McKay still has a lot to ad

What Patrick McKay absorbed – not to be confused with learned – on the football fields at Gonzaga Prep more than two decades ago led him to be a Super Bowl MVP in his field - not to be confused with on the field.

McKay, who graduated from Gonzaga Prep in 1986, won an Emmy in 2005 for an Ameriquest Mortgage commercial that debuted during the Super Bowl.

“It was a quick, silly commercial. It was a lot of fun and it made a big splash,” McKay said. “The Super Bowl can make a big difference. It’s not the end all, be all. There are plenty of opportunities and venues you can do work and get it noticed. The nice thing about the Super Bowl is you’re able to get in front of a huge number of people so it’s sort of like a more normal audience will appreciate it. Other times it’s just your peers that notice it.”

Tying that back to his days as an average player for a program that went to the King Bowl twice in his four years of high school isn’t a stretch.

“I was athletically inclined, I just didn’t have the same drive as my sister (Bridget),” McKay said. “I was just a normal dude. I wasn’t quite mature enough to know what to do when I was playing sports. I finally got good at it in advertising.

“It’s the competitiveness, being on your game. We have game days. We prepare, practice and practice and then go into our pitch, our presentation. That’s our game days. I wish I knew then what I know now. I would have liked to have had that. It would have come in handy.”

The Bullpups won the King Bowl in 1982, McKay’s freshman year, and returned his senior year, losing to Juanita, a loss they avenged a year later.

McKay was a reserve as a senior but earned the coaches’ award for his contributions at practice.

He probably did more for his younger sister’s athletic career than his own, though he said his contribution to Bridget’s fastpitch softball passion, profiled last weekend, was minimal: “I’m just the mean older brother who threw at her as hard as I could.”

After high school McKay attended Carroll College then returned to Spokane for an advertising internship. From there he bounced around – Washington, D.C., Seattle, back to Spokane, Virginia, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco.

“Even though Spokane is a small market, there are a lot of talented folks,” McKay said. “They got me on my way. I was very much a Spokane boy for a long time.”

While in California and working on a state-wide Got Milk campaign, his writing drew national attention and the ire of Major League Baseball because of a spoof on steroids.

Recently McKay changed jobs so he, his wife Nina and young daughter Avery could live in London.

“We wanted to experience living overseas and I wanted to work for a place doing really terrific work,” he said of his switch to the Portland-based firm that handles Nike. “It’s hugely different. I’ve been here four months and I’m starting to figure it out.”

McKay said a national advertising campaign in England is quite different than one in the states where his writing has to appeal to people in New York and San Francisco as well as Spokane and Iowa.

“You have to pick out things that are going to resonate with different kinds of people,” he said. “New Yorkers and Spokanites aren’t quite the same. In the UK you have to hide the sell a bit more, you have to be a touch more artistic.”

As for the humor, “It is just a little bit different.”

The English also tend to be a bit more patient, while Americans, “if you don’t entertain them, give them the business right up front, they won’t pay attention quite as much,” he said.

McKay likened American commercials to either a home run or a strikeout.

And a sports metaphor works perfectly for the way his football days have helped him put together a successful career.

“Despite the fact I was not a standout, I loved it,” he said. “And you learn a lot from that stuff. (Sports are) such a terrific thing to do. It doesn’t matter how good you are, it’s good to participate. You learn so much, teamwork, competition, what you’ll encounter in business world.

“Funny how it’s a truth that everybody eventually finds out.”