Down but Not Out, Gerry Graf Still Believes 'Creativity Sells a Ton of Shit'

When news broke earlier this week that independent, famously "crazy" creative agency Barton F. Graf would shut its doors at the end of the year, many ad industry veterans shared their thoughts on the implications behind the slow closure of a shop known for making legitimately unusual work for a wide variety of clients while also poking a good bit of fun at advertising itself. To learn more, Adweek sat down with the man at the center of it all: founder Gerry Graf. While in understandably low spirits about his agency's closure, he remains unapologetic when it comes to pushing the boundaries of creative marketing and fighting against mediocrity. However, in the nine years of running his own shop, the advertising veteran also learned the hard way about the countless, unexpected responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of an agency founder. (Hint: they include keeping your office bathrooms up to code.) Below you can read the interview, which has been edited for length and clarity. Adweek: How have things been since you confirmed that your agency would close after nine years? Gerry Graf: I have a 13-year-old son, and last year in school they asked him what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to take over his dad's advertising agency. So it goes deeper than just losing a business. I can start my own pity party and say 'Woe is me,' but stepping back and looking at the last nine years has been really helpful. The greatest thing that's happened in the last couple of days is lots of people who used to work here calling me up and saying how much they loved working here, how much they learned and how they became better at what they did. [kickout id="4"] And what's your key takeaway? You know, I saw some stories like, "Is this the demise of the independent agency?" ... clients going to project work and stuff like that. But we had internal problems as well. And if you're going to have a place where you're honestly trying to do something new every single time ... everybody has to be on board at the company. That started to fall apart about a year and a half ago. Another thing is that I'm the only investor in this company. We're completely independent and small, so we took the hits harder than most. I don't have a big cash-cow account where I can play around with hours. You take a step back when your businesses isn't doing well and say, "Do you make an inferior product?" No. We're known as the creative agency, but our clients have sold tons and tons of shit. In fact, last year Little Caesar's was the No. 1 selling pizza. We had three clients IPO for over a billion dollars. We had two clients purchased for over a billion, and I completely believe we helped them get to that point. What led you to do your own thing in the first place? Was it about having more control? It was never about full control. I always say I got my advertising MBA from Goodby Silverstein & Partners because I spent almost four years there, and all the smart things I learned, I learned there, including the belief that creativity sells and the ability to fight for work while not looking like an asshole. Then, after three stints [at BBDO, TBWA and Saatchi & Saatchi] I'm like, I've done a good job making teams, not just making work. Why don't I put a team together and try to do it on my own? Mark Waites from Mother said, "You should start a place." I met David Droga at an awards show, we had lunch, and he said, "Why don't you start a place?" But I was scared because I didn't have a client, and I didn't have any partners yet. Then I flew out to San Francisco and thought I would stop by GS&P. So I'm walking up the hill [to the office] and Jeff Goodby is walking down, and he goes, "You know, I've been thinking about you, and you should start your own agency." That was the final kick in the ass. Plus, my wife, who is just fantastic, bought Quicken Books and did what we needed for expenses. She said, listen, you've been talking about this for a long time. If you don't do it in five years, I'm never going to hear the end of it, so start your own damn agency. [kickout id="1"] And how did you get your first client? I knew the CMO from Kayak, because we had worked together at Chiat, and he called me and asked me if I knew anybody who would do animated banners. I did [the banners] because I had learned in the past that it's hard to get in, and it worked, because he called me up and said: "I need a campaign for the fall and I'm not liking what I'm seeing. Do you want to throw some ideas in there?" It was just me and some freelancers, and we put together three campaigns and sold it. He gave us the account. I'm well aware of my shortcomings but also well aware of what I'm good at, and coming up with great ideas that are creative and sell is something I could do with this little crew. And then it just kinda took off from there. So your reputation grew. I was working the PR angle since Day 1. When I started hiring people, I would do stuff like hanging a bedsheet out of the window of the SoHo office I was subletting. I wrote, I just hired Eric Kallman, the Old Spice guy, and took a picture of it and sent it to Adweek and AdAge and they ran a picture of my bedsheet. Then I dressed an art director up like a 1700s town crier and we walked into Crain's and he just started ringing his bell going, 'Hear ye, hear ye!' We got kicked out, but they ran our video. [BFG] got to a decent size. We were almost 70 people at one point, and then maybe two years ago we started disagreeing on the direction of the agency: Do we stay devoted to always pushing creativity or do we relax some standards and bring in the bigger clients? What sort of challenges came from being known as the super creative place? It's hard to be an account person here, because you have to learn the art of saying no to clients. Our motto is: We will not do what we're told. We'll do what we think is right. I just had too many experiences when I did relax my standards, did what I was told, [then] it didn't work and we got fired. How did you get clients to approve the unusual work? I put as much time into working with my planners and strategists as I do overseeing creative. I always liked to do work that is unexpected, and if you don't have a reason to do it, you just look like you're being weird and quirky. The way we've sold everything we've ever been proud of is to show them you've done more research than they've done: You understand their business, you understand their demo, you know where to find their targets. Every new business pitch we won was as much for our strategic thought and research as it was for the creative that we sold. [kickout id="2"] You have a very singular style, but it seems like you sometimes found yourself looking to escape your own signature as "the crazy agency." Yeah, but I also do it every single time. It starts with strategy, then it goes into crafting the idea or the script or some Facebook canvas ad in a different way than what everybody else is doing. And it goes all the way down to casting and dialogue. If that translates into me having a style, I guess I can understand that. We've even had a couple of clients who said to us, "We tried everything and nothing's working, so we might as well try you." Were there any moments when you really butted heads with a client? And can we talk about the GoDaddy "puppy mill" Super Bowl ad that got pulled? We showed them 10 ideas, and they chose that one. But Barton and the client had a bit of a cultural blind spot. When we were making it I didn't see anything wrong with it; I had a rescue dog. And three days before the game we made another Super Bowl ad for them. We thought we owed it to them, because we felt bad that all that work went to nothing. But I can't remember any instance where there was animosity between agency and client. It's more like, you feel you want to go this way and we believe we should go this way, so that's not going to work out. What were some of the unexpected challenges of running an agency? Being the founder, every problem comes to you, from 'Our client's not happy with the work' to 'We don't have any toilet paper.' Or, according to the New York City state laws, if you have more than 16 employees, you need more than one bathroom. We moved to a bigger space. But as we got bigger I [often] didn't know what was going on, because even though these problems come to you, they only come when they're blowing up. I felt many times separate from my own agency, and I would have to make a really big effort to sit people down and just see how everything was going. So give me your advice for those looking to start their own shops. No matter how talented you are in whatever part of advertising, you can't do it on your own; you need some partners. You have to be honest with yourself about what you're good at and what you're not good at, and find other people to do it. That's the most important thing. And trust your gut. There were a few times when I went against my gut, and my gut was right. [kickout id="3"] What do you think of the new agency models, where there are two partners and the rest are freelancers or that kind of thing? Can they work? It's got to be figured out, but I don't believe anyone's figured it out yet. You can run a business like that with two partners, but to create work that has an impact you need people dedicated to the client that they're working on. You really do need people who every day are, for example, playing Clash of Clans and going on the gamer Reddit forums. [Otherwise] you might get lucky and make some viral video or something, but you're not crafting work that's going to have an impact. That all comes through authenticity. The inevitable follow-up: What's next for you? I have some friends who are current and former CMOs, and I'm trying to get their side of it. There's a bit of a discrepancy between what they want and what they're willing to pay for. So if you come in and tell me what your company or your products are like, I can tell you how your brand should represent itself and I can give you a creative idea and a specific way of executing it. [Then] you can either let me execute it for you or, what's happened more times than not—especially recently—is clients say, 'Thank you for that idea, we don't need you anymore. We'll call you for a project.' So can I charge upfront for the value of what I just gave you? It's almost IP (intellectual property). [kickout id="5"] What's the biggest change in the business since you started? Time's always the enemy. [You have to] cut down the amount of time it takes you to get to something so you can be on to something else. It can be done. You can train your mind to get to a level of quality faster. How do you want people to look back on BFG? I'd like to think we were proof to everybody in the industry that creativity sells a ton of shit, and I think we did prove that. I always wanted BFG to be a kind of a haven for creative people—not just a creative department, but people who think differently. The people who are trying to push it, create new ways of communicating or just trying to do different things? We all need to kind of take care of each other.