Peter Bittenbender

Peter Bittenbender founded production company Decon with Jason Goldwatch in 2002. A record-label division came into being a year later. Today, Decon bills itself as an "idea shop," with a portfolio that features a "Green Week" campaign for NBC Universal that included an installation at 30 Rock, a series of documentary-style owner profiles for the electric Nissan Leaf, and a project for the Fiat 500 launch in New York last year that involved building playable musical instruments out of Fiat parts. On the music side, Decon works with artists including Aceyalone, Dilated Peoples, Lyrics Born, Pusha T, and RJD2. We asked Bittenbender Five Questions about what he's been up to lately.

Q: What are you working on today?

A: Bidding out productions for some of our rad clients: ChiatDay, BBDO, Tribal DDB, JWT, BeatsByDre, New Era. Pre-prod on a @Goldwatch music video, music selection for NBA 2K13, pitches for Absolut, Samsung, Nas, and UniversalRepublic, to name a few. We re-launched Mass Appeal a month back, so every day there is strategy work on that brand. Playing with my dog Shyla who roams the office, making the crew smile. Today one of the gang brought in homemade brisket, so I worked on eating as much of it as I could. No two days are the same at Decon, which is what keeps me energized and always ready for the next challenge.

Q: What is the best tool or innovation that you've found in the last year?

A: Next Big Sound is a great tool that we are using more and more to gauge the success of our online campaigns and brand-building efforts. I am not a huge tech guy, but this has been an invaluable resource as we focus more heavily on the social experience. I also like this new stapler I found that has a bottle opener on the other side.

Q: What project (film, television, commercial or music video) most impressed you in the last year? Why?

A: Caines Arcade. It's just a rad story, and the fact he raised all that money for college is just so cool.

Q: What's the best, or your favorite, project that you worked on in the past year? And why?

A: That is a tough one because we get to work on such a wide variety of projects. If you are forcing me to choose, then I would say the process of getting our first feature film into development. It's an entirely new business for Decon, and we are all learning a lot along the way!

Q: Name the top four artists on your iPod.

A: Promo time! NinjaSonik, Nneka, The Alchemist, Alexander Spit, Mr. MFN eXquire.