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| SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK & ROLL: Mark Roberts (left) and David Marett cater to grown-up businesses. photography by Joshua Martin |
It’s less than 10 minutes into my interview with David Marett and Mark Roberts, founders of the new ad agency Vice Squad, when we adjourn the meeting from their hip downtown office to the bar across the street. Drinks in hand, cigarettes lit, Marett, 42, and Roberts, 39, endeavor to explain the motivation behind dedicating their professional services to clients that make the products or provide the services that satisfy our baser natures. “These are viable businesses,” Roberts says, sipping a Shiner Bock. “Granted, some of them are adult-oriented, but there’s no reason why they should be treated like a second-tier client.”
During their years logged in the advertising industry, Marett and Roberts repeatedly observed hypocrisies in the way “vice” clients were handled. Roberts says ad firms would leave adult-oriented businesses off their client lists for fear of alienating mainstream companies. Vice Squad was formed to cater to these castoffs, those shilling tobacco, alcohol, lap dances, gambling, and so on, and provide unapologetic representation for businesses marginalized by broad-based agencies.
The pair says people in the industry have come out of the woodwork wanting to freelance. “It’s pretty juicy from the creative angle,” Marett says, exhaling smoke between sips of his Maker’s Manhattan. So far, they’ve added Live Nation (the world’s largest producer of live shows) to their roster and have other deals in the works, including designing packaging for a company that produces vaginal-tightening drugs.
Marett and Roberts joke that they’ve been preparing their entire lives for this calling but admit restricting their client list is not without risk. “We know the Southern Baptist Convention will never be one of our clients, and we’re okay with that,” Roberts says. “Once you go this way, you can’t go back to National Baptist Convention-type clients.”
As to their own vices, Marett, a lifelong bachelor, cops to “smoking, drinking, and occasional womanizing,” while Roberts, who is attached, says his primary weakness is coffee. But a quote from their press release announcing new business might be more telling: “Our first client of record makes us happier than our first lap dance.” Of course, that might be an overstatement.
