It’s been nearly one year since Stephen Creet left Toronto to become Young & Rubicam San Francisco’s chief creative officer, replacing Peter Angelos who left Y&R to become executive creative director at the San Francisco outpost of TBWA/Chiat/Day. "I miss the guys I play hockey with," says Creet, who was born in England but moved to Canada with his family when he was six years old.
Creet’s hockey pals may be thousands of miles away, but the fantastic view of the San Francisco Bay he now admires from his 19th floor office lessens his homesickness. "I can’t complain, I have a beautiful view of the ocean and I get to watch the boats go by."
Joined by his girlfriend, an interior designer, and their loyal Irish Setter, Vortex, Creet left Toronto, ending his six-year stint at BBDO Canada. Creet joined BBDO Canada in ’92 (then McKim/ Baker-Lovick/BBDO) as group creative director and was promoted in ’96 to executive VP/co-chief creative officer.
Prior to joining BBDO, he served as group creative director for six years at MacLaren Lintas (now MacLaren McCann) and six years as a copywriter at Toronto agency Vickers & Benson. Creet’s decision to head to the Left Coast last July was the culmination of about five months of dialogue between himself and Y&R San Francisco president/ CEO Austin McGhie. Creet says he had "absolutely no intention" of leaving BBDO when he was first contacted by McGhie in January ’98. "Austin McGhie called me up pretty well out of the blue and said ‘Are you interested in doing a talk?’ " says Creet, "and literally for about three or four months I said ‘Not interested, no, no, no.’ " McGhie’s persistence eventually paid off and the two men met for breakfast in Toronto to discuss Creet’s career prospects at Y&R. "We got along incredibly well and to me that’s very important," says Creet, "so that’s when I started to think seriously about it."
Creet visited Y&R San Francisco to scope out the agency shortly after he met with McGhie. "I went down and took a look at what was down in San Francisco and frankly I was horrified," Creet says. "Every instinct in me said ‘You have to be nuts to do this.’ "
"There were some accounts like Chevron that were in pretty good shape," Creet recalls, "but for the most part it looked like nobody had really cared too much about what the creative was."
Creet says he accepted the position because "it wouldn’t get any worse and it would be a chance to really make an impact, whereas if I had stayed up in Toronto, it would have been to some extent maintaining the status quo."
Creet says when he arrived at Y&R "pretty much everything needed to be improved." He believes a lousy work ethic was responsible for poor creative output. But 10 months later, Creet is proud of the agency’s re-birth as a top-notch shop. "The most significant change was the production of broadcast and that’s where my executive director [of broadcasting production] Roger Harris comes in," beams Creet, who hired Harris last year after working with him in Toronto at BBDO and Vickers & Benson. "The quickest way to make an impact is to make it look good, make it sound good and just give it a little bit of polish."
Creet says Y&R staffers have embraced his work ethic and creative input on projects. "I think most people liked the new rigorous standard of creative and they like having someone both to answer to and someone who is willing to take responsibility."
Creative Gamble
The agency’s MGM Grand Hotel & Casino account was the first project Creet worked on after joining the shop. In "Gentle Current," which plugs the Las Vegas property’s spa complex, an embryo-like object morphs into a beautiful naked woman, while calming Middle Eastern music plays in the background. Cursive text fades in and out and reads: "You swam in a gentle current for the first nine months of your life. Return." Creet describes "Gentle Current," directed by Howard Schatz of Hollywood-based Acme Filmworks, as "ethereal."
"The last thing we wanted to do was to be Vegas, and Vegas is as glitzy as you get…so we went completely against the grain," Creet says. Creet also worked his magic on a humorous :30 spot for Golden Grain Co.’s Near East Cous Cous. In "Buzz," directed by Mark Story of bicoastal and Chicago-based Crossroads, cous cous, the North African dish, is positioned as the new potato. The humorous ad shows a man announcing at the dinner table that he is a "meat and cous cous kind of guy" and a woman calls her husband a "couch cous cous." There is also a shot of a sign referring to Idaho as "Cous cous capital of the world."
"They [Golden Grain Co.] didn’t want to make it too exotic because they didn’t want to throw people off," Creet says. "So I said ‘Look, if you want this to appeal to middle America, then call it for what it is’ and that’s when we started to actually do creative that actually made sense."
One bit of creative that makes sense is "Dinner," a :30 spot for Kingsford Charcoal directed by Jeremiah Chechik of bicoastal The Artists Company. It shows a group of men at a cookout when a bear attempts to attack them. They end up barbecuing the bear. The message: real men use charcoal. "We were trying to stop charcoal grillers from going over to gas," says Creet, "and rather than say that guys who gas are wussies, we went the other way and said that real men use Kingsford."
Since joining Y&R, Creet has also worked on "James," a :30 for KC Masterpiece directed by Jeremy Warshaw of New York-based The Observatory, and "Lost Man," a :60 for E.J. Gallo Winery’s Ecco Domani wine directed by The Artist Company’s Chechik. Creet’s upcoming projects include work on the agency’s Sony, Scoop Away, PastaRoni and Lincoln Mercury accounts, as well as more work for MGM Grand and Chevron. Creet says that he is pleased with the direction in which the agency is heading. "I am actually pleasantly surprised at how much progress we’ve made," he says. "I thought it would take quite a bit longer." So, does the avid hockey fan think he should have remained north of the border? "I think it was absolutely the right move for me and I would like to think it has been good for the agency."b
