When Michael Clowater (BBA’94) enrolled in the business program at UNB, he had no real plan, but expected that he would eventually take over the family plumbing business in Fredericton, N.B., started by his grandfather. After graduating, he went to work with his father, but joined the New Brunswick Filmmakers’ Co-operative as an outlet for his untapped creativity.
“I didn’t like the plumbing business and I loved film," says Clowater. "I had worked part-time at National Video during university and watched a gazillion films. The co-op helped me get some grants and I made a short clay animation film called Alfred’s New Dog, which played at the Toronto International Film Festival Kids' Film Festival (formerly Sprocketts) and Interfilm in Berlin.
Clowater’s ticket out of plumbing and into his current career as a director of clever, funny commercials shot on locations in Canada, the U.S., Europe and South America, started with a job as a production assistant on an Eaton’s ad filmed in New Brunswick. “The agency hired people from the co-op as production assistants. In 1996, I moved to Toronto to get more work filming TV commercials and then became a writer and agency creative director,” says Clowater, whose commercials have won many awards worldwide, including Cannes Lions and Clios.
Four years ago, Clowater became an independent commercial director, hired by global and Canadian ad agencies, to create and shoot memorable, entertaining ads like Jif First Time, with the tagline 'Every time you eat Jif peanut butter is like trying it for the first time again'. In this 30-second signature spot, viewers watch a man exclaim and writhe in delight with each mouthful of peanut butter he tastes. The sheer variety of his reactions adds to the hilarity and makes viewers almost believe that they’ll taste the Jif difference.
“I’m a big fan of sketch comedy shows, like Monty Python," explains Clowater. "I like to take something absurd and make it as real as possible. To prepare for filming, the Jif actor and I searched YouTube for different, funny reactions of people being very surprised. The commercial was silly in a good way. The actor played it real, so the taste of peanut butter was surprising every time." The ad ran for over a year and helped to get Clowater a job directing a series of comedic ads in England.
Clowater says that his experience as a business student at UNB helped him in unexpected ways to develop the confidence to trust in his own instincts and to develop unique, creative approaches to solving problems. He had struggled in the highly structured format of high school and enjoyed the comparative freedom of university, where electives allowed him to sign up for scads of English courses. He fell in love with Shakespeare after seeing Dustin Hoffman play Shylock in the Merchant of Venice while doing a UNB study term abroad in London.
“I learned a lot of life lessons and made lifelong friends at UNB," says Clowater. "Because of the unstructured format, I learned to figure out a lot of things on my own and that gave me confidence. I discovered I have a different way of approaching problems and if I do it in my own way, I can accomplish amazing things.”
Those amazing things include Four Eyes, a short dramatic film he made about how an awkward, bespectacled, 12-year-old boy with autism and his mother learn from each other to stand up for themselves. The film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto International Short Film Festival, and was chosen as Best Canadian or International Short at the 2017 Silver Wave Film Festival in Fredericton.
His upbeat, energizing How to Dad commercial, which portrays dads as awesome and responsible, was created to launch Peanut Butter Cheerios for General Mills. It went viral, with two-million views, in three days. Following this trend-setting spot, Clowater was invited to join the roster of international production company Smuggler, for worldwide representation.
For a business student who started learning his craft in a video store, the path from plumber to film director seems slightly surreal. But Clowater is making the absurd as real as possible: “The best part of my career is that I get to work with amazing, talented people making films on locations around the world. It feels like a dream that came true.”
