Goodby Silverstein & Partners Snags Back Agency Alum to Lead Innovation

Goodby Silverstein & Partners has hired back agency alum and star creative Adam Reeves as director of innovation. Reeves had served as a creative director at the Omnicom-owned shop from 2012 to 2016 but hails most recently from R/GA San Francisco, where he led work on accounts such as Xbox, Pandora, Google and Airbnb. As director of innovation, Reeves will oversee creative on agency divisions GS&P Social, which serves clients like Comcast, PepsiCo, Adobe and Frito-Lay, and in-house innovation studio GS&P Labs, which is backed by animators, engineers and artists. "We're thrilled to welcome Adam back to GS&P," Margaret Johnson, GS&P CCO and partner, said in a statement. "During his time at the agency, he led many of the agency's most inventive campaigns. Adam knows how to inspire teams and make the impossible possible. We can't wait to see what he'll do next." "I came back to GS&P for the people and the creative spirit of the place," Reeves said in a statement to Adweek. He said he's "particularly excited" to reunite with Adobe and would like to work on the PepsiCo account. Having worked on the Doritos prior to leaving GS&P in 2016, he said he was "#jealous" to have missed out on the creation of the "Doritos Blaze vs. Mountain Dew Ice" Super Bowl LII commercial, which pinned all-star teams Missy Elliott and Morgan Freeman against Busta Rhymes and Peter Dinklage in an epic rap battle. [kickout id="2"] "Having two brands battle each other on the biggest stage was perfect," Reeves added. For him, creating impactful work means producing "something that aligns with the brief but that's bigger than the product," Reeves said, "GS&P's standard is to push the limits of the possible with work that has never been done before." Reeves' appointment is only part of GS&P's overall growth story. After winning several sizable accounts within the last year including PepsiCo, Liberty Mutual and BMW, GS&P said it added an impressive 97 employees to its staff in 2018 alone, 29 of whom are in the creative department. "This is not our first time having to hire quickly and at this scale," Derek Robson, partner and president at GS&P, said in a statement to Adweek. He claimed the agency had at one time added 300 employees. Robson attributed the recent boost in business on GS&P gaining "focus" and entering the right pitches rather than just "chasing money over opportunity." He said the agency is "approaching this growth spurt methodically" and bolstering the areas in which Reeves will lead: GS&P Labs and GS&P Social. Throughout his career, Reeves has been key in the production of some of the industry's more standout work. During his first stint at GS&P, Reeves is praised for having championed the making of creative work entirely in-house, according to a statement from the agency. GS&P said the shop's most-awarded campaigns have since been developed in-house including "Unacceptable Acceptance Letters," which called attention to the pervasive problem of sexual harassment on college campuses, and "Sonic #SquareShakes," the collaboration that had the fast-food chain sell small, square milkshakes designed specifically for Instagram to Coachella festival goers. During his two-year hiatus from GS&P, Reeves served as executive creative director at 215 McCann before joining R/GA San Francisco. "I learned a lot, made a ton of connections and got to appreciate from afar how rare the creative culture truly is at GS&P," Reeves said. "I'm a little rough around the edges, so at least they know exactly what they're getting." Reeves was one of the visionaries behind AT&T’s haunting “The Last Text” campaign, too, which he helped create while serving as senior creative director at BBDO before moving to GS&P in 2012. That awareness project documented stories from real people who have been affected by texting and driving including parents whose children died doing it. He also helped produce the music video for Weezer's "Pork And Beans," which picked up a 2010 Grammy for best short-form video. [kickout id="1"]