Graphis interview: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, The

Graphis, May/Jun 2001 by Barnett, Chris

Last January, on a chilly San Francisco morning at two minutes before ten, a tall, husky guy with long, tangled hair, granny glasses, vintage clothes and a scarred leather bag over his shoulder was shmoozing and laughing with Alex, the genial lobby guard at the Nob Hill headquarters of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He looked like a middle-aged bike messenger marking a mail room delivery, but it was Jeff Goodby, rolling into work in that calm, casual way of his. He knew the heat was on. The Super Bowl was about a week away and he still had to bless the final cut for a 30-second Budweiser commercial lampooning last year's blockbuster Budweiser Super Bowl spot "Whassup." The stakes were sky high, the media buy was $2.3 million, and the audience was global. But for Goodby, it was no sweat. "Gimme 15 minutes," he says. "Need to make a call? Use my office and just dial out." Two steps away from Goodby's office, his partner Rich Silverstein, is in his office coiled over his old, nicked up drawing board. Whippet lean, mustached, in skin-tight jeans and a black t-shirt, he biked to work, 20 miles from his Mill Valley home, over the Golden Gate Bridge through Chinatown. He's been roundtripping 40 miles by bike almost daily for the last 18 years. He is also anything but calm today. This morning, Silverstein is almost levitating off his chair because the agency was not invited to pitch for BMW's new Mini Cooper auto account. Yet he really gets revved when asked what he thinks about computer designed visuals and the so-called Wired magazine look with words flying all over the page. "I hate the Wired look. I hate it," Silverstein roars. "I've been criticized by my own people who say `you only want it to look pretty.' I say `no, I want a certain elegance. A photograph has to be of the highest quality. Type has to be well set and understood. There has to be a certain timelessness like the humor we do in commercials. You have to communicate. Do you see a computer in this room? The computer has taken over a lot of the work in design and it's gorgeous stuff, but it all looks the same and it's not always readable. "

It's been 10 years since Graphis first visited this San Francisco advertising agency then called Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein. In those days, it was the hot shop in town, billing $45 million with 65 people packed into a 150-year-old brick warehouse in what was once the city's hard-drinking and heavy womanizing Barbary Coast district. The three founders were refugees-make that renegades-from the local outposts of Madison Avenue monoliths-J. Walter Thompson, McCann/Erickson, Bozell & Jacobs, Ogilvy & Mather and Cunningham & Walsh among others. All had worked for the legendary Hal Riney, Ogilvy's brilliant, moody, golden-throated creative director. But all despised Riney's gladiator style of ad-making known as "gangbanging"-pitting up to a dozen creative teams against each other on a single commercial. Jumping ship in '83, they opened for business in a $500-a-month office in San Francisco, with a lone computer software account, bolstered by some freelance business generously tossed their way by Riney. By 1990, GB&S had a victory wall groaning with Clios, Effies, Addys, Andys, Gold Lions and a Palme D'Or, the latter two won at the International Advertising Agency Festival in Cannes. In fact, entering the '90s, the agency had bagged every ad trophy imaginable except one: a high-profile national account. They had it all except a client with the guts and the budget to vault Goodby into the ring with the likes of Chiat/Day, Fallon McElligot, Wieden & Kennedy, Ammarati & Puris and the supershop built by their old boss, Hal Riney & Partners.

Indeed, the agency's quirky, spellbinding work for local advertisers accounts and niche products grabbed headlines in the advertising trade journals. San Francisco Examiner publisher "Wild Will Hearst" tearing through the hilly city in a newspaper truck a la Steve McQueen in the San Francisco movie classic "Bullitt." Kids filming armadillos surfing with Polaroid Cool Cams. Near-instant TV commercials shot and aired in three hours promoting fresh mex food for Chevys Mexican Restaurants. A decade ago no mainstream marketer would roll the dice on the tiny agency's ability to build a brand in the big leagues. Even without that one breakthrough, national campaign, GB&S hit the paydirt on March 26, 1990, that would finally make them a player and put them on the map: Advertising Age Agency of the Year 1989, the first San Francisco agency and the second youngest ad shop to ever win the honor..

Fast forward to spring 2001. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners is still in an old brick building, but now its big, airy offices on the Nob Hill cable car line across from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel have a badminton court and an oddly serene air. It's room enough to house the 325 employees under one roof Billings have ballooned eighteen-fold to $770 million annually according to Colin Probert, the agency president. Meanwhile, co-founder Andy Berlin, who always wanted to play on a bigger stage, exited eight years ago and formed Berlin, Cameron & Partners in Manhattan. There seems to be no bad blood since the divorce and the three keep in touch.