On Oct. 1, Peter McHugh came aboard Leo Burnett as executive VP with responsibility for GMC. McHugh and the GMC creative team will be based in Los Angeles as Burnett looks to get a new Southern California shop up and running in the next month or two. The new West Coast service office will be dedicated to GMC and interface with Leo Burnett in Chicago and Detroit.
McHugh most recently served as chief creative officer and a managing partner of Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis. During his two-year tenure there, he brought in key new hires from as far away as Mumbai and Sao Paulo and helped to advance the creative work for such clients as Porsche North America, AG Edwards, Northwest Airlines and Harley Davidson.
He launched the latter’s first major campaign and went on to see Harley score a Cannes Lion. There was also notable creative for lesser known clients at Carmichael Lynch as reflected in such fare as Gibson Guitar’s “Empress” and Tractor Supply Company’s “Headed To TSC,” both earning SHOOT “Top Spot of the Week” distinction last year.
Before Carmichael Lynch, McHugh was executive creative director/partner at 180, Amsterdam, where he helped win adidas’ consolidated global business in partnership with TBWA and put 180 among the three “Agency of the Year” nominees at Cannes in ’04.
Prior to that, McHugh’s agency roosts included Fallon Minneapolis where he was a group creative director, Chiat/Day, Toronto, as executive creative director, Young & Rubicam, Chicago, as a creative director and DDB Chicago as a copywriter.
SHOOT recently caught up with McHugh to get his reflections on the advertising biz and the new opportunity he now embarks upon at Leo Burnett.
SHOOT: What attracted you to Leo Burnett?
McHugh: I knew Mark Tutssel [Leo Burnett worldwide chief creative officer] over the past few years from our judging at Cannes. He approached me about coming out to Los Angeles and opening an office dedicated to GMC.
Normally an opportunity at an agency has to do with inheriting something and trying to make it better. This was more like getting a blank piece of paper–albeit with a $250 million account to begin with–and basically being able to start from scratch, with all the joys and pains associated with that kind of endeavor.
I just felt this was the right mix of people, of challenge and opportunity. It allows me to be very entrepreneurial in a competitive and visible sector where we can do good things and get them noticed… While I’m not a car guy in terms of my advertising background, that was no reason for me to shy away from this kind of opportunity.
SHOOT: Is not being “a car guy” an advantage in that you will be able to bring a fresh, new perspective to the category?
McHugh: I hope that’s the case. We’ll see.
SHOOT: I recall that you were able to bring a fresh creative perspective to financial services advertising with your work for AG Edwards at Carmichael Lynch a couple of years ago. You had an egg character that represented the proverbial nest egg. One of those commercials, “Care For,” was a SHOOT Top Spot in which we saw a mom, dad and their young daughter nurturing their egg as if it were a family member. We see this family, including the egg, watching television together, frolicking at the beach, roasting marshmallows over a campfire. We even see the egg taking a piano lesson and being bathed.
McHugh: That is a good example of bringing something new to a category in need of something new. So in that sense there are some similarities between AG Edwards and what we hope to do now in the automotive and truck category for GMC.
I remember for AG Edwards we cut together a clutter reel of what all the competitors were saying in their advertising and marketing–it was all similar language and promises, talking about people’s dreams, wishes and hopes for the future. With everyone saying the same thing, the objective became saying it more uniquely. And we were able to do that for AG Edwards.
That same challenge certainly applies to the car and truck world where a lot of the advertising looks the same.
Just take a look at all the ads during National Football League game telecasts. The key question is how do we distinguish ourselves to break out from that clutter?
SHOOT: What’s your take on new forms of content beyond the :30?
McHugh: While the :30 is still important in the car and truck world, there’s certainly a lot more we can and should be doing in new media. Thankfully at Burnett I’ll be able to tap into resources like Digitas and work in concert with the creative people there. Hopefully we’ll have some cool stuff to show you in the not-too-distant future.
SHOOT: Will the Los Angeles foothold enable you to tap more readily into Hollywood and entertainment industry resources?
McHugh: Opening the office here gives us recruiting opportunities for creative talent that might want to be on the West Coast. And being in Hollywood could give us some interesting opportunities [in terms of entertainment industry talent]. I’d like to think that being out here [in L.A.] will give us more access to more talent. But the commercialmaking people I’ve worked with like director Lance Acord [of Park Pictures, New York, who helmed the aforementioned AG Edwards campaign] are crossing over regularly. If he’s not the cinematographer on a feature like Marie Antoinette or Where the Wild Things Are, he’s directing commercials. There are a lot of directors and editors I’ve collaborated with over the years who are straddling both worlds–commercials and features/TV. Commercialmaking talent remains an important resource for us.
SHOOT: How did you get into advertising?
McHugh: I was a student at Arizona State’s business school and it became clear to me that advertising was the only thing I was good at. Accounting was out. Advertising was kind of making up the rules as you go along. I tried to do that in accounting and it didn’t’ work–“What if we put this number over there instead?”
While you couldn’t be creative in accounting, you could be in advertising. So I took that as a hint and didn’t go to work at Deloitte.
I put together a book and started talking to people, breaking in as a writer at DDB and Y&R…And I’ve come to love the challenge. I remember at Fallon we launched Citibank–a complex account that I guess at face value might have you scratching your head and asking yourself, “How are we going to do good work on this business?
But if you’re persistent, patient, staff it right and solve the problems, you can produce good work that people notice, that helps the client be successful and helps you keep and attract the best creative talent.
