Late last month, Mike McKay came aboard Saatchi & Saatchi LA in Torrance, Calif., as its executive creative director, succeeding Harvey Marco who moved over to JWT New York.
McKay spent the past nearly 10 years at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GSP), San Francisco, where his swan song was helping to pitch and win the Quaker Oats business.
During his GSP tenure, which saw him move up the ladder from senior copywriter to a creative director, McKay worked on a variety of accounts ranging from Budweiser to Hewlett Packard (HP), Saturn to Haägen-Dazs, Comcast to The Wall Street Journal. His work on HP’s global “The Computer is Personal Again” campaign earned a Gold Effie, among other plaudits. And he also had a lead role in GSP’s lauded Comcast campaign.
At GSP, McKay established himself in both traditional and digital marketing, in some respects paralleling how the San Francisco agency had so successfully diversified itself into the interactive arena. He also contributed to the body of work that helped GSP earn distinction as SHOOT’s Agency of the Year earlier this month (12/5).
Originally from San Francisco, McKay graduated from California State University Long Beach with a journalism degree. Coming out of school, he by chance landed a creative job at a small agency in San Diego where he began to build his book. McKay made his way up to Orange County and eventually got into TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles, as a writer. There his book became stellar with broadcast campaigns for the likes of Nissan, Sony PlayStation and Infiniti.
From there, he returned to San Francisco to begin a long stay at GSP. Now he’s come back down to Southern California to take on his first agency lead creative gig at Saatchi.
McKay reflected on his new mantle at Saatchi as well as lessons learned at GSP.
SHOOT: What attracted you to Saatchi & Saatchi LA?
McKay: I saw what my predecessor [executive creative director] Harvey [Marco] had done here at Saatchi, getting integrated campaigns going, pushing things creatively and was simply drawn to the great stuff already coming out of the L.A. office.
For example, I really liked the tone of the [Toyota] Yaris work which captures this great personality for the car. I want to do the same for each Toyota model, finding a tone and personality for each and defining each model in a way that’s distinct–all under a Toyota look, feel and tone.
I also very much liked the Toyota Tacoma television spot that takes us into the World of Warcraft video game and brings the truck into the player’s weapons arsenal.
[Editor’s note: The “Warcraft” commercial is essentially a game capture done in the context of a 27-second spot–SHOOT, 10/26/07–and entailed Saatchi working with World of Warcraft videogame developer Blizzard Entertainment as well as with Santa Monica, Calif.-based visual effects/digital studio Hydraulx. A version of the broadcast spot also ran online, generating millions of hits from gamers.]
The point is that Saatchi is a place that already has a positive momentum going for it on different fronts. I’m coming in to tee up and continue what’s been started, to do inventive, fully integrated campaigns.
SHOOT: You’ve also been charged with the responsibility of bringing new business into Saatchi LA.
McKay: Yes, pitching new business is definitely another opportunity that brought me here.
I’m coming off of a successful pitch for Goodby on Quaker Oats and hope to likewise bring new opportunities into Saatchi.
SHOOT: And this is your first career opportunity to be the lead creative at an advertisig agency.
McKay: Certainly that was another factor drawing me to Saatchi & Saatchi. But as I said, it’s not a case of having to build something from the ground up.
There’s already a very solid foundation here on which to build upon. Toyota alone has 17 models and there are a lot of great challenging, creativeplaces we can go with them.
SHOOT: What did you learn from your experience at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners that you now bring to and will help further inform and benefit Saatchi & Saatchi?
McKay: That speaks to my biggest job here which is to continue to integrate digital and traditional departments, to get that to flow well, to make sure everyone is thinking across all the channels available to us, not just in one medium or the other.
Goodby, Silverstein was very successfully in doing that over the last few years, blending traditional broadcast and interactive to work together better. Traditionally these disciplines have been separate and that can lead to problems.
I want to make sure the people here know that digital is real and growing, that they need to learn it better., to get after it.
Meanwhile digital people need to learn to tell stories on film. Then you start to mix the people together and learn from each other. It’s an important phase of migrating.
I was fortunate to be at Goodby. As a senior writer, I was always paired with a good art director. Everyone is so talented there. The creativity was placed above all, and that continued when I became a creative director. Obviously it’s important to me now that the work continues to take that kind of priority here at Saatchi as well.
Also, we had the chance to move around on different accounts over at Goodby. That was a wonderful experience, keeping things fluid, being able to work on a Budweiser job, then HP, Saturn, Haägen-Dazs. It was a great breadth of brands to work on and to learn from. That kind of opportunity keeps you sharp and makes you just that much better.
SHOOT: You’re from San Francisco and spent many years at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in the Bay Area. But you’re also no stranger to Los Angeles, having been at Chiat/Day. Do you see any advantages to now being back in Los Angeles?
McKay: Being in Los Angeles, I think you have the opportunity to tap into different types of talents right in your own backyard.
I would like to try different kinds of writers, for instance–not advertising writers but those who write other things altogether. I’d like to look into people who direct documentaries, just different varieties of talent rather than the usual suspects.
At the same time, we’ll continue to tap into those we know in the commercialmaking community because obviously they bring a lot of talent and many insights to the table.
SHOOT: You earned a college degree in journalism. How did you go from that to a career in advertising? Did you seek it out or did it find you?
McKay: It was pure chance and good luck. I bascially took a job to get a job out of college.
I got into an advertising agency not really knowing what copywriting or art direction was. It was a little shop in San Diego and from there I began building a book. There was no grand plan. I just kind of fell into advertising as a career.
I’ve been very fortunate over the years, landing at great creative places like ChiatDay, Goodby and now Saatchi. It was at ChiatDay that I really built my book up. Obviously Goodby was a great experience personally and professionally. And now I have the opportunity to help shape the creative coming out of Saatchi.
