My name is Chauncey Hollingsworth.
(Yes, that’s my real name. No, I’ve never been in a duel or a foxhunt.)
I’m a writer. An idea guy. A multidisciplinary creative director. A leader. A mentor. A friend in the mix. A rare cut of meat.
I’m an award-winning CD in Brooklyn, New York, whose recent clients include MINI, Davines and Microsoft. I specialize in branding, creative strategy, and integrated campaigns where I can take a Big Idea and translate it into a spectrum of offerings and iterations, from TVC to digital to social. I’ve spent years leading remote and co-located teams around the globe in creating work that sells. I regularly win pitches.
I’ve worked with the commercial Web since its inception, variously owning or co-owning two digital shops that handled scores of successful projects for clients ranging from Whole Foods and Marmot to Motorola and CAT Footwear. My teams designed online experiences and immersive environments for industries and cultural product alike, including the book “Triangle: The Fire That Changed America” and groundbreaking anime films like “Ghost in the Shell.”
I was first published at 18. I’ve since written about everything from Japan’s illicit yakuza-run sex trade and Russia’s ex-pat feminist rockers Pussy Riot to the underground pitfights in dockside warehouses that were precursors to the UFC. My work has appeared in the Atlantic, Rolling Stone and numerous other publications.
I was in a band for a few years. Practiced. Recorded demos. Negotiated contracts. Organized tours. Designed posters and wheatpasted them all over the country. Capitol Records gave us some money and we recorded with a big-name producer. Our van had a CB, ashtrays, captain’s seats and royal blue shag carpeting, and we spent a lot of time loading gear into and out of it. Interpol once opened for us. Backstage, they got into an argument with each other where one of them said, in a really whiny voice, “All I’m saying is, I just want to be acknowledged!” Then another one of them hit on my girlfriend and passed out in a chair. We made fun of them, which tells you how little we knew about how the music industry works.
Civic participation and activism are important to me. I was illegally arrested for protesting the Iraq War, won a five-figure settlement from the City of Chicago, and figure prominently in a documentary about the protest called “Where We Stood.” I’m also in the documentary “The King, The Lawyers and the Cheese,” about underground comix artist King Velveeda and his legal battle with Kraft. I’ve been interviewed by WNYC, NPR / Vocalo Radio, Chicago magazine and many other outlets.
I taught classes for several years at DePaul University in game design, digital media literacy, media ethics and the history of games.
My background in writing, DIY entrepreneurship, creative sell-through and soup-to-nuts execution taught me hard-won lessons in collaboration, branding, amplification and promotion. If your art isn’t generating commerce — in ideas or word-of-mouth if not currency — then it doesn’t exist. This is the riddle of advertising: how to solve business problems with creative output. I devise new answers every day.