Looks like The Richards Group is looking for some new hires. The site, Sign Me Up Stan, offers an array of videos boasting some of the shop’s offerings: profit sharing, high creative standards and very honestly, late nights. Plus, the addendum of “Does your agency have a jet?” Yes, but not one we would ever be able to use. Like ever.
We like the little growling jingle that plays at the end of each video, “Sign Me Up Stannnnnnnn!” So, Korn. There’s are some random, gratuitous “agency” elements on there like a cow that moos and a wind-up toy. It seems agencies can’t stay away from making themselves try to appear, um… wacky. Otherwise, we enjoyed our watching the spots. Maybe we should go apply?
We would have posted one of the vids for you, but the site doesn’t make them available. We hate that.
So, you may be asking just who is Stan Richards? Well, here’s a little story, we’d like to tell… Stan Harvey Richards was born Philadelphia in 1932. Nineteen-thirty-two people! He’s a working class hero having been the son of a man who worked two jobs to open up his own bar in New Jersey, and then another in Atlantic City. Ah, the American Dream. Do you think he supported Edwards? Anyway, Richards apparently was passionate about the fine arts and in 1950, he entered Pratt Institute. Richards graduated in 1953 – the year Arthur Miller‘s The Crucible opened, the DNA molecule is unraveled and Stalin dies. Stan decided to move to Los Angeles to get into the film biz (what creative hasn’t thought of that?), but first, went to Dallas to show off his portfolio, which was apparently, very minimalist in contrast to the times.
However, he landed a mentor with Marvin Krieger, the creative director of Dallas’ largest advertising agency, Rogers & Smith, but no gig, Stan went freelance. After winning a few awards, he went in-house at the Bloom Agency in 1954. He was making $12,000 a year. offered to make him creative director at a salary of $12,000 a year. Adjust that for inflation and you get $92,494.57. Stan, naturally, took the job though he lasted only a year. The dysfunctional he saw there spurred him on to open his own shop. Isn’t that the way in which all indie shops are born? The “this-place-is-totally-fucked-and-I-can-do-it-better” attitude is eternal.
In 1955, Stan Richards & Associates was born. The rest is history.