Small San Francisco Ad Agencies Founded by Goodby Silverstein Alumni

**Many great San Francisco ad agencies are actually spinoffs founded by former employees who worked in the hallowed halls of Goodby Silverstein and learned to hone their craft.**

One time I asked a client how they found Division of Labor and he said, “I Googled ‘ad agencies founded by Goodby Silverstein and Partners employees’ ”.

I thought that was pretty smart. When you can’t hire the best, hire the people who learned from the best. Given the longevity of Goodby Silverstein and Partners’ and the talent that’s gone through the place over the years, a good number of us have started agencies. Some got big, some got mid, some stayed small, but all have pieces of what Jeff and Rich started 40 years ago.

Those guys pushed us for fresh, weird, honest, funny, smart, and quirky and they wanted the place to be a reflection of the clients and the people who worked there, not of them. So if you’re like our former client, Preston and you want an agency founded by people who worked up on 720 California St or 921 Front St before that, here they are. Our competitors but also our friends.

I will say, Division of Labor has pitched and won against most of these agencies. And we’ve pitched and lost against most of them. But if a client hires one of them over us, at least I know the client made both a crappy decision and a great decision at the same time. So here they are in alphabetical order, not by ranking, as they’re all great shops.

Argonaut - Hunter Hindman started it with Robert Ricardi, one of the best ad guys out there, and the place is a staple in the San Francisco scene.

BarrettSF - Founded by Jamie Barrett, ex Fallon, ex Weidan and Kennedy and ex Goodby Silverstein, the trifecta of agencies.

Butler Shine - The original spinoff. ButtShine has been doing it well for longer than all of us.

Camp King - Set in the Presidio, founded by Roger Camp and Jamie King. Roger did great work before he was at GS&P and they still do it today.

Cutwater - Founded by Chuck McBride, a great writer who also got to work under Lee Clow, so he has that going for him too.

Division of Labor - Founded by Josh Denberg and Paul Hirsch (and now run by Josh) they focus on Series B startups, tech companies and brand relaunches.

Funworks - Founded by Craig Mangan and based on the idea that improv can lead to great advertising.

Odysseus Arms - I don’t know Libby, but I know Libby’s work and it’s good.

Partners in Crime - Founded by Steven Goldblatt who liked our storefront idea but wanted it near the Giants ballpark.

Venables Bell - Paul and Greg started their place with Bob Molineaux and had Audi within 4 years. Still have no idea how they did that!

So if you’re looking for a shortlist of San Francisco ad agencies, skip the pitch and contact of a few of these places. Though our completely biased opinion says, start by clicking here.

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; the ad agency for startups, based in San Francisco, twice named Small Agency of the Year by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services a variety of clients and specializes in startups that have obtained Series B financing or higher. They also offer freelance services. Click here for a free consultation.

How to Launch a Brand in Three Short Months

Division of Labor’s new ad campaign for 15Five.

We won some new business this past April and launched our new client’s first-ever brand campaign this past August. The process from award to launch was incredibly efficient, which is rarely the case. Why? Well, to launch a campaign quickly, there is one major thing that must be done over and over again throughout the process. What is that thing?

Job One: Make Decisions

The client we’re talking about is 15Five. They're a major player in the employee engagement space. They’ve got a great product, but they’ve also got something many companies do not have; a decisive management team. Decisiveness is what separates the good from the great. The brunt of efficiency problems comes from delayed decision-making, or making decisions and then changing decisions. Or making decisions, changing the decision, and then showing what was intended to be the final decision to someone higher up the corporate ladder who actually has the final say. And then this new decision-maker eighty-sixes all the previous decision-maker’s decisions and now you’re back to square one. Sound familiar?

A well-run brand launch is best approached as one big decision tree. As you move through the process, you have to be decisive and never look back. This latest process was three-plus months start to finish:

Strategy workshop in May.

Develop creative in June.

Production in July.

Launch in August.

Make a shit-ton of hard decisions along the way.

Out of home advertising from Division of Labor and 15Five

The strategy workshop brought all the company players into one virtual room where we explored everything they could possibly say or stand for. (We run good strategy workshops; fast, fun, insightful plus there’s coffee cake.) From there, they had to decide on targeting, brand persona, archetype, main purpose, and a ton of other things that are all important but must be prioritized.

The next step is the creative brief which compiles the results of the workshop into a simple, pointed document used to brief creative teams. Give the brief to any team and they will know everything needed to communicate the brand. (It’s easy to un-decide things in this phase, so be careful.)

Four creative campaigns were presented and the team quickly eliminated two ideas and kept the two that they loved. They did not ask us to bring in other elements from other campaigns. Nor did they consult with their book clubs, spouses, therapists, investors, advisors, children or spiritualists. They decided which they liked best, and stuck with it.

Media plans were developed based on the creative and creative was revised to accommodate media. The client had to get serious about media spend and decide on a budget level for launch. This is a crucial point where delays can happen as the reality of spending money kicks in.

We then presented a production plan and prepared to brief our digital artists, designers, and producers. We presented everything via Google Sheets and in a Slack Channel and all along the way our clients could make comments, choices, and decisions.

They built out landing pages, prepared PPC, SEO, and organic planning. Then we all built out tracking and analytics plans and launched the campaign.

When does this decision need to be made?

Making decisions is easier when you know the effect of your decision. Is it permanent? Is it reversible? Is it crucial to the timeline? In every meeting they asked questions like:

What decisions do we need to make now?

Can you post our options and deadlines in the Slack channel?

What will you be doing next and what decisions will we need to make next?

These are the kinds of questions that need to be asked if you want to launch a campaign quickly. And if you want to make good decisions along the way. In the end, we have a shiny new campaign and, wait… what does 15Five do, actually? Ah, thanks for asking.

Basically, 15Five helps companies treat their employees better. And helps HR people revolutionize what we all think of HR. Their software helps learn what your employees actually think and does away with the yearly review process. 15Five will increase employee retention and engagement while helping companies behave better.

The entire employee engagement space has been blowing up the past five years as evidenced by all the articles out there including this recent one in Forbes, which is far more relevant and trustworthy than the blog of a small, independent ad agency.

So there you go. How to launch a brand campaign efficiently and some news about the employee engagement space and 15Five.

Thank you Julia Stead and Greg Hewitt and everyone at 15Five. Plus Dustin Smith, Rob Lee, Faruk Sagcan, Rebecca Reid, 29 Black, Rigved Sathe, Resize Guys etc.

The Chief Human Resources Officer is evolving. And 15Five is leading the way.

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; a top San Francisco ad agency and digital marketing firm that’s been named Small Agency of the Year twice by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services clients on a retainer or project basis. They also offer brand consulting services and hourly engagements for startups and smaller brands. Click here for a free consultation.

Nobody Cares What a Small San Francisco Agency is up to During a Pandemic.

Companies like GrubHub, Instacart and Costco are killing it. Others like the cruise industry will need a massive brand relaunch if they hope to be resuscitated. Division of Labor is here when you’re ready.

As we think about those businesses that are deemed essential during this pandemic, it is hard to believe that an industry like advertising was left off the list. I mean, when you think “essential business” you immediately think about healthcare, food, pharmacy and digital marketing agencies. You know, staples. Oh, and drycleaners are considered an “essential businesses” for some reason. A bit confused by that one. Does the government fear healthcare workers will arrive at the hospital wrinkled and frumpy? God forbid.

But, alas, we have grown comfortable with our non-essential lot in life, and this San Francisco ad agency is strictly adhering to California’s Shelter in Place Orders. Oh, and even if we were located in one of the dumbass states that refused to invoke a shelter in place order, we still would have decamped. It’s the right thing to do.

That said: We’re happy to report that all of our employees are safe, healthy, and working from home. If we’re being honest, no one really gives a shit what we’re up to, but here’s what we’re up to:

As a small creative shop, we are nimble, scrappy and working to create marketing opportunities for our clients with daily Zoom calls, plenty of time to think, and a shit-ton of digital tools and software to put stuff together.

Our latest digital ad campaign for Keen footwear offers loyal fans a 25% discount with the message “Keep the Love Going”, which follows up our initial effort that helped KEEN and their fans give away 100,000 pairs of shoes to workers on the front line and others in need. And now, inspired by that collective compassion, they’re offering everyone a 25% discount. No, it won’t save the world, but it’s something.

For our restaurateur client, True Food Kitchen, we had to pivot. With all but a handful of locations temporarily shuttered, we eighty-sixed the Easter brunch, Earth Day, and Mother’s Day messaging and are currently tweaking it to target summer offerings.

For the San Jose Sharks, whose season was cut short, we are beginning our plans for next year’s campaign with hopes that life is normal enough to care about sports again soon. It’s the Shark’s 30th season so our Teal Together campaign will be pulling out a few new surprises.

We also completed projects for Foster SF, Cloudflare, Roadie, Lively and Bay Area News Group as the world shut down. Of course, no one knows whether life will return to normal by summer, or at least something approximating normal. But all we can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Regardless, we are here for our clients. We look forward to the day when the Division of Labor can reunite in person. But for now, we are thankful for good health, extra family time and Zoom conference software.

Happy Passover. Happy Easter. Happy non-denominational weekend.

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Client Asks For “Out-of-the-Box” Thinking. Subsequently Demands Return to Box.

The Marketing team at Atom Analytics panicked today after their advertising agency delivered on the company’s request for “out-of-the-box” thinking. Pandemonium erupted following the initial creative presentations. Senior executives immediately scrambled to shove all the “out of the box” thinking back into the box.

“When I said “out of the box,” I didn’t mean way outside,” said chief marketing officer Dwayne Clutterbuck. “Like, if the box were a house I wanted the ideas to be, maybe, like in the tool shed.”

Top brass who sat in on the meeting were even more blunt. “This is not the type of out of the box thinking we’re used to,” said Connie Jennings, director of Status Quo. “We see out of the box thinking every day, and it never looks like this.”

Middle managers, however, hoping to quickly restore order initially gushed over the marketing plan and then mercilessly picked apart the presentation, blaming the agency for delivering precisely what they’d asked for.

The team from Atom Analytics reacts to their new agency’s presentation.

The plan included a number of thought provoking ideas along with a robust digital marketing plan and some stunts that would most certainly garner publicity. “There was something with Dennis Rodman walking on a tightrope over Times Square. It was just way too attention grabbing for us. You don’t need ideas to get attention when you have a great product,” said Clutterbuck completely contradicting the entire purpose of brand marketing and advertising.

Executives across the board feared that these new ideas might actually make the company appear different from the competition. Following the meeting, a feedback email from Atom Analytics to the agency read: “We were talking about next steps, and decided a safer approach would be to make TV commercials that point out our features and benefits like you know, those Ped Egg commercials. Would you be able to get us a script by Tuesday?”

Days later, Atom Analytics again asked the agency for “out-of-the-box” thinking, as if they completely forgot everything that just happened.

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Advertising, Branding and The Art of an Effective Tagline

In a bold move that further illustrates Nike’s commitment to brand identity, the company chose Colin Kaepernick as the face for its award winning ad campaign which, incidentally, coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Nike “Just Do It” tagline.

Arguably, “Just Do It” is one of the most successful—not to mention memorable—taglines in the history of advertising. The award-winning ad campaign, which launched in 1988, was the catalyst for Nike’s meteoric rise to becoming one of the world’s top brands. Thirty years later the now legendary line endures, along with the company’s commitment to keeping their brand identity laser focused.

It goes without saying, that every client that engages an ad agency to orchestrate their brand launch (or re-brand launch) dreams of a similar success story. But know this: When searching for the best ad agency to sell your wares, it’s important to remember that advertising is part art, and part science. How consumers react is only partially predictable. Sound market research, strategic thinking and brilliant creative can help. But the thing everyone focuses on first, is the tagline.

If there isn’t an actual secret sauce to replicating Nike’s “Just Do It,” how do you increase the odds that your message will resonate? The tenets below serve as some basic building blocks of an effective tagline. Choose wisely and a few choice words will be ingrained in the consumer’s head today, tomorrow, and for decades to come.

Keep It Simple

A tagline is intended to encapsulate a brand’s personality. It’s definitely not the place to explain your product’s many benefits. When presented with taglines, clients will often say: “I like the line, but it doesn’t tell the complete story of who we are.” That may be true. But that’s not what the tagline is supposed to do. The tagline is simply about evoking an emotional response. Gillette’s tagline “The Best a Man Can Get” doesn’t explain why. It doesn’t explain how a close shave can help you present a well groomed image and therefore appear more trustworthy to others. It’s all about how a guy feels.

Embrace What’s Unique.

A tagline can help set you apart from competitors. What do you offer that’s different? Avis’s “We Try Harder” tagline is a great example of this. The tagline came out of a discussion between DDB creatives and the Avis management team. Asked why anyone ever rents a car from Avis when Hertz was clearly the brand leader they said: "We Try Harder.” This tagline, which prevailed for 50 years (the company went another direction in 2012) positioned Avis to not necessarily compete with Hertz, but embrace its second-place status. It’s a classic example of owning your negative to turn it into a positive.

If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

“A Diamond is Forever" has appeared in every single De Beers advertisement since 1948. The tagline drove diamond sales to a record high and made a diamond engagement ring as essential to a bride as her dress, veil, and a multi-tiered cake. In 1999 Ad Age named “Diamonds are Forever” the tagline of the century. And, nearly two decades into the 21st century, there’s no indication that the campaign’s effectiveness is waning.

If you can create a simple line that says something great, keep it. Change your campaign, executions, media, social content, videos, products, promotions, digital marketing, everything, but leave the line unless there’s a good reason to change it.

Cut Your Losses

If you’re working with a brand with established gravitas it’s not always advisable to re-invent the wheel. In 2014, Burger King scrapped its 40-year-old tagline “Have it Your Way” and replaced it with “Be Your Way.” The intent was to promote individuality. However, fans panned the new phrase because it simply made no sense. “Have It Your Way” lets the public know that they can customize their orders. “Be Your Way” just confuses the consumer. Although Burger King put a lot of time and money behind their new tagline, it never caught on. And, in the end, they quietly condensed the line to read “Your Way” which is ultimately a face saving move without any acknowledgment that the change to, “Be Your Way” was a colossal mistake.

Say One thing Well

Apple’s “Think Different,” which ran from 1997 to 2002, says nothing specific about Apple products. Yet, to this day, those two words are synonymous with the Apple Brand. It was a nod to the early adopters—at the time just 5% of consumers used apple products—who were thoughtful enough to embrace to totally different kind of computer, which operated in a totally different way than brand-leader IBM. More than two-thirds of Americans now own at least one apple product. And while Apple users now far outnumber other brands, the cache of being part of something innovative and unconventional lives on.

Trust the Agency

You know more about your company and its product than anyone else. But your ad agency knows more about how to endear consumers to your company and product than anyone else. When you say something like, “I ran the creative by my wife, brother, neighbor, dog catcher, (fill in additional name here) and they didn’t care for it” that’s neither helpful nor constructive. If you hired a lawyer you wouldn’t run his legal arguments by your wife, brother, neighbor, or dog catcher, nor would you seek a consensus opinion on whether your accountant filed the firm’s tax returns properly.

Early in my career, I was working for a guy who was, and still is, one of the most successful creative forces in the advertising industry. We were presenting new taglines to a large sporting goods company. Afterwards the client said: “I like this line, but do you have anything else.?” Without missing a beat, the creative replied, “This isn’t a fucking restaurant, This is your tagline.” Few ad execs could speak to a client so directly without losing the account. But, as I said, this guy is a legend. My point, however, is that the client backed off, ran the campaign and reaped the benefits.

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; a top San Francisco ad agency and digital marketing firm that’s been named Small Agency of the Year twice by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services clients on a retainer or project basis. They also offers brand consulting services and hourly engagements for startups and smaller brands. Click here for a free consultation.