Lorna Rodriguez
Staff Writer
Pepperdine graduate Bryan Boettger has been known to monkey around. While still in school, Boettger, co-created the “Monkey Theory.” The theory, quite unlike any theory of evolution involving monkeys but just as brow-raising and speculation-causing, states simply that every song written about monkeys or with the word “monkey” in the title is good.
“Monkey Man” by The Rolling Stones. “The Proudest Monkey” by Dave Matthew’s Band. “Monkey Wrench” by Foo Fighters. All fit the bill.
During his time at Pepperdine University, Boettger and a friend worked the campus radio station on the 10 p.m. to midnight slot. Using such ploys as the “Monkey Hour” (which goes along with the theory), playing music with only sexual innuendos, and making prank calls to places like Dominoes Pizza, the boys won listeners with their creativity.
Boettger has a myriad of stories in which he and a buddy or two put on their “thinking caps” to start something new, and obtain a desired outcome or goal. Marketing ideas through imagination, they entertained others and satisfied their need to create and enjoy.
Now Boettger is a critical component of The Buddy Group. Described as “an interactive creative agency,” it is an ad agency minus the media bind. Official in July 2005 and run out of Los Angeles, there were five employees. This quickly expanded to 35 and added San Francisco to its cities with offices, which Bryan runs. All this in one year.
There are now more than 120 brands the Buddy Group works with, including Hasbro, Washington Mutual, and eBay, doing things like logo design and online advertising for movies.
Regarding the ever-evolving online world, and the creative side that Boettger particularly enjoys, The Buddy Group creates flash-based sites with interactive video, graphics and audio.
Right now The Buddy Group is working with eBay for the holidays, using flash animation on its homepage with the creation of a “gift wizard.” eBay will help you choose what you should search for and bid on for different people based on your answers to specific questions.
His obvious flair for creating, entertaining and ingenuity helped him get on scholarship for three years on the Graphic staff back at Pepperdine. As a journalist, his growth was furthered by writing for the features section, news section, as online editor, photographer, editor of “Currents,” and lastly as the Graphic editor in chief.
His flair for creating also led him to be part of the charter class of Sigma Chi Fraternity.
As a junior in 1997, Boettger won the national “Story of the Year” award from the Associated Collegiate Press for a story on the Malibu wildfire that year. A year later he graduated from Pepperdine.
When asked what he remembers wanting to do and be as a child and youth, “fireman” comes to mind, but really Boettger says “never one career choice [lured him].” Instead he’s “always been entrepreneurial, always driven to do new things and create new things.”
In high school he decided he wanted to focus more on journalism. Working for his high school paper “back when PageMaker was just starting to come around,” he says they began making the paper in color.
This job was a positive experience he shared with “a great class of people interested in newspaper,” despite a lack of a recruitment process for staffers. Working for the paper was interesting and exciting for Boettger. He says he “always liked to learn, and on top of that you get to teach people,” which makes sense considering he comes from a family of teachers.
After graduating from Pepperdine, he worked for newspapers in California, including the Ventura County Star, where on one assignment he wrote a story on a little girl from Guatemala who had heart problems and was to receive open heart surgery. He told the story and witnessed the surgery. Another time he worked on a story in which he had the chance to ride in a helicopter with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Soon Boettger moved to San Francisco where he started his own company that published city guides and on the side did marketing communications. In 2005, he began working with a friend, Pete Deutchman (also a Pepperdine graduate and former Graphic staff member). They had worked together for another company before and when that ended they knew they wanted to work together again at some point. The Buddy Group Inc. gave them that chance.
Boettger once considered himself a journalist. Since then, he has surely branched away from what he considers “an unbiased, romantic [profession]” and set of ideals. He still writes some for publications but his job is more marketing; generating a creative strategy for people and companies.
He does not deny his journalistic background, though. He says he still uses some of the skills from being a journalist: interview, research and writing.
When asked what drove him as a journalist, and which still applies in aspects of his career, he listed three points: “telling the story as fully and accurately as possible,” “knowing there was someone reading what he has written and taking it as the truth” and, “more on the creative side, [that] you’re only as good as your last idea.” This continues to motivate him to create.
Advice to budding journalists/editors etc:
- Read (as much as possible newspapers, magazines, books to make yourself more well-rounded)
- Observe (capturing something- info, a moment, what someone’s saying- a journalist needs to be aware of the nuances and unique aspect of a situation or person- otherwise you won’t capture the importance)
- Question (always ask Qs of others & of yourself-why? why? why?- so as not to take anything for granted, not to assume and to delve deeper)
Fact Box:
Full name: Bryan Ross Boettger
Age: 30
Hometown: Cupertino, Calif. (“home of the Apple Computer”)
Favorite animal: Monkey
Best subject in school: Math
Notable characteristic: Sarcasm
12-02-2006