Dexton Deboree is the founder, chief creative officer, and director of FALKON, a creative company established at the intersection of advertising and entertainment.
Deboree has worked on such multifaceted projects as Grammy-nominated film Quantum Of Solace, Emmy-winning branded content special “Yes, Virginia,” and award-winning brand campaigns for The Jordan Brand, Nike, Wilson, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer, among others.
When did you decide you wanted to be a storyteller?
In college, I was unclear about what I wanted to do with my life and who I was. I didn’t have a father growing up and was lost and confused. I was totally a meathead, in the gym a lot. I was an athlete and not a very good student, and not creative at all. I went to sleep one night, and I woke up in the middle of the night, and I wrote a poem, which is not something that I would do at the time at all. It could not be farther from what I would do. I went back to sleep and woke up the next morning and read it, and it changed my life. It woke me up, inspired me, and it opened a door that I never had access to before and it suddenly explained everything as far as why I didn’t fit in with other people, why I had this imagination that was very private, and [why] I was in my head. All of these things that had plagued me up until that point in my life all of a sudden became radically clear. From that point on, I wrote and read everything under the sun.
How would you describe your creative philosophy?
Inspiration. For me, I always ask the question “Am I inspired by it and is the world going to be inspired by it? Are they going to take inspiration from it in some form or fashion?” It can look many different ways what people are inspired by or inspired to do, but for me, it has to be something that is an inspirational aspect, and the takeaway is I am inspired to be better, do better, look at the world a little bit differently, open up to people, treat people differently, and question my shortcomings and the things I’ve been blind or ignorant to. Whatever it is, that needs to open up for somebody, and that is a prerequisite to everything that I do. I want you to leave inspired in one way or another. Surely, it’s not going to inspire everybody. Some people are not going to resonate with it, but if it has the ability to inspire people, especially in the positive, but inspire them in a remarkable way, then that’s a part of it. If it’s not doing that, it either needs to adjust to being able to do that or I’m leaving it alone.
