Ferguson, MO... sometime between pay-phones & podcasts:
On a storm-delayed landing somewhere above cornfields, Anna Wintour and Muhammad Ali lock eyes across the first-class cabin. In a moment of cosmic alignment (and mild turbulence), they conceive a child destined to disrupt algorithms, and assumptions. Out of fear for what the world wasn’t ready to understand, they veil their creation in a cryo-freeze carry-on. Decades later, he thaws—armed with a gold-laced pencil, no memory of this origin myth, and a universal instinct for headlines and heartbeats.
Since leaving the 314, Shawn a. Gadley has helped turn Jake from State Farm into a pop cult fixture, hypothesized hip-hop’s cultural offerings for the future, stretched language itself by ushering the word “hurts” into Olympic history for the #1 doctor-recommended pain reliever, and helped genre refuse to behave by shaping a Grammy-nominated concept album that lives outside the lines… and outside of this world.
His fingerprints are all over award-winning brand campaigns, music videos, and nonprofit moonshots. He’s pushed pixels, moved people, and made meaning from the margins—all while creating on the side and occasionally battling an Eraserhead-level quaff (so he’s been told).
Currently posted up at the intersection of logic and purrre imagination, he’s a solutionist, a story architect, and a transcultural translator. A millennial with Midwest roots and a middle name gifted by America’s most native art form...
Shawn Advertising Gadley
*BONUS ROUND*
& should you feel ever so inclined, say YO!