Margaret Johnson and Rich Silverstein are as alike as they are different. Together the pair runs the creative department at Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. Johnson looks for people who are “smart, funny and driven”—what she calls the “magic trio” — while Silverstein looks for people who are aware of what is going on in the world. It is this melding of ideas that has helped GSP to be so successful.
At an agency driven by creativity, Silverstein and Johnson do their best to challenge or “squeeze the most creativity” out of their employees, although Johnson notes these employees wouldn’t have been hired unless they had some inkling of creative intelligence. To Johnson, creative intelligence means, “recognizing ideas that are going to make a difference in the world, that are smart, that are innovative and have never been done before.” Silverstein admits, though, that his employees focus too much on advertising alone and do not have enough life experiences for his taste. “I am extremely connected to what’s going on in the arts world of America and the popular culture part of America and I don’t think enough of the young people are,” he says.
Silverstein and Johnson both understand that life outside of the agency is important. Johnson believes that experiencing culture, whether it be watching movies or listening to opera, fuels the creativity within. As an avid cyclist, Silverstein turns to his passion for creative fuel. His daily commutes are often decision-making journeys. “For my filtering process I would get on my bike and ride home and in that one hour I’ll come up with [if the idea is] working or it’s not working,” he says.
Just because an idea does not work, does not mean the process of getting there is useless. Silverstein and Johnson strongly believe that failures are necessary to move forward. Learning from failures is common in the advertising world, and it’s often not easy to deem whether or not something works at the start. This is where risk taking comes into play. According to Silverstein, “Any agency that wants to be relevant has to take risks.” And although sometimes the risk has to be cut back when it overwhelms the client, GSP employees come into advertising because they want to take risks—and generally they are given the freedom to do so. Johnson supports the idea of risk taking but would like to know sooner when risks can become critical to the business. Lately, Johnson and her team have started coming up with many ideas very quickly early in a project. That has allowed GSP to identify good ideas from bad ones sooner.
At GSP, a specifically designed process called SPRINT allows for the incorporation of as many different perspectives as possible. “That process really helps because everyone on the team, not just the creative department, but the account team, the strategy team all have an opportunity to invest in the work that you are going to be doing moving forward, really early on,” Johnson says. “And it just helps kind of shape the work in an interesting way.”
Regardless of their varying perspectives, Johnson and Silverstein agree that “creativity at GSP is everything.” Through creativity, GSP has developed a strong new philosophy: “Make stuff people care about.” Achieving this goal requires GSP employees to be informed global citizens. For Silverstein, this idea is what has made GSP successful. “It’s a love of what’s going on in the world, rather than what’s going on in advertising.” Johnson adds, “We only want to put things out into the world that people care about. We only want to do the most innovative things. We want to affect culture. We want to be a part of pop culture.”