Everyone thought they were mad. Downright crazy, in fact. Who in his right mind would open a new ad agency in San Francisco during the worst economic downturn in a decade? And who leaves one of the best ad agencies in the country when it has all but promised him a partnership? Ready to answer that question with a smile are Paul Venables and Greg Bell, former creative directors at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco, and current makers of their own destiny.
Last June, Venables and Bell, co-founders/co-creative directors, opened Venables, Bell & Partners (VB&P), San Francisco, with one account and a dream. Bob Molineaux, who was then managing director at the New York outpost of San Francisco-headquartered AKQA (formerly Citron Haligman Bedecarré), joined the pair as founder/president. Now, 10 months and four new clients later, the trio can only say its leap of faith has paid off.
The irony is, Venables is the last person to tell you that launching the agency was a risk. For one, the shop was opening with an estimated $50 million account for Ultimate TV, a digital recording system created by Microsoft. Secondly, the clients managing the account for Ultimate TV used to be at SBC Communications, parent company to Pacific Bell, a brand that Venables and Bell had worked on for several years at GS&P. "Here you have these wonderful, smart clients who you know want to do great advertising—and they have a big national account with television advertising, and Microsoft is behind it. We would be foolish not to do it," explains Venables, who when he left GS&P was associate partner/creative director, and part of the next generation of creative leaders at the shop. Bell was a group creative director at GS&P.
With the addition of Molineaux, a former colleague of Venables and Bell from GS&P, and the blessing of Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, how could they lose? "It was a storybook way of starting an agency," Venables notes. "We had to do it."
And the fairytale continues. Since opening, the shop has scored several national accounts, including HBO Home Video, Barclays Global Investors and Bell Automotive Products. At press time, the agency was a finalist in the pitch for the Robert Mondavi Wines account. Add that all up and the company has doubled its revenue in less than a year, according to Venables.
Interestingly, what started as something perceived to be a small boutique agency has sidestepped all the growing pains associated with a start-up. "We’re already working on a national footprint with great brand names that are known and national, so we’ve been lucky so far," says Venables.
Humor, With A Twist
During the four years that Venables and Bell worked as a team at GS&P, they established a track record for solving "big, ugly, nasty marketing problems," as Venables puts it. And the way for them to best tackle problems was with humor. After all, Bell, who is an art director, had come from the Mecca of comedic spotmaking, having worked for just over five years at Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, before joining GS&P. While at Cliff Freeman, Bell worked on such lauded accounts as Little Caesars and Staples.
At GS&P, the team’s work for Pacific Bell won several awards. Pacific Bell’s "Neighborhood," directed by Chris Smith of Independent Media, Santa Monica, won a Cannes Gold Lion in 2001, and a Pacific Bell spot titled "Prison," helmed by Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles, was honored at the 2001 ANDY Awards. Other accounts that Venables and Bell worked on at GS&P included Discover, Isuzu and Netflix.
While the duo certainly leans toward the comedic side of advertising, Bell says that lately the two have focused on making the work smart, and letting the funny stuff happen when it seems appropriate. "If it comes out funny, great," notes Bell, "but we make sure the work is bullet proof before going to produce it."
The pair’s recent campaign to sell the first season of the HBO prison drama OZ on DVD for HBO Home Video is a good example of humor as the byproduct of a solid concept. The spots propose that watching Oz, a show that portrays the dark side of prison, will make you think twice before breaking the law. For instance, in "Jaywalking," helmed by Tom Routson of bicoastal Tool of North America, a man stands on the sidewalk waiting for the "Don’t Walk" sign to change. He looks both ways and determines that there are no cars (or people, for that matter) coming for miles. He tentatively steps off the curb, but as he does, violent prison scenes from Oz flash through his mind. He leaps back onto the sidewalk, escaping near incarceration. In a second ad, titled "Newspaper," also directed by Routson, a man buys a newspaper from a vending machine, but as he walks away, realizes that he has mistakenly taken two papers instead of one. Cut to more horrific prison drama and the man rushes back to the machine to add more change, in order to open the vending machine and replace the extra paper.
Three ads the duo conceived for Barclays’ iShares product—"Walk," "Elevator" and "Helmut"—are equally smart, with unexpected twists. In "Walk," an investment advisor and a businessman walk down a busy city street talking about successful investment strategies the advisor recommended based on iShares. When a nearby car’s ignition system backfires, creating a gunshot sound, the businessman tackles his investment advisor to the ground like a bodyguard—showing that an advisor who uses Barclays is worth taking a bullet for. Phil Morrison of bicoastal Epoch Films directed the trio of spots.
Venables says that choosing the right director for their projects can make or break a concept. "It sounds obvious, but if we had chosen a traditional comedy director for the iShares stuff, that spot ["Walk"] would have come off goofy and joke-y, and it would be horrible," relates Venables. "Morrison can do this hyper-reality thing that is very stylized and believable, so when the tackle happens at the end, it’s funny."
Not that Venables and Bell have completely abandoned straight-up humor. Their work for Ultimate TV, directed by Hank Perlman of bicoastal/international hungry man, is ultimate funny. Take, for instance, the spot "P.E.V.R." The ad’s narrator introduces the viewer to a man with a big problem: His wife wants to have a serious talk with him, only he’s in the midst of watching a show. But Ultimate TV’s digital recording system allows him to implement P.E.V.R.—Pause, Empathize, Validate, Resume. That is, he pauses the TV, empathizes with his wife, validates her concerns, then resumes watching TV. "P.E.V.R." is a quick, easy solution to insuring marital bliss, while not missing a moment of the big game. Rounding out the Ultimate TV campaign are the spots "Bridge Show," "Ad Guy" and "Metamorphosis."
For several of VB&P’s clients, an online component has been created as part of a brand’s solution. To do this, the agency has been looking to Mekanism, San Francisco, to handle any Web-based advertising that crops up. (Mekanism is the new-media division of San Francisco-based production company Complete Pandemonium.) For the time being, there are no plans for VB&P to bring its online work in-house. That said, Venables is open to having the agency grow when needed. "I’m in this business to take on as much as I can, and that will mean working on bigger accounts and tougher marketing problems," he notes. "And if that means needing more people, we welcome that. We’re not about staying small."
