The invitations to this annual event change every year. The year I was invited to play, they took the form of three large-format posters. They were like collectibles in that way, you could trade them if you wanted, hoard them, keep them in a plastic covering sheet… I don’t think anybody was actually doing that sort of thing. That’s not what really matters though—what’s truly important is that these posters were a sumptuous success.

A little background: These invitations were used for an annual soiree that the agency threw down for it’s favorite clients. Every year, the color-theme of the party would change—and if you were going to this party, your clothes had to match that year’s hue. This year’s color was “chocolate.” And that was pretty sweet because the idea of people wearing chocolate has it’s perks for the imagination. I mean really, when you think about it—the core of beauty can almost always be defined as anything you can wear—but also eat. Our question was, “How will you wear it?” We propped up that question next to some lovely images of people wearing swanky little chocolate accessories. Rich.

We worked in St. Louis with the talent-coated photographer, Brandon Voges, who had no truffle at all with this assignment. (I’ll stop that right now.) It was a lot of fun and a successful campaign.

An interesting side note: The production manager we were shooting with invited my CD and me out for a nice dinner that night. Joining us was a fellow from Colorado who was also working with one of their photographers. That fellow looked remarkably like Patrick Dempsey. And you could tell he got this a lot from people because he knew how to work it too. As a result, everywhere we went that night we were given the VIP experience. It was like a really bad episode of Entourage. True story.