Profile: Michael Craven
Crispin creative exec pens ‘Body Copy,’ a murder mystery set in the agency world
Feb 22, 2009
Michael Craven
“Ad agencies provide a good canvass for a murder mystery,” says Michael Craven, a 38-year old associate creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, explaining the setting of his recently-published first novel, Body Copy. “There are a lot of smart people, attractive people, people who are semi-famous and creative people who don’t necessarily make decisions in a rational way — and then of course there is jealousy and ego sometimes. There are some nice ingredients for a crime story.”
The Harper novel tells the tale of a former pro surfer turned P.I. who investigates the murder of the famous creative director at Parker/Gale, a fictitious Los Angeles agency known for its award-winning work. One chief suspect is an envious, not-so-celebrated local competitor.
“I love detective novels and always wanted to write one,” says Craven, a Jacksonville, Fla., native who studied English at the University of Georgia before beginning his advertising career as an assistant at Grey Entertainment in New York in the mid-90s.
“I had a vague sense that I wanted to be a writer,” says Craven, who counts Ross Macdonald, Carl Hiaasen and friend James Frey as a few of his favorite authors. “But I didn’t know what kind of writer or really what that meant or how you made that happen.”
A friend at Simon & Schuster, where he first worked after moving to New York post-graduation in 1992, introduced him to someone at Grey and set him on a career path in advertising that took him to MTV’s in-house agency, then to TBWA\Chiat\Day in Playa del Rey, Calif., and most recently to Crispin, where he began as a senior copywriter on Burger King in 2007 and now serves as an associate creative director on the Microsoft account.