucket. Old school copywriters are dying. It’s not the same. Have you ever read that book Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This? That’s like the old school Mad Men version. These days, you meet those guys and they have a moustache like Tom Selleck and they drive a Jaguar. You tell them they to do copy for a blog and they’re like, “I can’t do that!” It’s the same thing! It’s actually a lot easier. It’s just weird.
What sets you apart from other copywriters?
Definitely life experience. There’s people that can write, classically trained, the Webster dictionary, grammar laws and shit. But if you’ve never gone outside and got bitten by a snapping turtle or you’ve never fucked a girl, how can you properly…I don’t know. The girl that wrote Eat Pray Love, even though I’ve never read it, has an amazing TED talk about creativity and how it came to her. She said that writers have the highest suicide rate out of anybody, and I believe her.
How do you get a job in advertising?
You need an awesome portfolio. You need to find out who the recruiter is. You need to hit them up constantly You need to find out who they’re fucking. You need to find out people that work there. You need to find out creative directors names. And you need to send them gifts.
How involved are you with street wear culture at the moment?
Well I took over Concepts again and I have a Nike SB and Vans coming out next year. Talking to Jordan, because I think Jordan should be doing the same thing with SB, and we should get different shops to do crazy different Jordans like that. Red Wing Boot, Artero jacket, Northface jacket, things like that.
Is that where your real passion is at?
That’s just easy and it’s cool because when your done you actually get a jacket six months before everybody else does. It tells a story and it’s cool and shit like that. Advertising is just the way to make the most money and do the least amount of work.
Let’s test you out here. I’m going to give you a client and you give me one line, real quick. Hyman Brothers Mazda Dealership.
(thoughtful pause) Fully Shaven Zoom Zoom.
Is this going up completely unedited?
No, it will get edited.
Thank God.
and thanks to Rob Heppler. See some of his work here.
by Neil Lopez