It’s been a wild ride since that long ago, frigid, February day in 1981 that I arrived in New York.

And it’s been one that’s taken me from legendary Doyle Dane Bernbach, to Chiat/Day, to starting and running my own agency, Goldsmith/Jeffrey, to serving in a leadership role for global agency networks as Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Lowe North America and later Y&R North America.

With this site, I’ve tried to create an overview of my career, show a collection of my work as a creator and creative director, and talk about my experiences as a mentor, teacher and department chair.

I hope you enjoy.

I did these ads as a student at Art Center College of Design in 1980. Although I had already done hundreds of ads, this was the first time I really felt like I "got it", and had done something I truly liked.

I also remember thinking that I had made a breakthrough, and that it would only get easier and easier to do better and better work.

If only that were true.

I was honored to be picked as one of the 25 Creative Directors featured in this 25th Anniversary issue of Lurzers Archive.

It’s a publication that I respect, with a high taste level and well-informed editorial staff.

In addition, most of the creative directors featured were people that I knew and respected from various international show judgings and events.

And as you’ll see when you read it, we all had about the same answer when asked what the biggest, transformational change in our industry would be.

The interview below it in another edition of Archive with Hermann Vaske began during a late-night session of Cannes judging, and continued into a longer discussion a few months later in New York. It was truly a pleasure…Hermann is a knowledgeable reporter and an entertaining, provocative conversationalist.

Mentors are important. And they come in all forms.

Roy Grace, the chairman and chief creative officer of DDB, hired me out of school in 1981. The agency had over a thousand people, and probably two hundred creatives, but Roy found time to take a personal interest in me. He pushed good assignments my way, and then pushed me to do great work on them.

Roy was demanding and very direct, and his tough critiques were often sprinkled with sarcasm. After he killed a campaign that you had argued hard for, he would often say "Gary, you'll thank me someday".

He was usually right.

Thank you, Roy.

Helmut Krone, the legendary DDB art director, was a mentor of a very different kind. While Helmut was a man of few words, his actions spoke loudly.

Although he was probably about sixty at the time, Helmut worked harder than anyone in the agency.

And in spite of his body of award-winning work and Hall of Fame career, Helmut always carried the edge of a man who felt he had something to prove.

And he did. To himself.

Locked in his office most of the day, experimenting, ruminating, cutting, pasting, throwing away yesterday's "great idea" and generally torturing his writers, you learned from Helmut by watching.

I remember once while working on a very radical Volkswagen campaign getting up the nerve to go to Helmut's office and asking if he would take a look at what we'd done. To my surprise, he said he'd come down to my office in a few minutes.

When he walked in, I had all the work spread out over the floor and pinned to the walls. He stood in silence, scanning the room, smoking his cigarette for what seemed like an eternity.

He finally said, "you might be right" and walked out.

Coming from Helmut, that was a compliment. I think.

Bob Gage, an equally legendary DDB creative director, was my immediate boss when I began my career. Roy had assigned me to be his assistant.

Bob was older as well, near the end of his career, and working almost exclusively from home at the time. We didn't meet in person for almost three months. We worked by phone and fax and messenger service. A funny, Mad Men-style precursor to our current digital/virtual age.

Bob was a big, gruff, outspoken bear of a man, but a teddy bear at heart. In some ways he reminded me very much of my father, and we worked well together.

Bob had the ability to cut right to the heart of an idea, not getting caught up in the superficialities that can make lame work somehow appear to be good.

And while he was tough on the work, he was supportive of the people who did it.

He also shared his wisdom. and handed out pearls of advice.

“You. know, Gary, I have a lot of bad ideas too. The difference is that mine end up in the trashcan and most people’s end up in magazines”.

Only two months into my career, he asked me to go to LA to cover a very important Polaroid shoot for him. The account team was extremely nervous, sucking down bottles of Maalox, but wouldn't dare question him. In a phone call before the shoot, I thanked him for trusting me.

"Don't worry, Gary, whatever you f...up, I can fix", was his response.

And yes, he could.

I have worked for a wide variety of clients in almost every conceivable category in my career. From massive multi-national corporations like IBM, CocaCola, UPS, Xerox and General Motors to small, local institutions like The Bronx Zoo and The New York Lung Association.

The challenge of finding the right audience, the right message and communicating it in the right tone and right media context never gets old.

It started with what was to be a brief, introductory phone call that turned into a wonderfully stimulating hour-long conversation.

Which led to an in-person meeting at the Royalton in New York.

And was then followed by a lengthy discussion that became a podcast.

Dave is a knowledgeable, insightful, provocative interviewer, who’s easy to talk to.

And most importantly, easy to listen to.

I’m honored to have been featured as one of his guests.

I hope you enjoy our chat as much as I did.

Stuff From The Loft podcast

It was dream assignment. 

Bringing back a classic American brand that was the one and only luggage manufacturer trusted to transport the moon rocks back to earth.

From a conceptual framework that comes from the core of the company's origin, to re-designed products, to a new brand look and feel, to a website refresh and an all new social media presence, Underhead worked closely with Zero Halliburton to go from one small step to a giant leap.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Robert Reiser Agency: Underhead

Hunter Douglas asked us to completely re-think the way high-end, custom window treatments are selected and sold in a retail environment.

We chose Unspace, an architectural firm in New York, and its incredible founder, Ji Rook Kim, to partner with us in what has become an ongoing, three-year relationship.

After extensive consumer and behavioral research, a prototype store was conceived, designed and built in Olde City, Philadelphia.

It officially opened in June, 2017.

The heart of the design concept was the notion that this complicated and stress-inducing big decision for the buyer needed to be simplified and reduced to a series of easier to understand smaller decisions.

To date, the store has a conversion rate seven times higher than any other store in their network.

The long-term plan includes a global rollout with hundreds of stores in the United States and throughout the world.

Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Architect: Ji Rook Kim Agency: Underhead Architectural Firm: Unspace

Design Gallery Opening Philadelphia

You never know when a great client will walk in the door. Many of the ones that engender the most initial optimism turn out to be nightmares, while the ones that begin with low expectaions can exceed your wildest dreams.

That was the case with Everlast.

The brand had lost its lustre, with the glory days of Muhammad Ali and its boxing heritage long in the past.

The budget was small, and they were competing against all of the leading fashion brands.

And then there was their CEO, a former accountant who began our first meeting by telling us, “I don’t know anything about advertising, but I know what I like.”

As it turned out, Milt Adams was a smart, daring and supportive client.

And best of all, what he liked is what we liked.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Ty Montague Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

In a category that has been built around middle-aged (and older) consumers with traditional (stodgy?) tastes, Celebrity Cruises asked us to reposition their brand as a premium vacation alternative for younger, affluent, design-conscious, tech-savvy travelers.
Modern LuXury and it’s accompanying graphic tone inform every internal and external touch-point from advertising to new activity concepts such as "Tech & Deck" to redesigned shampoo containers. 

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Robert Reiser Agency: Underhead

In my roles as a creative director, chief creative officer, chairman, business owner, college department chair and leadership coach, I've had a lot of opportunities to mentor people at all levels of business. From large groups of juniors to individual CEOs and CCOs.

There is nothing more satisfying.

The book I've just published officially began as something I wrote and put together as a gift for my graduating students at Art Center College of Design. But in reality, it began a long time ago in the earliest days of my career at Doyle Dane Bernbach in New York.

I learned a lot of lessons (some the hard way), had a lot of mentors (some to emulate and a few to NOT emulate), and watched talented people all around me rise (and sometimes fall).

I had similar experiences at Chiat/Day, and although the culture couldn't have been more different, the characteristics that led to success and failure were the same.

Upon opening my own agency, and ten years later (after it was acquired by IPG) running Lowe North America, I gained years of invaluable experience looking at mentoring from the perspective of a leader who was responsible for both the quality of the work and the bottom line. 

In Work Wise, I've tried to distill a career's worth of experiences into 20 brief and direct lessons that will help get juniors off to a solid start. And hopefully help a few middle level and senior people be just a little bit better as well. 

Work Wise on Amazon

Every year, we pick two or three causes that we believe in and create pro-bono campaigns for each.

And, as we learned the hard way, it’s better to identify the cause we want to work on, research the issues and just go ahead and DO what we believe to be the right campaign before engaging with the client.

More often than not, they love and approve work that never would have even made it to the meeting had they been involved in the process from the beginning.

Crain’s readers are at the very top of the income scale in New York.

And as we all know, that is an audience that media buyers and the clients they buy for will do anything to reach.

So all we had to do was figure out a way to tell them that in a fresh, memorable way that hadn’t been done before, and with an attitude that was oh, so New York.

Special kudos to our clients, Rance Crain and Bob Felsenthal, who were brave enough to approve this and several other campaigns we did that most clients would have shied away from.

And yes, fortunately, their bravery paid off.

Art Director: Henrietta Lienke Copywriter: Tom Miller Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith, Dean Hacohen Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

I have created work for Knoll for over twenty years. Beginning with my first company, Goldsmith/Jeffrey, where Knoll was our first client, all the way through to Underhead.

From brand campaigns, to product campaigns, to product naming assignments and special projects, my DNA is intertwined with theirs.

With our most recent project, Knoll asked us to create a campaign making a direct link between their heritage of modernism and the things they do, and always need to do, to maintain and build on it.
Every element of the campaign was centered around the singular notion of Modern Always. 

We created "What's your always?" as a way of inviting conversation, discussion, and engagement with the brand.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

When you have a superficial magazine, that everyone knows is a superficial magazine, and everyone reads because it is a superficial magazine, and everyone loves because it is a superficial magazine, why not just say so?

That’s exactly what we did for US.

The campaign for US and Rolling Stone beneath it targeted media buyers.

In this case, we just took the facts and found a graphic, unexpected way to dramatize them.

Jann Wenner, the CEO (and founder of Rolling Stone magazine as well) was a smart, opinionated and mercurial client.

He and I had a few historic battles (that we laughed about afterwards) but he always ended up buying great work.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

Rarely do you have the type of client that actually pushes you to make the work better and further out, as opposed to pulling it back. Smarter, funnier, more provocative, more obtuse...those were all of the things Alan Broce at ESPN pushed and prodded for.

In this campaign, both print and tv, the idea was to talk to all of the people who didn’t think 24-hour sports was a good idea (and few who did but had issues with it anyway).

ESPN 2 is a hipper, edgier version of ESPN that wanted to target a younger fan base as it’s viewers.

The campaign that we did below used the staid, stilted and outdated images of sports in the past as a counterpoint to the  intense, unrestrained and fan-centric frenzy of modern day action.

Art Directors: Gary Goldsmith, Jason Gaborieu Copywriters: Dean Hacohen, Eddie Van Bloem Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

Long before I became the Chair of Advertising at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, I began teaching a special class there that I created.

It consists of two weekends, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with the students working on their own (and going to their regular classes) throughout the week in between.

It's called Crashvertising, and for good reason. One, we cram 14 weeks of work into 10 long, intense days (and nights). And two, it's built around what it's like to enter advertising now.

If you can survive these 10 days, you'll do just fine.

Like anything, mastery of the fundamentals is the key to long-term success. So we spend a lot of time talking about the two primary tools you will be working with every day of your career - words and pictures.

As everyone quickly finds out, combining them in unexpected ways to create a new meaning can begin to bring you closer to that magical feeling great work has.

As everyone also quickly finds out, it's not easy. Especially faced with complex strategies and tight deadlines. Which is why a big part of the class is about defining a work process that helps you become more consistent, instead of relying on luck, drugs, prayer or old award show annuals.

One of the keys to that process is removing the preciousness and self-editing that typically sets in and forcing yourself to come up with more ideas than you ever dreamed possible. During the course of the week, each student will generate nearly 1,000 ideas.

We take "talk" breaks each day and talk about all of the attributes, beyond the work, that lead to a successful career. Talent is important. Intelligence is important. But hunger is essential. And if you can't pass my Hunger-meter, you need to rethink your career choice.

We live in a superficial world, where everyone is expected to be a performer. So we write blogs. We tweet. We post. We comment. And like it or not, your ability to talk and persuade will play as much of a role in your success as will the quality of the work you do.

Everyone is required to evaluate everyone else's work. Put an orange dot on their best idea. Explain why they picked it. Discuss, question, argue.

Learning to think critically is essential to better edit your own work. It's also essential to becoming a creative director.

We work hard. We don't sleep much. We get frustrated. We question. We resist. We struggle. And in the end, we get better and are amazed at the quantity and quality of the polished, finished portfolio work we produced in just 10 days.

The two key things that loyal Frangelico drinkers talk about when asked are the rich, luminescent color of the liqueur and the immersive experience it invites.

This campaign, the first one that writer Steve Landsberg and I produced at Chiat/Day, was our attempt to bring those two powerful notions together.

As a side note, the campaign quickly created widespread speculation about whether there was “subliminal messaging” hidden within the visuals. There wasn’t. Or was there?

An added and unexpected benefit of the campaign was that it drew the attention of a young, upcoming artist named Jeff Koons, who arranged to acquire the rights to paint large, exact replicas of it.

To this day, more than thirty years later, the paintings appear in some of the most prestigious museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York and the Gagosian Gallery in London.

For us, it was an eighties version of going viral.

Thanks, Jeff.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Steve Landsberg Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith, Steve Landsberg Agency: Chiat/Day

After teaching Crashvertising once a year for three years, I was asked if I would consider becoming the Advertising Department Chair.

Art Center at that time was structured differently than most academic institutions…there were no Deans and the Chairs ran their programs autonomously, based on their knowledge of their discipline, their real-world experience and their industry reputations.

I chose to accept and after a brief interview process was selected.

One of the key questions I was asked in the final meeting was, “What is your 5 year plan?”

My answer: “To change the plan every year”.

Our business was (and is) going through seismic shifts…a rigid approach that stands still for one year, let alone five, is dead in the water.

First on my agenda was infusing the program with new instructors…all of whom were producing award-winning work.

So, joining an existing group of excellent instructors, which included Dennis Lee, Mel Sant, Koji Takei, Paul Soady, Lou Danziger and Z Gevorkian, were Paul Caiozzo, Nick Olish, Ryan Gerber, Tom Cordner, Sam Bergen, Rob Palmer, Daniel Gray and Scott Fish.

Over time, I also brought on several former students of mine whose careers were already flourishing including Karine Grigorian, Liz Levin, Andrew Kim, Sonja Johnson and Alex Nassour.

And, with the invaluable, yeoman efforts of our department manager, John Vasquez, who kept everyone focused and kept the trains running on-time, our hard work paid off.

Over the next ten years, with instructor Dennis Lee stewarding the teams/process, we won more than 80 One Show Pencils and numerous other awards in every student completion.

We were named Global Creative School of the Year by the One Club in 2022 and 2023.

And most importantly, our students have gone on to stellar careers all over the world at places like W+K, Apple, Google, 72&Sunny, Droga, Facebook, Mother, BBH and more.

They’ve also won many awards of their own, including dozens of One Show pencils, Cannes Lions and even the Grand Prix at Cannes for Apple, won by Esteban Cardona Jimenez, currently the creative director at Coinbase, and the Titanium Lion at Cannes, last year won by Alex Nassour of W+K for Door Dash.

Working with and mentoring our students and collaborating with our instructors over the past twelve years has been one of the most satisfying and rewarding parts of my career.

More to come.

While I never formally finished my architecture education, it has been an ongoing passion that I have never tired of.

I designed both offices of Goldsmith/Jeffrey, and was very involved in the redesign of the global headquarters of both Lowe and Y&R in New York. And on the residential side, I’ve done several apartments and worked closely with architects on a few houses.

So in 2008, as both a personal project and a business, I founded and built Yourchitect.

The concept was simple; helping people find both the best and most importantly, the right architect for them.

The ten best architects for each city are chosen by me, and do not pay to be featured. It’s a subjective choice, based on both my personal taste and research into their projects and reputations.

And as I directly tell our viewers, if you’re looking for a wide spectrum of unedited and unvetted quantity, just go straight to that little search engine called Google.

In addition to architects, the site features what I consider to be interesting and design focused retailers, suppliers and artists, as well as architecturally relevant sites worth visiting, both online or in-person.

If you happen to be working on a project of your own, I hope this helps.

www.yourchitect.com

As a Creative Director, I had a tradition of occasionally picking a talented, young writer to partner with me on an assignment.

It served two purposes.

One, it gave me a chance to get an up-close, first-hand look at how they worked so I could help them improve.

And two, it gave them a chance to see how I worked, and how many average (or bad) ideas I came up with in the torturous search for something good.

Steve Lundberg was one of those talented, young writers and we worked on this campaign together.

Ibid was an incredible stock photography company, showcasing only the work of top photographers who shot very conceptual pictures.

Our message was simple: flipping through their thick, handsome books, ideas literally jumped off the page…if not for a current assignment, then one to be bookmarked for a future one.

Our client loved the work, and the campaign went on to win awards.

And by the way, Steve was even better than I imagined him to be and was a pleasure to work with.

I’m not at all surprised that he’s gone on to have a great career.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Steve Lundberg Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Lowe & Partners

The Applied Physics Lab at John Hopkins is an incredible place.

Ideas, experimentation and innovation are in endless supply.

They asked us to work with them to define exactly what it is they do and, more importantly, create a singular, memorable messaging thought to communicate with all of their audiences and stakeholders.

After a deep-dive into their operations and processes, it became clear that what separates them from everyone else in this dynamic, blue-sky space is the ability not just to dream it, imagine or conceive it.

But to Prove It.

In late 1981, during my first year in advertising, I was working on the Polaroid account at Doyle Dane Bernbach in New York.

Polaroid had a relationship with Warhol - they were supplying him with cameras and film to create experimental pieces.

Apparently, he had seen and liked some of the work I was doing, and our client arranged for me to join him for a private lunch at his "factory".

To be honest, I don't remember much of what we talked about. I only remember that he seemed shy, maybe a bit nervous, and was most comfortable when talking about the work.

He didn't say anything nearly as profound as the many quotes he is famous for, nor did he try.

Thirty years later, having had more than my share of lunches and dinners with talentless fakes and egomaniacal poseurs, I've come to appreciate the simple, unpretentious nature of my conversation with Andy all the more.

When you are from Texas, you never really leave.

You just go on a 42 year business trip.

And even though I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, a "city boy", the open vistas, the light, the big, bold landscapes and the high sky resonate deep inside me.

These shots were taken on a road trip with Trish and Charlie to West Texas, Marfa and Big Bend when he was a young boy.

I’m sure someday, he’ll go back.

I never had any desire to do work in the fashion arena. I found most of the work vacuous and void of concept.

So when I was asked to work on Dior at Chiat/Day, I reluctantly accepted, and mostly because I would be paired with legendary copywriter Phyllis Robinson, formerly of DDB fame and the first woman inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame.

But little did I know that would only be the first part of the treat.

Because of his long-time connection to Dior, I was able to shoot our work with Richard Avedon, a hero who’s work I had long admired.

Over the period of weeks that we prepped and shot, we spent a lot of time together, and it’s time I will always treasure.

Richard could not have been more generous with his time or easier to work with.

One day before doing some test shots, he took me up to a room with flat files full of his prints, as well as the reject prints that didn’t make the cut, and explained why he had chosen the ones he did. And much to my surprise, when I picked up a reject and commented on something about it that I liked, he gave it to me.

I’ll always treasure it…as a reminder of that day, and a reminder that often the most talented people can also be the kindest.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Phyllis Robinson Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Photographer: Richard Avedon Agency: Chiat/Day

There has always been a debate about the value of awards in our business.

I come out in favor of them, as imperfect as they may be.

I think it's important to participate, to measure your work against the best in the world, to both judge for yourself and have your work judged by the best people currently doing what we do.

Which is not to say that I always agree with those judgements. Some of the freshest, most experimental work that I've done has sometimes won very little, or not at all. Some of the work I felt was smart but fairly predictable has surprised me and won gold.

But the idea of competing, of being part of the conversation, can both motivate you to do your best work and inspire those who see it to do theirs.

I won my first awards in 1982, my first year out of school, while working at DDB.

Since then, my work has been in more than 20 One Show annuals. I've won numerous golds, silvers and bronzes, and hundreds of certificates of merit.

I've won Cannes Lions, for print and television.

I've won New York Art Directors Club golds and silvers.

I've won D&AD awards, and awards from the London Film Festival.

I've won AICP awards, and my work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

And Andys, Clios.

Communication Arts, Graphis and Archive magazine have featured my work.

The highest satisfaction for me has always come from those rare, magical moments, often in the middle of the night, when you look at a piece of work you created and know that it's good.

But winning an award in a show you respect, judged by people you admire, is a close second.

I’ve also had the pleasure and honor of serving as president of the One Club.

And as my president’s message attests, our mission as an institution is to reward and showcase work that makes everyone working so hard in our business believe in the possibility of producing something meaningful on their next assignment.

(As an aside, the Art Directors Annual at bottom/left designed by Nora Vaivads and myself at Goldsmith/Jeffrey spoke to the subjective but real value of awards)

Sony has long been an admired brand, and one known for innovation.

The Walkman literally transformed the notion of portable music.

But at this crucial moment, as the world rapidly evolved from analog to digital, it was important to make a statement that wherever the forefront of new technology was going to be, Sony would be there, developing new products and innovating in ways that would enhance and deepen the human experience, as they always have.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Lowe & Partners

The work created at DDB on Volkswagen is legendary.

It’s the campaign that literally ignited the creative revolution in advertising in the late 1950’s.

I produced these two ads in the early eighties.

The “Who cares?” ad was obviously required to be part of the traditional VW format.

The “A to B” newspaper ad was not. It’s my favorite of the two…it gave us a chance to create something completely new yet still within the campaign’s tone and attitude.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Irwin Warren Creative Director: Roy Grace Photographer: Carl Furuta

CA is one of the most widely read and respected publications for the advertising, graphic design, illustration and editorial design communities. So it was very meaningful, especially at that stage of our business growth, when they selected us to be featured.

It not only further motivated our entire staff, who had been working around the clock, but it served as vital recruiting magnet that caused portfolios and resumes from around the country to appear at our door.

Chivas Regal had a long history of producing award-winning and memorable work at DDB.

It was also a client that Mr. Bernbach was very involved with - he had a close, trusting relationship with Edgar Bronfman, the CEO of Seagrams, and was vested in making sure the work shown was both right for the brand and lived up to the highest creative standards of the agency’s previous work.

Throughout the year, almost everyone in the creative department would try to come up with ideas that would make the cut. It was a prestigious account, and most of the work produced did well in the award shows.

The long process culminated in a meeting with Mr. Bernbach which, of course, none of us were invited to attend. Roy Grace and one or two very senior creative directors presented all of the work.

A handful of ads were picked to be shown to the Seagrams clients.

And of course, Mr. Bronfman had the final say.

This Christmas ad that I produced with writer Diane Sinnott made the cut and was very visible during the holiday season.

And as I found out when I got a transatlantic phone call in the middle of the night while on a shoot in London, it also became my first One Show Gold.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Diane Sinnott Creative Director: Charles Piccirillo Agency: Doyle Dane Bernbach

Promoting a newspaper, especially one as well-known as the New York Times, is not as easy as it at first seems.

After all, what a newspaper is selling is the quality of its reporting and depth of it’s editorial opinion, both of which can be at best subjective and at worst, intensely polarizing.

But whether one agrees or disagrees with any particular piece or position on an issue, isn’t there value in having a forum that raises the issues and creates debate and discussion?

We thought so.

And fortunately, so did our client.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Robert Reiser Agency: Underhead

I was thrilled to get my first, big campaign assignment on IBM.

I had enormous respect for them as a company, both in terms of the quality of their products (I used an IBM Selectric typewriter) and their early embrace of the importance of design and “design thinking” throughout the company.

And in many ways, they paved the way for Apple, making bold, bright-colored business machines sitting on peoples desks not only acceptable, but highly desirable.

As it turns out, the assignment was in fact for the Selectric, which was the current gold standard of business typewriters.

At its core, what we needed was a vehicle/graphic device that gave us a framework to tell this wide-ranging story.

And is so often the case, the one we found came right out of the essence of the product…the beauty of the typewritten letter form.

I was a little surprised when the account team told me that I would be going to the client meeting to present the work myself. Generally, that was left to more senior people. But I welcomed it.

Three campaigns were presented, and ours was the third. It was obvious that the agency thought it would be a long-shot to sell, and showed it more or less to demonstrate to the clients how “far out” we could go.

But a funny thing happened as I began laying the work down on the table and talking about it; they liked it.

Ultimately, Chuck Francis, the legendary Chief Marketing Officer of IBM who to this day is one of the smartest and most encouraging clients I have ever worked with, chose our campaign.

It was both an unexpected and very satisfying early win for me.

But even more importantly, it was a valuable lesson that I’ve never forgotten; always show your best work, no matter how little chance you believe it has of being bought.

Of course, even when your work does get approved, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be more battles along the way. I had presented the campaign using Helvetica as the typeface for the body copy because its clean, crisp lines contrasted well with the organic and loosely-edged shapes of the enlarged typewriter characters.

But since Bodoni was the official corporate typeface, Chuck deferred on this one to IBM’s design guru, Paul Rand, and told me I could try to persuade him if I wanted (dared?) to.

I sent Mr. Rand the campaign, and a few days later he called me.

The call started out well, with him saying that he liked the campaign and giving me a back-handed compliment by adding the he was surprised that someone in “advertising” could have created it.

But after briefly explaining my rationale for Helvetica and pleading my case, his response brought me back down to earth.

“Use Bodoni.”

Oh well.

The campaign for office systems beneath it was another that was very different than anything they had done. And again, Chuck Francis approved it. Never underestimate the value of a brave, visionary client at the top.

Typewriter campaign Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Irwin Warren Creative Director: Roy Grace llustrator: Gary Goldsmith

Small Business campaign Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Steve Landsberg Creative Director: Roy Grace Illustrator: Gary Goldsmith

The workshop class I taught at NYU Stern School of Business was entitled “Entrepreneurial Realities: Life in the trenches.”

One thing we talk a lot about is the first and most important choice you will make as an entrepreneur - what kind business to start.

My advice is simple: do what you love, and the money will follow.

The other important topic we spend a lot of time discussing are the sacrifices you must be willing to make to be successful.

How long you are willing to go without a paycheck?

Are you willing to work nights and weekends and forego vacations?

Is your enthusiasm and ambition going to sustain you through what may be a long slog to even the first hints of success?

And, oh yes, how many late nights in a row are you willing to eat cold pizza for dinner or tuna out of a can?

Mercedes Benz was one our longtime clients at Lowe, and the creative team of Marty Orzio, Randy Saitta and Andy Hirsch created a wonderfully simple print and outdoor campaign that inserted the iconic Mercedes logo into images that gave it new meaning.

I threw in this one execution for Valentines Day.

Art Director/Writer: Gary Goldsmith

Retail can be difficult and often not very conceptual.

Fortunately, a few retailers do have the taste, desire and marketing savvy to do something different.

Barneys New York, a high-end, fashionable department store with a long and fabled history, is one of those.

In this case, we ran these spreads in late August and positioned the opportunity to buy a new fall wardrobe as sweet consolation for the melancholy that befalls all New Yorkers upon a beautiful summer’s end.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Tom Miller Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

Electronic Data Systems was a leading global technology services company founded by H. Ross Perot in 1962.

We won the business in a very tough pitch against Ogilvy and The Richards Group.

They were smart, savvy and aggressive…and became yet another client of ours that proved big, multinational corporations will in fact approve provocative, untraditional work…if you can make a smart, rational case for it.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Photographer: Ilan Rubin Studio Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

El Al was one of our first big account wins at Goldsmith/Jeffrey.

One of the key selling points we made in the pitch was that we had NOT worked on an airline, and would therefore bring a fresh perspective to the table.

And speaking of tables, we had our white marble conference table removed from the room just as they walked in for the pitch.

We made the point in the meeting that no matter how far apart we were geographlcly, nothing would keep us from working closely together, whether it be an ocean or a table.

That thought resonated.

In terms of the work, it was sometimes emotional and sometimes witty.

And hopefully, always un-airline.

Art Directors: Noam Murro, Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

So, here’s a glamour assignment for you: Do a trade campaign targeting healthcare professionals promoting a high-end brand of wheelchairs, canes and walkers.

Not something you would jump at the chance to work on? A brief you would pass on to another team because you were just “too busy”?

But what if I told you that you’d win One Show awards in both print and TV, as this Lumex campain did?

Great work is about a talented, driven team and a smart, receptive client. Nothing more.

Don’t wait for “The brief that’s going to make you famous”. Turn whatever brief you’re working on into the brief that makes you famous.

Art Director: Noam Murro Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

How do you tell people your Scotch is the best in the world without seeming braggadocios?

If you’re as fortunate as we were to have a smart, Scottish client with a quintessentially dry, sarcastic sense of humor, you create a tongue in cheek organization and let its loyal drinkers to do it for you.

This campaign instantly developed a cult following, with requests for prints and posters.

And if you like Scotch and have never tried The Macallan, I suggest that you do.

But please don’t tell anyone.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

Long known as a fashionable store for women, Bergdorf Goodman decided it was time to establish themselves as a leading store for high-end menswear as well.

To do so, they said they were prepared to do something radically different to attract attention.

To us, doing something radically different meant not showing men in suits.

Which, of course, we knew would be a tough sell.

So right before we presented this campaign to Burt Tansky, their CEO, a master retailer and a true gentleman, we showed him boards filled with suits on models cut out from ads of all of his competitors.

When we asked if he could match the images with the brands that made them, he couldn’t.

And when we showed the campaign, he smiled and said, “you sold me”.

Art Director: Gary Goldsmith Copywriter: Dean Hacohen Creative Director: Gary Goldsmith Agency: Goldsmith/Jeffrey

A few thoughts for Executive Creative Directors…and aspiring Executive Creative Directors.

It’s no secret that the business of advertising is changing.

Clients are demanding solutions that go beyond the staffs and aptitudes of traditional agency structures.

They want access to the best talent, wherever in the world it resides.

And they've figured out that bloated agency infrastructure, expensive office space, trendy furniture and in-house espresso bars have little to do with generating transformational ideas.

Out of these realities comes Underhead, a collection of individuals and independent companies with a track record of producing some of the freshest, most effective communications across every discipline.

In an age where overhead is the problem, Underhead is the solution.

Visit us at Underhead.com