Agency Square One, Dallas, has come a long way in its first six years—from pancake house to penthouse. Group account director Jim Wegerbauer recalls: "Before we had an office, we used to go to a place called The Original Pancake House. We would start working there in the early morning and quit whenever our cell phones died. After a month or so, we had to move from the booths to the tables—because you hang around the pancake house all day, you start putting on pounds."
Today, Square One finds itself comfortably ensconced on the top four floors of a downtown Dallas high-rise. With the Miller family of beers as its core client base, the agency has forged a unique, laidback identity, while producing award-winning work for a variety of local and national accounts, including Dr Pepper, The Parking Spot and Wilsonart. Square One’s growth has been rapid—especially over the past three years. Billings have skyrocketed from $30.1 million to $84.6 million; its original staff of six has swelled to 119.
Four partners founded Square One in the spring of 1995: Tim Murphy, Tom Hansen, Bill Ferguson and Bob Nichol had all labored for industry behemoths and were anxious to start their own agency. Murphy and Hansen—the creative guys—had worked together at Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, while Ferguson, an account executive, and Nichol, a media director, both knew Hansen from working at what is now DDB Dallas.
Though none of the original partners is from the Dallas area, favorable circumstances in ’95 made northern Texas an opportune place to open for business. Tom Hansen knew Tim Taft, the VP of marketing at Whataburger, a local fast food chain. Taft made a standing offer: If Hansen decided to open his own shop, then Whataburger would be its first client. So the quartet of agency execs opened shop in Dallas.
If hamburgers put the agency in business, then beer solidified its success. Murphy and Hansen both had extensive brew advertising experience, especially with Miller. Hansen was the head creative on the Miller Lite account at Leo Burnett in the early ’90s, and both men worked as freelancers to create the original Miller Icehouse campaign. Thus, their fledgling agency was able to contend for business from Miller. Square One has since worked for Miller Lite, Miller High Life and other Miller brands, such as Milwaukee’s Best, Red Dog and Icehouse.
A recent Miller Lite promotional campaign for the South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, shows Square One at its flexible, creative best. In the course of three weeks, the agency conceived and self-produced four low-budget spots, featuring assorted bottles and cans of Miller Lite starring in black-and-white film spoofs. One of the spots, "Horror Film," garnered recognition in SHOOT’s "The Best Work You May Never See" gallery (6/15, p. 15), and featured the slaying of a 12-ounce Miller bottle with a Valley girl accent, by a monster 16-ounce bottle, followed by the revenge of her male companion bottles. The raw production and dialogue in the ads struck a mocking, yet affectionate, tone. Each spot ends with the tag, "Indy Film Makers. It’s Your Time." Kent Johnson, an agency art director, helmed the spots, which were written by copywriter Brad Walk; Square One CFO Ernie Capobianco served as executive producer, while Mary Alice Butler was the producer.
Creative risk is a driving force in Square One’s office culture. Partner/creative director Tim Murphy gives his crew maximum leniency and extremely flexible working hours, but demands results at the end of the day. "If some of the guys are having a hard time thinking, they’ll go off site," he explains. "And as long as they come back with good stuff, I’m not going to complain about it. One of our guys used to go to Borders bookstore all the time, and he’d come back with no fewer than four complete campaigns."
"It’s a wise-guy atmosphere around here," continues Murphy, "…quite a different atmosphere from any of the agencies that I’ve worked at in the past. The guys that have come in from either DDB or The Richards Group [also in Dallas] really notice the difference."
Square One’s 23-member creative department works in a cubicle-free, open environment and shares its space with only one other tenant: the office bar. "We’ve got beautiful conference rooms, but the bar has evolved into the ideal meeting place," says Murphy, who designed it.
Crossing Borders
Hops and laughs alone, however, do not define Square One, which recently completed a Spanish-language AIDS awareness campaign for Noo Vision, (now Grupo Vida) a Dallas-based non-profit group. Square One has worked extensively on ads for the Hispanic market, and the agency’s foray into Spanish-speaking terrain, handled through its four-year-old Uno Com division, is an ever-expanding effort. Uno Com operates under a philosophy of "One Brand One Market One Voice," meaning that Square One attempts to present a brand identity unified across cultural and language barriers—the agency seeks to ensure that the essence of the brand does not get lost in translation.
"Apple Pie" and "Tamale," two spots that Square One created for Miller Lite, illustrate the agency’s strength in promoting a brand across different markets. In "Apple Pie," directed by Barton Landsman of bicoastal/international @radical. media, two friends are waiting for a baseball game to start. The organ cranks up the national anthem. The two friends—one Latino, one Caucasian—are watching the game together. The Latino, sighs: "Ah, baseball." Then the other friend chimes in, "It’s as American as Apple pie." The camera then pans through a line of the ballplayers, revealing names like Casillas, Olivar and Muñoz. The Latino friend cracks a smile. "Apple Pie" recently won a FIAP (Festival Ibero Americano de Publicidad) award.
"Tamale" was directed by the mono-monikered Jaume, who at the time was with now defunct The End; he has since joined bicoastal/international Partizan. In "Tamale," a man sits down at a bar in the middle of a desolate desert plain. The only thing standing between him and a cold Miller Lite is an extremely hot pepper—offered by a shaman-like bartender. The man hesitates for a second, downs the tamale—and spontaneously combusts—leaving only a pile of ashes. The bartender, who makes a game of this, chalks up another victim on his mystical beer fridge, as another man comes up to the bar.
Both "Apple Pie" and "Tamale" were produced by Beaucoup Chapeaux, which has offices in Dallas and New York. Beaucoup Chapeaux is a company that acts as a freelance agency production department for ad shops that either don’t have in-house production departments, or need extra production support. Square One has worked with Beaucoup Chapeaux almost exclusively over the last four years. Beaucoup Chapeaux president Lisa Dee says, "We’ve been incredibly fortunate with Square One … it’s a very unique relationship." With no in-house production department, Square One relies heavily on Beaucoup Chapeaux’s services; the company has already produced 22 spots for the agency this year and expects to double that number by year’s end. When asked about his producers of choice, Tim Murphy explains, "As a company, Beaucoup Chapeaux is always up on the latest talent. They can produce a high-quality spot on a limited budget, and they’re very professional all the way through the job."
Postproduction work for Square One is a more fragmented enterprise: Around 80 percent of Square One’s editing is done locally, by Dallas houses like charlieuniformtango and Easy Way Editorial. "For sound or special effects, though, we go all over the place," states Murphy, "but generally we like to keep postproduction here in town as much as possible … a lot of the guys with families like to stay in Dallas, instead of going to L.A. for two and three weeks at a time."
Indeed, Dallas seems a hospitable clime for Square One; the agency should total $150 million in capitalized billings this year. More growth is planned, and Square One’s new headquarters are designed to accommodate it. At an agency where happy hour is handled in-house, the good times appear to be steadily rolling.
