Jeff Lee, 24
Copywriter at SID LEE, a montreal based ad agency.
I’ve always been a funny bird.
When I was a little boy, instead of putting me on medication, my parents took me to a circus where a grew up as an acrobat for the next 8 years. This is where the magic all started. I remember looking throught the curtain and take a peek at the audience. I saw stars in their eyes. I soon understood that if you want to get people attention, all you have to do is capture their imagination. For a few minutes, they forget everything and go to a special place into their heart.
You will recognise that magic in every of my following projects.
It’s in a roadtrip across canada at age 16 that I had the idea for my first TV show: La nouvelle école. The show would document the passions and adventures of other 20 something in a for us / by us perspective. So I picked up the phone and called the local station in Québec city, pretending I could produce this kind of show. They agreed to see a pilot that I produced with money I borrowed to daddy. They loved the concept and gave me the the funding to produce a full season. I bought all the equipment and overall we produced 60 episodes. Life is an adventure.
Meanwhile, I started discussing with the RDS network, literally hiding myself in my college bathrooms to return the executive’s phonecalls. They agreed to air a season of our new concept La Virée: la vie est une aventure, an extreme sports and lifestyle show across Canada. Just like the previous show, this do it yourself approach captured the imagination of the audience and brought fresh air and freedom in a relatively conservative channel. But after just a season, the network pulled out the show because it was too edgy.
I was 21.
At this time, me and my partner Guillaume Arsenault rented a little office above a leather shop. Still today, the smell of leather remind me of those innocent years. But we would soon be short on money. I thought my career was over and that no other network would like to meet me. I saw myself as the yougest hasbeen ever. But I soon realised that the problem was not the way I was doing tv shows, it’s just that everything was changing. So I packed my bags and moved to Montreal, big city of dreams.
With partner Maxime Fleurant (swoo.ca), we created a content platform called Bombe.tv that would soon become a succesfull content brand that we could distribute on TV, other websites and channels.
After 3 years producing tv and web content, I realised it was once again time for me to move on. The day to day techy stuff was distracting me from my real passion, wich is to tell stories and inspire other kids like me. A few months ago I quit my place as the editor of bombe.tv and joined Sid Lee, a Montreal based ad agency where I now evolve as a copywritter. Or how I like to say, a Digital Storyteller.
I’ve always been a funny bird. But all those years trying to find a good branch to rest, I completely forgot that what I was made for was to fly.
