By Robert Goldrich

A couple of weeks ago Guy Seese assumed his new role as executive creative director at Grey San Francisco. He’s no stranger to the agency, having freelanced there on several occasions after exiting Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco, last June. At GS&P he was a creative director and associate partner.
    Now Seese leads Grey San Francisco’s integrated creative department and oversees all the work–from traditional ad fare, to interactive, to web development. He partners with Grey West managing director Betsy Sperry to set the creative vision for the agency, recruit top talent and guide new business creative efforts.
    During his year and a half at GS&P, Seese helped deliver notable advertising for such clients as Motorola, Anheuser-Busch, Sprint and Saturn.
    Prior to GS&P, Seese spent five years as exec creative director/partner at Cole & Weber/United, Seattle, working on such accounts as Nike and Dell. There his tongue-in-cheek integrated campaign for Rainier Beer won AICP/Ad Age’s inaugural Battle of the Brands in 2005, a New York Art Directors’ Club Gold and national “Best of Show” at the Addys.
    The Remember Rainier branded content campaign resurrected the brand, which had been a longstanding Seattle staple, but fell upon hard times. Centerpiece of the campaign was a 30-minute TV series, Rainier Vision, featuring long lost Rainier Beer commercials, including the famous spot in which Rainier Beer is uttered in sync with the hum of a racing motorcycle’s engine. Each series episode, hosted by a couple of regular Rainier guys, was billed as being “30 mouth-watering minutes–12 ounces at a time.”
    Earlier, Seese spent four years in New York as creative director/partner at Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and senior art director at Euro RSCG New York. Prior to that he had stints as small shops in Chicago and Seattle.

SHOOT: What attracted you to Grey San Francisco? You clearly had an idea of the shop’s dynamics since you had been freelancing there.

Seese: I remember Jeff Goodby telling me that the way I take things on, he thought I needed to start my own agency. I told [Grey West managing director] Betsy Sperry that I was thinking along those lines and she said, “You don’t need to. You can help to create this agency.”
    That opportunity for authorship means a lot to me and Grey is already redefining itself. I saw that first hand while freelancing here in recent months. We did a pitch for SanDisk which makes memory chips for consumer devices. I came in to lead the team as a freelancer. The creatives here stepped up and did an amazing campaign, real fun work that could have come out of any of the agencies I worked at in the past.
    We wound up losing that pitch to Publicis & Hal Riney [San Francisco] which was a letdown. But the work was great. And being in the trenches with the people here on that effort convinced me that this was an ideal place to be.
    The enthusiasm I felt throughout the ranks here as we developed that work was just great. There is an amazing group of people here.
    And it goes beyond SanDisk. The smart global business-to-business work that Grey San Francisco did for Nokia is an impressive case study.
    So too is the work Grey did for [Blue Cross] Tonik, a healthcare company providing insurance for 20 to 30- year olds who usually don’t need insurance. Grey branded Tonik brilliantly across the board, even from a design standpoint.

SHOOT: What lessons did you learn during your time at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners? How was it working with such standout creative luminaries and partners as Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein?

Seese: A week after I left that agency I was freelancing for Jeff Goodby on Budweiser. It’s a relationship I loved and valued.
    The biggest takeaway was just being able to work with Jeff and Rich [Silverstein], two giants in the industry, to see them go about their business, how they create work, how they behave–what they emphasized made each and every day a lesson.
    Their amazing track record of creating great work is directly related to their priority of how it’s all about the work, doing everything to nurture and protect the work–and to nurture and protect the creative people who are doing the work.

SHOOT: What lessons did you learn from your recent round of freelancing during which you got a taste of several shops? What other advertising agencies did you freelance at besides Grey San Francisco?

Seese: Beyond what I experienced at Grey, I freelanced for J. Walter Thompson in New York, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, and The Barbarian Group both in Boston and San Francisco.
    They all are great places and represent different business models. They demonstrate that there are different ways to attain what you want for your clients. And it’s an experience that will help me to contribute even more now to Grey San Francisco.
    One key bond across all agencies is that collaboration is crucial and you can be most successful if your collaborators and you share a basic commonality–the desire to do something great. And with that attitude, you can do just that–even in the face of shrinking budgets and less time. So much of success is based on team work and a cooperative spirit.

SHOOT: How did you get into the advertising business? What factors led you to ultimately end up choosing it as your career?

Seese: My father was an architect, my mom an interior designer. They both supported me as a creative person from the beginning. They encouraged me to do interesting stuff–and stuff I was interested in.
    At the same time my dad said that while doing great creative work is cool, you need to make a living and get paid. That sort of led my artistic bent into the field of advertising. I nosed my way into advertising and have been doing it now for about 14 years. It’s absolutely been a great ride for me and I’m sure it will continue to be over here at Grey.

SHOOT: You were an executive creative director earlier in your career at Cole & Weber/United in the Pacific Northwest. How has the role of an executive creative director changed in recent years?

Seese: The best executive creative directors today are those who have a full-on understanding of what the potential of interactive can be and strive to reach that potential.
    You don’t necessarily have to be an authoritative expert. But you need to have that vision for interactive components and be brave and smart enough to make decisions that will move you forward as an agency.
    Being an executive creative director is about understanding where you think you can take a group of people, encouraging them to make clients famous, to get your people to do that brand of inspired work. And part of that equation is interactive which has become increasingly important over the past five years and will continue to be in the foreseeable future.
    You’re continually looking to create the next proof point, trying to figure out where it will come from.  I’ve had the good fortune of enjoying that kind of experience on Rainier Beer [a Pabst brand] which was a pivotal proof point several years ago as to how new media content can build brand and help create new energy and momentum for a client.

MySHOOT Profiles