Design and Marketing Visionary Peter Arnell

The 'Our Way' gents have an in-depth interview with a man who's responsible for shaping the look of the last 40 years. Peter Arnell is a pioneering graphic designer renowned for his transformative impact on brand identity in media and advertising. His creative expertise has extended to high-profile campaigns for global giants such as Chanel, Pepsi, Apple and DKNY, where his innovative designs bridged art and commerce. Arnell’s work is a testament to the power of creative vision in transforming everyday visuals into iconic cultural symbols. His groundbreaking creativity continues to inspire and influence design worldwide.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our Way with yours truly Paul Anka and my buddy
Skip Bronson, is a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, folks, this
is Paul Anka.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And my name is Skip Bronson.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
We've been friends for decades and we've decided to let
you in on our late night phone calls by starting
a new podcast and.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Our Way. We'd like you to meet some
real good friends of ours.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Your leaders in entertainment and.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Sports, innovators in business and technology, and even a sitting
president or two.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Join us as we ask the questions they've not been
asked before, tell it like it is, and even sing
a song or two.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
This is our podcast and we'll be doing it our way.

Speaker 4 (00:46):
But fundamentally a content how to be unique, simple, beautiful
in order to make it matter. So I think at
the end and people are going to look back and
say things about how simple, elegant and beautiful the work was,
and how we tried from the beginning to change the

(01:07):
way work was done, and that we were the first
people to actually mix art and commerce.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
Mister Bronson, Oh my god, I was getting nervous.

Speaker 6 (01:29):
I went two days without speaking to you. I think
that's a reticual.

Speaker 7 (01:33):
Yeah, you know you and I've spoken about Peter Arnell,
and I think he's got a lot to say.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
I think marketing and branding.

Speaker 6 (01:40):
I mean it's a rapid fire. I call it rapid
fire creativity. That's really what it's about with him. I mean,
he's just a machine gund of ideas and thoughts, and
people don't realize so many products out there that he
had his hands on.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
It's just literally, mind bug.

Speaker 6 (01:59):
No one like him, I mean, no one has served.

Speaker 5 (02:01):
That's right, That's right.

Speaker 7 (02:02):
And you know the funny thing is he's just recuperating
and got hit by a truck with me. I don't
know that we'll have time to even get to that,
but crossing the street in New York, where he's so relevant,
gets it, gets hit by a truck. I had pictures
from the hospital wires, I mean every bone. But I mean,

(02:23):
you have no idea the shape this guy has been
in for the last what eight nine months? Finally winds
up with a clinic in Switzerland to straighten him. Ount
this guy was totaled by a truck.

Speaker 6 (02:37):
Going to hit him.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
He's still going strong.

Speaker 6 (02:41):
Speaking of shape, don't forget he lost two hundred and
fifty pounds.

Speaker 7 (02:45):
That's right, that's right. He had an orange diet. He
weighed four hundred pounds. He weighed three of me, exactly
exactly because we talked about it. He was on me
how to her health, and body said, geez, is Peter,
you were three of me. But he's a fascinating guy.
He really has You're gonna really enjoy him. And you

(03:08):
would say he's adorable.

Speaker 5 (03:10):
You know.

Speaker 6 (03:10):
I was speaking to him on the phone of the
day and he said, you know, we have to do
this in two parts because it's gonna be so great.
I said, okay, let's get one part done and then
co don't worry about that way.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
We're gonna tell you.

Speaker 6 (03:23):
Look at the things that he's done, you know, you know,
the BlackBerry pepsi pepsi and why on and on and
on cars that he's been so car Yeah, it's just
he's really something else that really one of one has
never been anyone.

Speaker 7 (03:41):
Like him, that's right. And he's still going strong. And
I know he loves you to death. Hand always got
a good judgment. He always has, of course we know that.

Speaker 6 (03:49):
Who didn't know that? And we have great he have
great mutual friends. So it's gonna be fun. I'm looking
forward to talking to him, knowing better than anybody, but
I'm getting I'm just starting to get to know him,
and I I really enjoy him.

Speaker 7 (04:01):
So yeah, okay, so here we are, buddy, all right,
sleep warm, love you too.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
And today is another special day. I know we've had
so many wonderful guests, a lot of them friends, so
we knew what we were talking about. But today is
very very special for me because at an old age

(04:29):
where I kind of bowed away from new friends as
that I had enough, I ran into this guy who
had heard about for so many years, so iconic. His
path and mind crossed in the night with so many friends.
But this guy, you know, where are the abundance of
smart people we know that follow us. He has had
some kind of life and some kind of story. And

(04:51):
I will qualify it now by saying that he is
a friend and someone that I admire, and he's a genius.
I mean, this is a guy that started out and
we'll get to it. He's published, he's written twenty books,
involved with David Hockney in the beginning, which we'll get
to Bergdoff Goodman, Donna, Karen Samsung. I mean he's an
industrial designer, graphics, communication designer, Frank Gary. There's so many

(05:17):
involvements that this guy has had and so eclectically successful.
I mean espresso. I make my coffee every day. I'm
an espresso and his brain and his mind and his
picture come to me right away. He's done so much
amazing stuff that is such a thrill to have him
and to introduce him to you, he says. I said,

(05:38):
he's a photographer, which is amazing. A lot of stuff
around my house. He's a graphic artist, industrial designer, branding, branding.
He's the king of all of this. And it all
came to a head for me when I got involved
at the Fountain Blue Hotel, the new hotel in Vegas,
and the difference to the success of that hotel or
the lack of the success of it. But then the

(06:01):
success from that hotel is our guest, you know, Peter
Arnell made the difference in a challenge of that building
in Vegas when you walk through it. He is everywhere,
everywhere in that hotel, everything that is tasteful and well
thowed out. So to our listeners out there and to you,
my friend Skip say hello from Tokyo. By the way,

(06:24):
and I'm gonna get to this guy who just got
hit by a truck a chip shot ago and he's
still traveling and doing what he does. Friends Skip slo
to Peter Arnell from Tokyo, Japan. Peter, nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Pleasure. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
You have to mention also, I first, I had always.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Heard the name Peter Arnell. It's like his name is
a brand.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
So I'd always heard about all the incredible things he
had done with Pepsicola and all the rest, and then
about im what Peter maybe twelve thirteen years ago was
at the Beverly Hills Hotel Hell with Mickey Drexler, and
Mickey was there with Peter, so I just we just
spoke briefly. But then later in life, I've learned that

(07:10):
one of my best friends, Richard Gallub, is one of
his best friends, and so I've gotten to know him
through Richard. But it's a treat for me to have
you on our show today.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
It's great to be here. It is amazing how Paul
and I in the last couple of years, through not
easy situations, Paul I have managed to, you know, stay
on track. Paul is an incredible coach and an amazing leader,
and so I stepped into his world a couple a
couple of years ago, and he was doing a podcast actually,

(07:43):
and he started mentioning his relationship to Fountain Blue, and
we jumped on that. In fact, the launch of December thirteenth,
twenty twenty four, twenty twenty three. Excuse me, I can
absolutely say without exception that the connection the DNA, the
power of that evening was one hundred percent due to

(08:04):
Paul's incredible scripting of that evening and that performance on
his own. He had the entire world enthralled in his
storytelling and his music and his history. And it all
took place in no more than fifteen minutes on a
stage in the middle of chaos, bracketed by a lot

(08:27):
of opening craziness and another performer who was, shall I say,
Paul not necessary focused that night, but Paul really it
was incredible and so I then became a massive fan.
And then shortly thereafter we flew to New York City
and I had this insane idea and I got Paul's

(08:49):
support on it to convince the New York City Times
Square Authority to allow us to work with them collaborate
and take over the dropping of all. It was seventh
anniversary out blew, so just coincidentally as the bell rang,
we thought, oh, we can actually have two balls dropping

(09:10):
that night. That whole ball is made up of geodesic
dome triangles that looked like a bow tie, so if
you James the patterns, then you could brand it, and
we did. We shared in common that design that was there,
so I identified that Broadway Turn of the Century was called
the bow Tie on Seventh Avenue and Broadway crossed, so

(09:32):
bow tie, bow tie, geodesic dome. It couldn't have worked
unless Paul got on stage and it actually took over Broadway,
which he did. But as he stood by the side
of the building where he originally went to, I guess
Singh signed his first contract. So it was just an
extraordinary moment. And of course the power of that incredible history,

(09:56):
the intelligence, the amount of knowledge and both you know,
connecting to an audience and storytelling that Paul has is unprecedented.
So I've learned a lot. I'm in awe of Paul,
and I love him dearly and I look forward to
a long, long, continued relationship with him and Paul has
always spoken about you. So here we are, and You've

(10:20):
had a lot of people on the program so far
that I know, from Jim Gray and Nickey and all
the buddies that I've worked with or for or I
continue to. I'm doing that new museum with Jim and
Tom Brady in Nevada, which you guys talked about in
the hotel, and so anyway, I'm just super pleased to

(10:44):
be here.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Let's I appreciate all of that, Pete, I do. Let's
get to you. This is about you today. Where did
it all start? Let us all know what tweaked you
into this incredible career that you've got. Because you've got
a great background, I want you just spill it out
for us.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
So I was born in Cheepsa Bay, Brooklyn, eight to
Russian immigrants Ukraine on one side, on dad's side and
on mom's side English and Spanish. You know, back then,
I think things were just different. I think in the
late fifties and the early sixties there was so much

(11:23):
change going on that even as a small child, you
can even look up and see a grandma on the
one day hysterical crying and you know, near sight to
put it back together that President Kennedy was shot, and
so those sixties were extraordinary. Vietnam War, Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
Robert Kennedy, our friends landing on the moon every six

(11:46):
months to a year. There seemed to be this incredible
and as a little boy, I'm sure I was very
affected by these incredible, overwhelming events that just stick in
your brain. So as Tom I went on, I ended
up in a very very special high school for gifted
children named Brooklyn Technical High School, which was basically developed

(12:11):
after the Wars of v occasional school. They then became
clever with the language of pulled at college preparatory, but
basically it was it was high school where you could
actually learn engineering or architecture or trades. So I went
to Brooklyn Technical High School. My father's twin brother, manny A.

(12:32):
Braven coincidentally worked for the gentleman who did the Fountain
Blue Hotel. He had an office down in Miami. I
was overwhelmed. I met the gentleman who designed mars Lapists
that hotel when I was in my I think I
was twelve or thirteen years old. On a trip down
to Miami. I ended up in mars Lapis's dining room

(12:56):
fifty something years ago. Little did I know I was
going to get involved with Blue Hotel. But I was
so overwhelmed and impressed by architecture i studied it. I
then went on to Columbia University at the time had
the most amazing program and professors. Bob Stern was there
at the time. Robert Stern was really on the pinnacle

(13:18):
of Postpondern architecture. He just finished an incredible book. He
was the golden boy in New York City. Philip Johnson
loved him. So I got involved in architecture. I worked
part time for Bob Stern, making models at night to
make money. And at the end of that run at Columbia,
I transferred over to Michael Graves and I continued my

(13:40):
education at Princeton. Michael had become the godfather of this
new movement at the time that was was incredible. He
had just finished becoming one of the Whites with Charlie
Glaffney and John Haydock and Richard Meyer, and he moved
on to this postmodern new plateau. And I was good
at making models and getting stuff done. I was always

(14:04):
good at getting stuff done and so I worked with him,
and then Michael had a show in Rome and he
needed a little catalog done, and I got obsessed with
designing this catalog. It was at the American Academy in Rome,
and at the same time someone in Italy named Alessi
had asked him to design a teapot which became very

(14:26):
very famous as Whistling Teapot by Michael Graves that is
still available in the marketplaces. I think it's the number
one Sully teapot of all time. And Michael asked me
to kind of project manage that, so I went to unless.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, I learned industrial.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Design quickly around that project. I did that book and
I was so excited about how these things moved so
quickly versus architecture, which moves so slowly. So I got
very excited about catalog. That turned into me thinking, well,
why don't I get to publishing, And I met with
a man I missed him, Monticelli, who was running wheret

(15:02):
Zoli at the time in North America, and I convinced
him to let me edit and write and design twelve
books on contemporary architects. This was pre Google, so you know,
students were desperate for knowledge and so I went out
and I spoke to Frank Gary and James Stirling and

(15:23):
Aldo Rossi and Charles Waffney and all these architects, and
I said, you know, give me a shot.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Was that your first major project, Peter?

Speaker 4 (15:31):
That was my first major major when you say major.
Getting announced as the editor of the first series by Rizzoli,
you know, on contemporary architects was a big deal back then,
especially me coming out of academic life, you know, at
Princeton with Michael etcetera, etcetera. And the books was successful.

(15:53):
They were so successful that a guy named David Hockey.
Hockey asked me to do books with him. I started
Camera Works and that book ended up in a window
on fifty sixth Street at the toy store, and a
woman named don Mellow had just been appointed the head
of fashion for Bergdoff, come in when Carter Holy and
Hale bought them, and she said, could you find this

(16:16):
guy who did this book. I'd like him to do
a book on the history of Bergdoff Goodman and I
showed up, you know, at the store. I thought, to
be honest with you, this was like a scary moment
for me. I thought, you need a license to do
all this stuff, you know, marketing, and there I had
no idea, absolutely no idea. I was coming out of,
you know, another whole world.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
So a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure.

Speaker 4 (16:37):
Super super super stressful, and they loved me and we
had a good conversation. They introduced me to mister Goodman
who lived above the department store, and they said, we're
going to get you to write a book and interview
mister Goodman. Anyway, within weeks the book project started and
they were paying me like fourteen thousand bucks a month,

(16:59):
which was just extraordinary, just so you know, put in
perspective on the advance for the books, I got around
eight to twelve thousand dollars per book, So I was
in fat city. Back then. I could pay my three
hundred dollars line of credit that master pardon. I had
no money. I had huge debt because of the college
and all that stuff, and no family money. So this

(17:21):
was just unbelievable. And all of a sudden, this woman
Don Mello and Susie Butterfield, who was running public relations
and advertising there, said why don't we give Arnell a
shot at doing little ads for us? And within minutes,
not hours, minutes down a Karen gets fired from Anklin, or,

(17:42):
as she likes to say, she kind of moved on,
and the Japanese owner, Tommy O'taki reached out to me
and carried Donovan around the New York Times and Style
section and don Mello all kind of gang together and
got me in front of Donna Karen. And so there

(18:03):
I was doing Bernard German ads meeting every week, people
like Carla Fendi, car Lagafeld, Georgia Almani. They were all
coming in. Remember the first flow was all European way,
and I was like, go talk to Peter and he'll
figure out what the ad should be. There was Donna
Karen as I. Everyone was eyes on Donna Karen. And

(18:24):
I had nothing in my portfolio, I mean zero that
would give me any kind of educational point of reference
on how to do advertising in fashion. I didn't know
even how to book a model or any of that stuff,
so I stayed away from it. I took my Rico
camera and I went under the Brooklyn Bridge exactly where
my grandfather parked his car at two in the morning

(18:47):
every day when he went to the Foam Fishbocket is
a fishmonga. His whole life. That's how we made his living.
And of course, just so you guys know, if you
parked the car under the brook Bridge, it means you
could afford the right spot because the pigeons were under
the Brooklyn Bridge. So when he got out in the morning,
the car didn't look like the car anymore. And it

(19:10):
was December eleventh, and I looked up and the mist
was coming off the river, and I shot that bridge
and I put New York under it. And I back
then we made these things called vloxes. They were like
big photographic xeroxes.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
They looked good.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
And I came the next day. I worked all night.
I knew I had it. I came in and Data
started crying and Tomio started crying. I was like, holy shit.
So there was no product, no color. I had a
picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I was going to
launch what was at that point considered the hottest designer
in America. So something was on my mind about what

(19:51):
does it look like when you actually turned the camera
around and show somebody an environment or a culture or
an idea versus a photograph. Now, photographing an idea is
very different than photographing clothes, something is very specific versus
creating a conversation or connection. And then once that picture ran,

(20:12):
we ran it once in Women's Wear Daily. It was explosive.
It was like, holy mackerel, what the hell is this?
And everybody on Seventh Avenue, including all over the world
in fashion came running Armani and b Blows and you know,
Ungaro and Valentino. They all wanted to know who this

(20:33):
guy was. Was an architect doing architecture books and works
with an artist named David Ockney who Don Mello at
Bergdolf loves and it's shooting pictures of Brooklyn Bridge. So
I realized what had happened, and what had happened Paul
was at that moment the impact of a child being

(20:56):
shown a riderless horse come up the avenue named Charlie
during the funeral of a president who had been assassinated
with the boots in backwards. I was like the entire
world that day stopped to look at what's not there,

(21:18):
and it must have connected to my brain from a marketing,
branding design point of view conceptually that what is not
there is much more powerful than it's there. Because everyone
asked the right questions at that point so I continued
on that path of trying to connect people. I never
shot pictures in color because I think that's distracting. I

(21:41):
think black and white photography gives you The form factor
is the idea, the clarity, the simplicity, which I believe in.
And then I was going against the grain and we
grew and grew and it was explosive. But I was
the boutique guy doing you know, buttie agency, doing fashion
stuff for a long time. And then this wonderful husband

(22:05):
and wife showed up at my ninety one or two
at my desk, Korean folks from Soul. He was the
chair and of Samsung. He came on his own with
his wife, Madam Lee. He said, my wife loves what
you're doing for Donna Karen, could you conceive of something
for this company I have called Samsung. And that's really

(22:28):
where we shifted quickly, and the company grew tremendously and
I ended up in Seoul and I proposed three things
to him to do a power brand. I showed him
that if Ge is having his company do microwave ovens
and they're selling it for ninety nine dollars in white

(22:48):
underneath the counter, in good Housekeeper magazine and he's selling
unbranded product for nineteen dollars in Asia, that if we
could have a brand, it would change his entire and
it wasn't good enough. I did it, and I did
breakthrough stuff for them, and I came up with all

(23:08):
different kinds of incredible communications, but it wasn't enough, and
I raised my hand. I said, we have to shift
from a manufacturing mindset to a design mindset, and I
went out to art Set, a College of Design Pasadena.
His niece at the time, Mickey Lee, who owns CJ Entertainment,

(23:28):
who's very powerful now in the entertainment She won the
Academy Award a couple of years ago for the first
movie ever that career received Academy Award for She's the
Queen of K pop and K cont and everything else.
She was very instrumental and kind of my partner away
in helping Samsung get all of me, which was very

(23:51):
all over the place and very complicated and extremely eclectic
into a kind of rigor discipline. And we went after
the school that I convinced mister Brown at the time,
David Brown, who was the dean of the School of
Design at art Set of College and Design at Pasadena
to sense some professors, and we opened up a studio

(24:13):
to design product while that was going on in Korea,
and I moved to Korea, and while that was going on,
I was still running everything else, finishing the architecture books.
And it was insanity, really insanity. No one knew what
I was or what I was there for, or I
was a designer, I was a publisher, I was a writer,
I was in fashion. It was very confusing. But those

(24:36):
who got close to me, you know, I was really fortunate.
They just gave me a chance. They said, look, just
keep it going. As very complicated when you get middle management.
They all wanted you dead. Everybody middle manager wanted me
dead because, like I was very disruptive as you could appreciate.
And then it exploded, and it exploded because they were

(24:59):
in the chip business. We were beginning to set up
the design studio and there was a guy named Pete
Skarzinski who was in the communications phone sector at Samsung
in New Jersey, and within minutes, literally minutes, we had
a prototype phone. We were running out to Texas because

(25:20):
Sprint PCs CB was beginning and Motorola and Att were
all locked in and we need a new phone, and
no Kei and Erickson could supply that voyue for North America.
So there's a book that just came out called Samsung Rising,
and it says, which really sums it all up. Chair

(25:41):
and Lee gave Ardel card blanche to get us in
the phone business, and that's really the beginning of us
as an organization growing and really getting respected as a
guy who understood how to develop enterprise, could see the opportunities,
connect the dots, and see through a concept from the

(26:03):
beginning all the way through to the shelf that was very,
very rare. This idea of fully integrated, holistic approach to
marketing was not on the table at the end of
the eighties beginning of the nineties. You know the full picture.
But there was a guy named Steve Jobs who thank God,

(26:23):
was raising his hand and getting the work to understand
what an entrepreneur was. And Steve Jobs, as you both know,
did an extraordinary job at learning, participating in and growing
an organization where every single aspect design, typography, economist, electronics, technology, distribution, retail,

(26:49):
every single detail was conceived and considered every single day.
That's why Apple ended up becoming Apple, and so he
gave permission for the world well to see people like
me no longer is jack of all trades, baster of none,
but rather an entrepreneur who actually had mastered into disciplinary

(27:12):
and integrated holistic marketing. And then we just sort and
we grew and grew and grew, and we got involved.
We were blessed to get involved with so many things,
you know, from you know, a con Edison logo to
the redesign of thirty five brands for Pepsi co mounted
dew to Soby tell.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Us about Pepsi, the rebranding of Pepsi. I'm very interested
in that. What was your vision on that, Peter.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
I was in Hong Kong when we got the assignment
and I was doing market research. You know, this thing
called emojis was new to the world clearly. You know,
back then you could read or look or find trend
in Europe and Asia that was going to hit America five, eight,
twelve years ahead of time. If you were really living

(28:00):
in the street, which I love to do, whether it's
Japan or Hong Kong or England anyway, you can really
smell trend and those things aren't things to copy. But
there's things that influence and you could see how those
things would become original thinking that could affect a marketplace.
So we were in Hong Kong and Indra Newi had

(28:22):
just taken over as chair and she had just come
back from a meeting with Steve Jobs. She wanted to
go out there to learn about design and how design
and design that innovation could affect growing the business and
evolving it. Anyway, she just was very hot to really
make change. The problem with Pepsi, which continues to be

(28:46):
the problem, is that they sell sugar water, and so
in the long run, design cannot affect good packaging, good logos,
good marketing, you know, so it can't affect in the end,
the real problem, and it can't make change through a problem,
which is that they don't sell products that are really

(29:07):
good for you. Right at least at that point, it
was where Doritos and Pepsi would not be on our
screen of you know, this is going to help you
stay healthy and grow well and all that stuff, especially
to kids. So I put it in the category of
nicotine and alcohol. It's all that stuff that is not
good for you. However, you know, you're a young business

(29:29):
growing and there's a lot of money to be made
in design and all this stuff. So I kept my
mouth shut and my head down. And they also owned Quaker,
and they had me on a bunch of stuff there,
and you know, better products and Soby and water and
a whole bunch of things. So we took it all
on and I saw this emoji, and I realized that

(29:51):
a logo doesn't just need to be one logo could
be a multitude of logos. So when a Pepsi logo
that I designed originally came to market, each brand and
Pepsi zero, Pepsi like Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi check, each logo
had a different slight variation on that logo, and they

(30:11):
were all about smiles. So if you look carefully, I
just dropped down the curve that was from the original
graphics of the Pepsi signature one hundred years ago, and
then I just moved him slightly, and then we put
them out there. It was super successful, clean elegant chic
got a lot of good results for that, and then

(30:34):
they used that and applied it to a ton of things.
While I was doing root air with a dog on it,
and you know, so Bey with Lizards, dancing with Michael Jackson,
thriller music, and going to super Bowl in Naomi. You know,
it goes on and on and on. But the Pepsi
experience was extraordinary. Is the first work I did as

(30:55):
part of a public company. I had been bought by Omnicom.
At the time, I was known as John Wren's secret weapon.
I was introduced to Pepsi by John Wren. John is
an extraordinary man. He recognized the value of having an
organization like ours in his organization. And it wasn't easy

(31:15):
from the beginning, and it wasn't easy through the ten
years that I was with him because we were different
and that's always complicated. But he introduced us and he
got us into Sony, Chrysler, Pepsi. In each one of
those organizations, I did different things, designed cards, and I
became the head of innovation for design at Chrysler Corporation.

(31:38):
He got us into Home Depot. It was the list
was long, and our company just grew and grew and grew,
and we ended up being about three hundred and fifty
people at that time. I started out with twenty seven
when I started with John, and we became a very
important part of the Omnicom offering, of which Pepsi and

(31:59):
Chrysler work two of their biggest accounts at the time.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Bell even a busy boy.

Speaker 4 (32:08):
I don't know what to stop. You know, I've been
really lucky. I've been lucky.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Let me add something or a question.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
As they say in the news, there's a lot to
unpack here, right, there's a lot to talk about, just
from what you were, you know, so articulately explaining to us.
But going back to Donna Karen just for a minute.
So Donna Karen, who's a friend of our family, and
you know, she had the Donna Karen brand initially, of course,
the big thing for her was obviously DK and Why. Yes,

(32:47):
who came up with that? The concept of calling it
DK and Why and the whole I'm sure you came
up with the logo, but the whole thought that, well,
let's come up with a parallel brand, and let's call
it DK and Y, which was obviously less expensive, more
for the you know, for the masses and not just
the classes. But where did that? How'd that first come about?

Speaker 4 (33:11):
There are two spaces that I always work in with
everything that I've ever done that has been successful, and
paulk can attest to.

Speaker 8 (33:18):
This.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
One is called the collaboration, and that's powerful. It goes
back and forth, you kind of you keep on standing
at it, and it goes between two minds and they
arrive at the third. And so there's that space. The
other is the space of go off and come back
and show me. The second one works well for certain organizations,

(33:41):
but the first one delivers incredible rich value because in
the end I go away. I always try to explain
to people I have a like real date stamp on
my work because when I get it right, or if
I get it wrong, I'm out. You don't do the

(34:03):
Pepsi logo every year. You do it once and then
you go right. So my window is very precise. It's
like swat. You got to go in, get it, and
go out. So there was a woman named Patty Cohen
who's still very close to me, and Donna who was
running her advertising and public relations, and she called me

(34:24):
one day and said, you know, we've got a real issue.
We are doing this incredible volume, but we'th thirty million dollars.
Coulture in America at the time was not popular and
if you think about the price points, that Donna was
charging at the time. It was extraordinary what she was

(34:46):
getting for, you know, product that was under an American label,
and she was fighting our Moani at Valentino, and I
mean she had serious competitors. So we looked at it
and we realized there's a ceiling there, and so Patty
calls us up and says, can I come down. We
were in the worst part of town. We were in

(35:08):
the fringe of Chinatown. I was one hundred Grand Street
in an old bakery building on the first floor where
a data go buy that Rats weren't available. This is
March nineteen eighty eighty six, because we launched in eighty seven,
in full of eighty seven. And she came down and

(35:29):
make a long story short, she told us what Donna
was up to. Donna was trying to figure out how
do you do a second line? And you got to remember,
as I said before, I'm not a fashion guy. At
the time. I knew nothing about main floor and fridge
lines and second lines and all this stuff. But I
just got the sense that we're going to come out

(35:49):
with a line that costs less than the other line,
right say, value less price. And there was Presidents in
the market at Client and Client Too, which is one
of the biggest at the time, and that was owned
by the same company that owned Donna Karen. In fact,
Donna Karen worked for ant Climb prior, so I knew
they were headed down that path. We're gonna go like
Pyramid top thirty million down here, had three hundred million

(36:12):
down here a billion. It's going to keep on growing, license,
underwear everything. And it dawned to me that there's probably
a better way to do this, And since I didn't
know anything, I was quite I guess I had zero
filter on this one. And I realized that customers who

(36:33):
love caviat also eat pizza. The woman who dresses up
during the week also has a weekend, like that customer
has Saturday and Sunday as well. The way the market
was looking at it was bizarre. It was like, that's
our customer at weekend, doesn't matter, and they don't wear
blue jeans, and it's just incredible. So I mocked this

(36:55):
thing up inside a book which I still have, which
is dig because I always said Donna Kara as being
big in the stecks move like it was unbelievable, like worldwide,
big voice and I bought this thing up in a book.
I like books, remember, guys, I started with books, so
my presentation all looked like books and pressed the hell

(37:18):
out of everybody. And this one was like forty by sixty.
It was like a fairy tale book. And when you
opened it up, the first thing on our left was
an arrow shot of a can of caviat and on
the right was a pizza. And I said that it's
for the other side of the same woman, which just

(37:39):
blew everyone's mind, the department store's mind and Donna everyone. Now,
I want to be clear. I must have refined that
thought through god knows how many presentations a million times.
And the guy who helped me sell it in was
Michael Jackson, which is going to blow your mind. But

(38:00):
Michael Jackson had just come out with Man in the Mirror,
and I, you know, back then, no one called you up.
It's like, oh, the video has Michael Jackson's music, Like
I didn't even know about rights. So I cut this
video together called d Ken why to Michael Jackson's music,
and we showed it. It was back in the you know,

(38:22):
the top down there was that what was it called
the three corner Machine. You know that tape machine, that.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Beta max beta max beta max.

Speaker 4 (38:32):
Yeah, that grayish color thing you know, with that at
a top lower, but it just slipped at it and
pushed it down. And I showed Donna that Michael Jackson video.
We sold the whole world that video. It was out there,
like you know, by the way. Back then there was
no Google or YouTube rate, so I didn't there's no

(38:52):
way you get in trouble. There was Michael Jackson man
in the mirror, this incredible film. I made the two
and a half minute, and then the pizza and the
caveat and then these chunky letters. Now here's the deal.
If it's the other side of the same woman, then
in fact, all you need to do is make sure

(39:14):
that you put a dot dot dot under the DK
and Y, which is how that label was made, so
underneath I could say Donna Karen New York. It sounds
stupid and obvious, but in fact it became the bridge.
So the woman was able to feel like she was
getting a piece of Donna Karen and DCN Why Donna

(39:35):
Karen made sense together. So Saturday you were able to
put your genes on to go to flea market right
in order to do that correctly. We had a price correctly.
So imagine we're coming out with a second line, but
we're connected to the first line, so we could get
a better margin. Well, that was the expulsive economic, the

(39:56):
incredible solution, and Donna so ahead of everyone. Her voice
in the marketplace was important. She was sending messages out
about women. I mean, this is the days of working women,
and you know, women had no say at the table.
It was intense when we started in the eighties and

(40:18):
we were sending messages out. We were doing campaigns showing
Rosemary running for president in women we trust. Everything was
a message, Everything was a message. Everything was right. So anyway,
so I worked in the basement of one hundred Grand
Street for about four months. Patty came down two or
three times and we put this book together, and I

(40:40):
went up there and I showed it to Donna, and
that's exactly what happened, and she was overwhelmed. I had
not a great moment, you know. I jumped in. I
couldn't keep my nose skip out of doing the accessories
and the belts and the logos and the scarves and umbrellas,
and I just was all over the place. But it

(41:01):
was all in the book and it affected. It was
the first time that graphics had taken over a brand
at that level in that marketplace, right. You know, we
weren't Nike, you know, we weren't Adidas with stripes and everything.
And then the magic happened. She said, how are you
going to launch this thing? And Reagan was speaking at

(41:22):
the un that day, and I for four thousand bucks,
we got the skywriting dkn Y in the sky. Everyone
thought it was a political message. All the cameras moved
up to the sky, CNN, NBC, what the hell does
that mean? And within minutes later I got three guys
from Rome to come and paint the side of Jeff

(41:45):
Coon's wall and Soho, which was an impossibility in the
old days. Advertising was painting it on buildings, as you know,
and especially down in Soho rebeca industrial areas of Manhattan.
A lot of them exists, but you know, the Arts
Commission and all this, you know, building zoning and all
this protection of historical stuff, they don't let you do it.

(42:09):
So I convinced them that I was doing something historically important,
and we painted that on the side of that Houston
and Broadway right on the north facing wall of Jeff
Cohon's factory, who gave me permission to do it, and
the city said okay, And so we ran that ad

(42:29):
once on the side of that building and it just
you know, it changed. So between the way we acted,
the way we saw it, the way we changed the industry,
the way Piece and Cavia worked together as someone, I
would say that I was the conceiver of the eyes

(42:50):
and ears of the custodia of that vision. But as
far as the product goes, which matters and in the
end is the only thing that mattered. That was one
hundred percent Donna Karen and she had a woman working
with her at the time named Jane who is working
with her just on TK why brilliant designer, And the

(43:13):
two of them conceived of this other side and it
was explosive and the company grew half a billion, a billion,
billion and a half. There was a guy there at
the time named Steve Russeau was the president's CEO, and
he was just chugging along with Donna and they were
building it and it went to Asia and Europe and

(43:33):
we serviced that account and I did everything. I designed
the boutiques and the product, all the accessory stuff, the graphics,
the jewelry, and it really to this day is kind
of like what is on the back of my shirt.
You know. It was a very important point of all
the things I did in my life. That and Donna is.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Extraordinary speaking of them, this cuise because you've done amazing things.
Is there a project where you feel you didn't get
enough recognition for its impact? I'm an artist. You're an artist,
and there are times where you go, wow, I contributed
so much. Not that we always need it, you know,
but it's nice to be appreciated, right. Is there one

(44:17):
where you did not get enough recognition for its impact?

Speaker 4 (44:21):
You know when big companies write big checks and they
don't expect you to get the credit, right, And I
spent my entire life behind the curtains. As you know,
if I'm successful, it means that Donna ends up having
a huge businessess that soultelvmh.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Right.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
If I'm successful, it means that everyone in the world
is drinking espresso. My success is so far behind, you know,
and in back and so what. But to answer your question,
because I did get behind the camera many times that
I directed many of these commercials and photographed much of

(45:01):
what we're talking about. When it came to the communications
and those iconic graphics like d Ken why or the
bridge or any of those things, I would argue that,
as we all know successors a lot of authors, that
the one that really really I wouldn't say, I don't
get the right credit, but we never played it in

(45:25):
a way that would give you the credit. Is when
I took a really dying company called Rebund, I mean,
just get it. Its track with Paul Fire and such
a brilliant guy, just unable to catch up to Puma,
Adidas and Nike, just unable to but without the kind

(45:45):
of capital, without the kind of design needed, et cetera,
et cetera. He asked me to get involved, and I
remember I was sitting there with his whole board head
of marketing, Nicky pont Or, was a brilliant marketer, went
on to become the head of and a whole bunch
of other things. And I told him to scratch the

(46:06):
vowels out of his name and become RBK. And I
remember the president I won't mention his name at the time,
looked at me like I was out of my mind
and literally said, this will never work. Someone said where
do you get that idea from? I said, it's your
goddamn you know, in the stock exchange, it's listed reebuck
is RBK. I said, the whole world knows RBK. But

(46:27):
the way I'm going to do it is, I'm going
to scratch him out. I'm gonna put this billboard up.
I'm just going to scratch it out. Scratch scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.
And people love when brands attack themselves. There's a certain
level of like, holy Macro, look what they're doing, especially
when you publicly display that. So I scratched it out.

(46:48):
It was big, big in the marketplace because it was
the time when music and sports were coming together. All
the rappers and all the you know, Alan Ivis said
and made a kiss, and jay Z and fifty Cent,
so they were all in the beginning of their careers.
We got them all together and we said to jay Z,

(47:10):
let's do a sneaker Sean Carter and let's fit you,
and fifty Cent wrapping on TV stuff and let's get
iveson wrapping in his spot. And everything was getting real
street and aggressive. So the scratching out of the nowels
made sense. I had no money, zero money, to do
things at that time. So we all made promises like

(47:31):
we'll give you a line, and then the big moment
was and here it goes. You asked the question, what
do I get the least amount of recognition for Terry
Tait office linebacker one of the most successful, biggest Super
Bowl spots of all time? We could afford an athlete,
So we made what up. It was just at the time,

(47:52):
Remember it was the beginning of like finding some nasty
stuff in a pepsiican in Congress. Remember serious garbage going
on in offices during the time, you know between you know,
this is the beginning of the knee too stuff, you know.
So they loved the idea that Reebok had this guy
who was just there to protect right, and we put

(48:17):
him out there and he just became famous overnight. In fact,
we broke the web. Sixteen months Seventeen months later, Paul
Reebuk was sold to Adidas for two point six billion
dollars bonus, please, there was a big number. And uh, anyway,
this boy got zero out of it other than the

(48:40):
fame of creating those spots and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Let me add to the unknown and skip you'll appreciate
this because it's it's universal, and everybody's very much aware
of Vegas, you know, they love it, and everybody's very
much aware of how Steve Win, the amazing genius of
Steve Winn, put it to a whole new chapter, culminating
in the Wind Hotel where every other hotel, Skip, you

(49:04):
were a part of it. It all had you know,
Treasure Island blah blah blah. Guess who came up with
calling Win the Win hotel, folks, the gentleman that you've
been listening to who's been so articular on these other companies,
mister Arnell, How did Winn get the name Win? When
you and I know it was a photograph of a

(49:25):
penis of Picasso called Lariff fade out, fade in, and
and did you know this Skip by.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
The way, I did.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
And I also knew just to tag onto that when
Peter was talking about Morris Lapidus, Steve was always obsessed
with the curve.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Of the building, the fountain blue and Miami Beach.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Yeah, that's where he and I met.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Yeah, and he.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
Thought, Paul, he thought that was the greatest design and element.
And as a result, that's why the Win and the
Encore have that curve right because of that whose grandma.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
They used to bring him to the show, my show,
and she'd say, we're going to Steve, Polly Uncle. She
used to always say Polly Uncle. And Steve came at
eighteen nineteen. You know, we've known each other for a
lot of years. And he looked up at that building
one day and as he has said, that's what I
want to do. I want to be in that business.
But that curvature started with the other partner at Caesar's,

(50:22):
Jay Sarno. Jay Sarno had a motel up in Atlanta,
and they all copied Jay Sarno from the motel to
the Fountain Blue, but anyway back to Peter and back
to the wind. But that's very very true.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Skip.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
He wanted from that day when he come to the
foundin Lilt to see the show, looked at his grandmother
said that's what I want to do. But the amazing
thing I didn't know, because I've known Steve for a
lot of years. But then I found out Peter Arnell
because we all got the call, Skip, you and I
building a new hotel. What are we going to call it?
We went through all the names, remember that, but Peter

(50:57):
Arnell gave him the name the goddamn Hodel. Shoot, Peter,
you are okay.

Speaker 4 (51:03):
So Skip brought up a good point. I just want
to clarify. I think Steve would appreciate it, both of you,
knowing how he loves to be precise and factual. He
had come home, I think he was in boarding school
up at West Point. He'd come home and his parents
had cabana four six one or four six three, we'll

(51:26):
have to clarify that one. And he was up on
the cabata when he looked back and saw that curve,
and it was at that moment he knew that he
wanted to be in the business. And it was later
on when he finally had his chance to grab that
memory where he actually physically put it to work. But
the two properties he did, and the curve and the

(51:47):
way that curve goes up to accommodate for the graphics
on the top and the geometry, they improved tremendously on
the Fountain Blue in many ways, as you both know.
So here's what happened. I'm sitting at the Playboy mansion.
You was in a bathrobe, and his daughter Christy is

(52:09):
introducing me as the guy who's gonna work on Playboy
dot com. You can't make this stuff up. And we
have an incredible meeting. And you don't know this, but
Kevin who went on to become the head of acquisitions
at Disney under Eiger, who bought Star Wars and Marvel
and everything, he was the head of Playboy dot Com

(52:31):
at the moment. I'm sure he's gonna kill me after
I just said that. But brilliant, brilliant guy, always looking
at understanding technology in the way that no one else could.
And we left that very successful meeting, went back to
the offices and Christy said, you know, I would love
to do a hotel in Vegas, and so I said

(52:54):
I could do that, not knowing anything, and I took
the bunny rabbit ears and not unlike Zaha hadid twenty
five years later, I formed the two shapes of these towers,
fifty two stories eyed at the front of the beak,

(53:14):
and the whole mouth of the opening was the entrance
of the bunny, and it was a chapel right in
the forehead. It was extraordinary. And she said in that meeting,
if we come up with something good, we'll show it
to Steve whin, we'll see if he's interested in partnering.
So that's how I met Steve. I ended up in

(53:35):
his office with her showing him this incredible model, of
which he had absolutely no interest in. I think the
meeting was there set up to respect he you know,
obviously respected Christy. She's brilliant, and I had a good relationship.
But minutes later I got a phone call, I'd like
for you to work on the pre opening. I didn't

(53:57):
realize what a pre opening was because Steve, as you
both know, can articulate marketing and communication strategies and purpose
and business better than anybody. And he said, I got
my educational pre opening from Steve. I came in and
I was there to get a contract, just like I

(54:17):
was just overwhelmed. And he said, well, we're going to
start by me telling you what the brand is all about,
and what the hotel's going to look like, and what
the name is and he said it's Lorem. I can
only imagine, Paul, since you know me a little, how
disappointed I was. But I heard you and everyone else

(54:41):
what the freaking hell is Lorem? And he took out
this kind of circ do so lay logo, which was
just an embellished bunch of type that like had a
leg of woman. And I was crazy, by the way,
beautifully articulated. But he said, well, do you know what

(55:01):
the reva is? I said, because I was silent, and
I said, of course I know what the revas And
it's because you know I speak French. I sent it was.
And by the way, you know that when he bought
that painting, everyone in the world knew about it. And
I said, he said, what do you think about it?
I said, it's terrible. I had no idea. Who is

(55:24):
in the room with that German shepherd?

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Two of them, I ex who's called i X.

Speaker 4 (55:31):
It was one of them that growled when I raised
my voice.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
It's the one that bid up Bernie Ekelestein's nose.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
By the way, so you got off.

Speaker 4 (55:39):
He leaned into the table only like Steve could, and
the lips.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Got tight and the tone went up, the tone, and.

Speaker 4 (55:49):
I said, here you go. I know you won't only
not get the work, but you're gonna be in trouble
for the rest of your life. This guy's gonna absolutely
make sure you never work again. And I said, your
name is Wig, like you're in Vacus it's not loose,
it's wind. I'll never forget. I said that, at which
time he picked up the phone and called General Powell.

(56:15):
So what the hell is he calling General Powellful? I
had no idea they were buddies, and Powell said, that's
a great idea. He was on the speakerphone. Of course,
Steve didn't want me to hear that. I'm sure. Anyway,
he screamed something or other and then he said, well,

(56:36):
what are you gonna do? He said something like that,
What are you doing? I said, well, if he give
me a shot, I'd like to test it. Oh my god,
talk about a kinder, softer, more generous Steve. I said,
if he give me some money. I think it was
eighty grand or something. And you remember he had that
polling guy who's his best friend.

Speaker 8 (56:57):
Franvalonce just Cannibal when it comes to just landing right
in the middle of the even just me kind of
getting to know that guy and opening up that door
would have been brilliant for my career, and so hop
skipping a jump.

Speaker 4 (57:14):
It all came back while that was happening. He called Spielberg,
he called Diller, and he called Trump that he didn't
tell me that, but he told me later that he
had done that. Of course, Barry, who never was you know,
as he says, was ever a doubt of anything that
he ever said was right, just said it's absolutely right

(57:35):
and hung up the phone. Spielberg said, I'm not going
to come to a hotel. I have no idea what
LOREV is, but if it says win on the door,
I'm in. And Trump he called, obviously, because Trump had
his name on every building, and that's why you didn't
want to do it, and he said, look, you're going
to go down. Steve told me oldest later. But more importantly,
the research came back and everybody loved the idea. You know,

(58:00):
he tested women, he tested man, he tested families, young
and old. He did a great job and they went
for it. And of course Elaine did something brilliant also.
I mean, I don't know if Steve would appreciate me
saying this, but it's the truth. She put that dot
at the end of it. What I understood from everyone
was that she was not in favor because we were

(58:22):
nine months or eleven months out and all the graphics
were done and the napkins were made, you know, the
science and everything so that was somehow of a dump,
if you know what I mean. But can you imagine
years later I end up working for a Sofa and
Coke on that property. I go back into the town.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
The Fountain Blue, the found Blue, somebody gets the Fountain Blue?

Speaker 4 (58:46):
Sorry, found Blue Las Vegas. Yeah, that story my uncle
working for my meeting with him when I was thirteen fourteen,
The curve, the wind, the whole thing, and I'm back
in Vegas again. Life is funny, huh? How it just
goes like this.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Again?

Speaker 3 (59:15):
We were talking earlier about storytelling. You know, Steve, everybody
always went to get financing, they had a deck, PowerPoint,
you know, whole presentation renderings. Steve didn't have any of that.
You just had a great story. And he's a great storyteller.
And to that, you're a great storyteller, and you tell
stories through your work. Obviously that's something you've always done,

(59:37):
is you've created storytelling. That's really what this is about.
But how would you want people to interpret your work?
Like fifty years from now, what would you want them
to say about Peter Arnell?

Speaker 2 (59:50):
He did this, He did that.

Speaker 4 (59:51):
I was very fortunate the early days to get to
meet people like David Ogilvie and Jay Shiatt, George Lowe.
These are giants in These are guys who invented creative
Madison Avenue right, and they all would always say the
same thing. And by the way, the reason why we

(01:00:12):
ended up getting bought by Omnikom was because Lee klow
who ran Giant Day, you know, famous for everything from
Apple to the Nike. He was the one who had
told John Wren that we were good bye. George Lois
had tried to buy us for twenty years and merged

(01:00:34):
the companies and my first first work as a consultant
to make a couple of shekels, which was not my work,
but supportive work for other companies for David Ogilvie. At Ogilvie.
In method there was a neither two or rather two.
I forgot how you pronounced it. And I had done

(01:00:54):
some photography for an AT and T campaign that I
never told anyone about. These guys always said the same thing,
make it simple, make it beautiful. Every one of them
believed that style mattered, and I realized as I got
older and older, you know, you could teach style. It
was very hard and it was very limited in the marketplace.

(01:01:16):
And to make something simple. WHOA, Now here's the lesson skip.
You have one second. You always had one second. It's
not today Instagram and all this. Everybody had one second.
And it didn't come on the billboard with a thing
that said if you don't understand this, here's my phone number.

(01:01:37):
Call me. I'll explain it. And within a day, if
you didn't sell what you were trying to sell, it
didn't work. So make it simple, make it beautiful. Beauty
had the most incredible ability to attract. You know, we
used to call it appeal strategy and it had fancy names. Mentally,

(01:02:00):
a content had to be unique, simple, beautiful in order
to make it matter. So I think at the end
and people are going to look back and say things
about how simple, elegant and beautiful the work was, and
how we tried from the beginning to change the way

(01:02:21):
work was done, and that we were the first people
to actually mix art and commerce, because if I approached
it from a commercial point of view, I never would
have achieved anything. From day one, that photograph of the
bridge had zero commercial value until I put New York

(01:02:41):
under Donna Karen and everyone realized I had pulled a
woody Allen on them right, it was like, Holy, Mackley
is Manhattan movie, greatest city in the world. Make it here,
make it anywhere. I'm showing the Brooklyn Bridge black and white.
It all felt like it had been there. The trust

(01:03:02):
and confidence you need to provide people in good communication
is so harm to get people to liberate their cash
within seconds and believe that you're valuable. So I've always
believed that if you can attract people by shooting ideas,
then you can get people to join a brand, not

(01:03:23):
buy a product. And the moment you got them hooked
on joining, then they're going to become an advocate. And
then they got to wear it. And the moment they
wear it, they're going to be your best voice. And
the moment that goes in the marketplace, it goes like wildfire.
So he's the guy who was a troublemaker, defied all

(01:03:45):
the rules, did things differently, but always ended up making
it simple and beautiful. I think that's, uh, yeah, that's
the epitaph if there is one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Paul's a storyteller.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Obviously his music, you know, his songs tell stories, and
you know your logos they tell a story. But it's interesting.
You must have loved the television series mad Men. Just
taken a guess and if they ever did a reboot
of that, you have to be on that. I mean,
there needed to be a Peter Arnell character in there.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
I'll tell you something. I won't mention his name, but
there was a writer who tried to take me down
fifteen twenty years ago, because you know, when you're script
what we're talking about now, it's all history. But you know,
I'm designing a car, and I'm designing a logo and
I'm shooting picture. Oh the hell believes any of that stuff.
So this guy really want to take me down. But anyway,

(01:04:39):
he named the article mad Man, and he said that
you know, they had nothing on me. But it is
true that I grew up in the beginning of the eighties.
You all saw Scorsess, you know, the Wolf of Wall
Street movie with you know that was how it was. Guy,

(01:05:00):
as you both know, you said anything to get in
the door, and you said anything to get out of
the door. You know he got the order. You ran right,
and and you did anything possible. And if you get
it done and it didn't matter, give you the goddamn camera.
I'll shoot what are you talking about gotta hire a photographer,

(01:05:23):
but get photographer. I got it. Who's got time? Just
give me a camera. So I acted that way, and
I got a lot of people upset. I probably rusfled
a lot of feathers in the same way as you
just said that. People like pauled it, what the hell's
a fifteen year old kid doing writing music for Frank Sinatra.

(01:05:44):
And by the way, by the way, it was amazing skit.
The other day, I'm sitting here in Japan. We get
up at seven in the morning, look jet lag and
I put on Christmas music. What's the first goddamn song
that comes up? Edny, Like, I know his history almost
as good as anyone, and I know nothing. There's so

(01:06:07):
much wiggle, you know, it's unbelievable, and there comes up,
you know, this incredible Christmas song. You know, I'm a
guy who spent his entire life working with very serious, incredible,
brilliant talent, like I've always been attracted the music industry.
Seline Dion thirty is with Tina Turner Michael Jackson designing

(01:06:32):
album covers, and you know, like for him, and I
think to your point about storytelling, Paul is arguably not
only Kitty articulated without singing, but when it gets to
the song, it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. I believe the next
five to ten years for Paul to be boundless. And

(01:06:55):
I say that to him a lot. I really believe it.
If I could have any impact on it. As a
brand guy, I think Paul anka the brand, it's mythology
at a level that is just extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
I got you, and I appreciate it. I love you.
But I want to talk about Peter now, the brand.
What's ahead of you? What projects are you working on?
Did you have a goal? Is a one unfulfilled? Because
I know you and your energy, what's in it for
the end of this journey here?

Speaker 4 (01:07:32):
Yeah, First of all, I think about that a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
And I'm going to leave everything in that you just
said about me, So don't worry.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
I appreciate I was you know I was about to say.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
But I want to know what Peter Arnell's got his
eyes on right now.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
Tell me here's the thing you didn't ask me, the
big question, which is, in forty seven years, what did
you miss that you regret? That's a big question, Peter.

Speaker 9 (01:07:57):
In forty seven years and You've been just amazing to
listen to in these forty seven years. Is there one
thing that you regret? I mean, Skip called me and
said you got to ask him that question? Can you
answer that question?

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
I can. The eighties are upon us and I'm all
focused up on fashion. The nineties are upon us, and
I'm running to Korea. And while that's all going on,
there's a guy on the West Coast named Steve Jobs.
There's another guy over there named Jeff, and another guy

(01:08:33):
over there named the Surge, And I google and it
go want to I completely missed where I should have been,
which is in Silicon Valley. I completely missed it, like
missed it, like missed it. So at my age, I'm
not going to miss the next one. The next one
is all about in my mind space.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
I thought you were going to say the next one
is AI. You threw me again.

Speaker 4 (01:08:59):
No, no, I you know what. I'll tell you something
you have mentioned, both of you over and over and
over again. Today's storytelling. You're looking at someone who is
obsessed with everything. From when mister von Braun came over
with his boys from Germany to start the Marshall Space Program,
which then turned into NASA. I am overwhelmed by space,

(01:09:23):
and I spent my entire life trying to do anything
I can to sit in rooms with Jim Lovel and
buzz Old and everybody else. I have weeks and months
of work with them. I put them in TV commercials.
I've been with them my whole life, all these astronauts.
I've been to launches and this and that and everything,
and so I believe strongly that the AI boys have

(01:09:50):
it covered Altman and everybody. There's not much I could do,
and machine is so powerful if it's organized right, so
I don't need to go there. However, space needs storytelling,
and the thing that we're lacking right now is that

(01:10:14):
we have the optics on big rockets brilliantly coming back
down at being caught by hooks in Iraq in order
to allow these rockets to be reused, and the efficiencies
around it, energy, all this stuff. As you both know,

(01:10:36):
Elon has done extraordinary job. However, I don't think storytelling
is something that those guys necessarily focus in on. I
think they're engineers and scientists, and they're doing a very
important job to achieve what we as Americans and the

(01:10:58):
world at large, which loves, which is exploration at a
level that is unbearable to comprehend.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
And keeping Peter and keeping with that, and Skip will
tell you. I want to get your feeling on that
subject broadened space aliens, What do we know? What don't
we know? I believe and I've been reading about it
for years. And Skip talk to me, he looks at me. Sometimes,
I really believe there is a new world order, and

(01:11:29):
will open that there is an alien dynamic in all
our lives and the timing of it is going to
happen very soon. What you're feeling along with that whole
space concept that you have, Yeah, you know, are they
out there?

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
Are they?

Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
They are? I absolutely believe they are. And yeah, you
have to be pretty naive to think we're the only ones, right,
I think at that's point number one. Point number two
is we as Americans did a great job getting everyone
to think about those, you know, alternative life forms whatever

(01:12:05):
you want to in a strange way because we called
them aliens of them, We've branded that for years.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
They've been setting us up. They've been brainwashing with this.
I mean, when you read about Christopher Mullen, have you
followed him? Used to be Admiral Ni. Yes, there's so
much evidence that they are there in a part of
our lives, and I think that that's something that we're
all going to have to deal with in the next
few years. That those will I.

Speaker 4 (01:12:32):
Think, I think Paul, I think Steven Spielberg when he
created The Extraterrestrial.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
Yeah, Et was the first.

Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
Guy who made all of that, truly made all of
that beautiful, understandable, and connected it to humanity in a really,
really powerful way. He's the movie became one of the
biggest successes. You know that that. Stephen once said to me,
I'll never forget this. We were working on a project together.

(01:13:03):
It was just incredible. He had just the band of
brothers and I was working at Chrysler at the time,
and I wanted to do this collaboration with the Jeep
on the launch of that, and I was working anyway.
He said to me, you know, Peter, Sharks don't have soundtracks,
and he said, imagine Jaws with a John Williams extraordinary moment.

(01:13:30):
And then he went on to say to me, if
we can make He was describing visually how important the
scene was in this commercial, and he said, if we
could make what the audience sees tap into what they
believe it should be, we win. And he went on
to explain et that we actually believed the audience believed

(01:13:53):
that really was an extraterrestrial. He invented, created that right,
and so to your point, he made it all like
oh before it was scary and these were like one
eyes and big heads and green and all this stuff.
Having said that, it won't be in the form, Paul,
that we expect it to be in. Certainly they won't

(01:14:16):
look like us. I don't believe. And no, but I
think all this work is gonna at some point they're
gonna knock on the outside of that rocket and say
we'd like to talk, Just like Christopher Club is planted
in America. I think they already have, Peter.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
I think they've already been in touch, because when you
look back at the history of it, it goes back
to years and years ago from Brazil, and I'm in
this story after story and everything is just culminating, and
I really believe they've been in touch with whomever it is.
It's not going to be talking like we are. There
will be a frequency, spiritual kind of connection to all

(01:14:54):
of that, but it's just there's just so much evidence
that I absolutely believe that at the right time, because
everything in life is timing, that we're going to have
to put our arms around that for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:15:05):
Skip, it's your turn to respond to two Paul's.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
I was going to ask you, what's the what's your
one design that you'd like to show the alien visitors
that sort of sums up your work.

Speaker 4 (01:15:19):
I'd like to invite them to the beautiful rooms at
the fount of Now. I think if it was Mini
Eminem's I remembered I worked on that for mister Mars.
It was funny because you know that Mars. The funniest
thing is that Mars lost huge market share to Skittles

(01:15:43):
because Skittles took the deal for e T and Mars
pasted it. You know, It's so funny. Hey, guys, the
big guys come out with a disposable razor and they
make it blow and some god, he says he, By
the way, if you painted it pink, it do w

(01:16:04):
market overnight. If you've scratched the vowels out of rebook,
you could become a new company, right if you actually
are going to grow a hot street Brad from Dotta
Karen and this FDN Y and NYPD DCAM why fits
in perfectly right. It goes on and on. These are

(01:16:25):
obvious things. They're like obvious, So I think I'd probably
want to give him like a small M and M
because they wouldn't choke, you know, they probably have very
little narrow you know.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
Yeah, Well, you've been just great to I mean, being
in Japan, having your family there and taking already you know,
well over an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
To just talk to us like this. It's just been special.
It's been exciting.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
And I'm glad that so many people, additional people who
are already you know, so many people know of you
over your work, but hopefully through this podcast they'll really
get a better sense of who Peter Arnell really is.
And at the core you're a great guy too. I
might throw that in there, Oh, thank you. That counts
for a lot for Paul and for me.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
Thank you all of that and above, and Paul will
tell you you'll speak for himself in conjunction. I love
this guy.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
I love being.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
Around creative people. I've been blessed with being in that
ballpark Skip and the greatest moments for me are being
in rooms with people smarter than me being with people
that I respect, because at the end of the day,
it's all about the respect and the trust. But Peter
is one of the great geniuses when it comes to
what he does, and anything that we say about him

(01:17:43):
needs to be amplified. And it's that old story of
the unsung heroes in a sense. You know, I've always
said from the beginning, I get all the credit. I'm
up there and say, wait a minute, I've surrounded myself
with the greatest arrangers, the greatest musicians. Nobody talks about
them because we said, as Peter alluded to earlier success

(01:18:04):
as many fathers. Even though there is great recognition on
Peter to the layman, and in this crazy, hectic world
we live in, some of those guys are never really
hailed the way they should be. Peter, I love you.
I appreciate the time you've taken out. Go choke on
some seaweed or whatever you're eating tonight, think of me,

(01:18:25):
because you're in my most favorite country of the world.
I was there at seventeen years old. When I was there,
Peter and skipped, there were bombs still in the ground
and I was going to hospitals with kids and no
limbs and what have you. But Japan, I must tell you,
and you can all attest to this because you've both

(01:18:46):
been there is one of the most amazing cultures and
still is. And you enjoy it there, Peter, because I
just love that place something crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:18:55):
And they love you as well as.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
You know, because I'm their size.

Speaker 9 (01:18:58):
That's why they're sick of looking up at all these
six feet fucking tall actors.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
We're all the same size down.

Speaker 4 (01:19:06):
Unbelievable, unbelievable. Anyway, listen, guys, thank you so much. Has
been great. It's just been wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
Thanks Peter, well for us to thank you, Peter, appreciate it.
We'll talk sooner, all right, Cop, bless you, Bob. But
that's love.

Speaker 4 (01:19:20):
I have a great day.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
Our Away with Paul Anka and Skip Bronson is a
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):
The show's executive producer is Jordan Runtog, with supervising producer
and editor Marcy Depina.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
It was engineered by Todd Carlin and Graham Gibson, mixed
and mastered by the wonderful Mary Do.

Speaker 3 (01:19:51):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.