Sipping Americanos with
Jeff Goodby
Usually we are very cautious with words like 'legend' or 'icon' but this time we didn't have a second thought to put them to our next guest's name, the legendary co-founder of San Francisco based Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Jeff Goodby.
Jeff's 45 years advertising carrier produced some of the most iconic works of the industry including gazillions of Super Bowl commercials and a truckload of major awards for Budweiser, Doritos, Cheetos, Nike, Chevrolet, the 'Got Milk?' campaign... and the list goes on.
He sat down with Cluso's co-founder to find out that none of them would be unhappy if the Buffalo Bills would win the Big Game in February.
(Editor’s note: The conversation took place before Buffalo’s playoff defeat)
Jeff Goodby
We just shot a big commercial in your city!
LAJOS HORVÁTH
In Budapest?
Jeff
Yes! I'll try to send it to you. I think I have your email here.
I'd be interested to see what you think.
LAJOS
Something for the Super Bowl?
Jeff
No, they're running it right now.
It's for a streaming cable service, cable TV company, Xfinity.
It’s really good.
LAJOS
It's nice to hear that it's good and you are proud of it... when I got my first job in advertising, it was a French agency called RSCG and the 'S' stood for Jacques Séguela. He was a famous guy in France, he did the election campaigns for François Mitterand. And when I started the job he just published a book with the title "Don't Tell My Mother I'm in Advertising, She Believes I'm a Piano Player in a Bordel". And I thought this guy must be nuts, because to me it was just so amazing to be in this business, I loved every bit of it. And then comes this guy, you know, and he is ashamed of being in advertising... I put that book away.
But if I fast forward to today, sometimes I think that maybe he was right, because if you have a look at the products that our industry is pouring out, not the award-winning stuff, but the actual work, 99 percent of it is just really annoying for people. To me this is the only industry that doesn't get better and better with time. Even Kim Jong Un fires better and better rockets into the sea.
I don't know how you see that…
Jeff
Well, I think that 99 percent of advertising has always been terrible, but the other one percent was really good and it had a way of bringing us together and it was something we all shared and talked about. I think that the opportunities to share and talk about things have gone down a lot.
Except for live TV we don't experience things at the same time, you know.
So when I go to work the next day, you can talk to me about a commercial that was on the Sports Network last night.
You have probably viewed it. I didn't.
So now you've got to go back and look at it on YouTube or some crazy shit.
It's very hard to share things, there aren't commonalities. And that was one of the things that I think made advertising work and fun to be in was the commonalities because good things got famous and when you went to a party, I used to have this thing that I said was like the ‘taxi cab test’.
You know, when you get in a taxi cab and the guy asks you what business you're in and you say advertising, what does he mention?
Does he mention something that you did?
And if he did, that's a really good thing.
Well, that's impossible now.
It used to happen to me all the time. I mean, I was lucky enough to make things that people were like, oh, did you do this? And actually, we did.
And nowadays if you talk to a taxi cab guy it's exactly what you said.
People go “I hate advertising, I mute all of it. You know, it's all terrible.”
Now, that's not really true, some things are good.
I'm going to send you the thing we shot in Budapest, it's really good.
It will play on the the football and basketball games here because those are the only things that we actually share in real time.
When we started the agency, we talked about respecting people's intelligence and presuming that they're as smart as we are
Jeff
Now, the other kinds of advertising that we do, things that get sent around on the Internet, those are fascinating, too.
But the quality of those is really one percent of one percent. And it's really funny when an advertiser comes to us, a client who says ‘make something that will go viral’ because you and I know you can't make something that will go viral.
You can make something that's good but you have to get very lucky to have it be sent around at all. And the standards among younger people are really high now.
If they get a thousand likes on something, they think they failed - so the standards are high, yet the quality of the stuff is very low.
And I'm like you, I kind of despair about it.
But we look for opportunities to do things that can be shared. We have a thing at our agency that we call mass intimacy, which is to make something for millions and millions of people but it seems like it's just speaking only to you and we like that feeling. We think that's a really good thing to shoot for.
The places to shoot for that, though, are are dwindling. What you were saying before really resonates with me.
I think when we started the agency we talked about respecting people's intelligence and presuming that they're as smart as we are, presuming that they have the same sense of humour that we have, not talking down, not belittling people and talking down to them. And that was very important to us. I think we still believe that.
But man, the pressures to do things that talk down to people, especially with A.I. are great. I mean A.I. will make us talk down to people a lot because we'll just get careless. We'll make things. We'll put them out there.
You know what I mean? They won't be that great, but the A.I. will make them two percent better and we'll be that's good enough. Put it out. Let's go.
That's the problem. We've got to sell some cars here or whatever.
Some clients come to us and go: are you A.I. first?
LAJOS
We hardly receive a brief these days where the client doesn't ask for at least one option which can be produced with A.I. and probably only for the reason of being able to cheaply produce.
Jeff
Oh, it's even worse than that. Some clients come to us and go: are you A.I. first?
Do you always think about doing things in A.I. first before you go do complicated human stuff?
LAJOS
That's really terrible.
But what would you say to someone who is interested in advertising? Like if you had a daughter or son, why should they start in this business these days?
Jeff
Well, I have a daughter that was a strategist at my company for a while and she was good at it. She went to college, she was an economics major and so she was good at research.
But she lost interest in it.
You know, it wasn't an interesting way forward for her. And I think that's partly because if you are a strategist or an account person or something in the old days, you were making things that people knew in the real world. And suddenly you're not. Suddenly you're doing something that's almost theoretical, and nobody has ever seen the stuff you're making. That's very frustrating and difficult for people like you and me.
If the sky is red and it's a BMW commercial, you're fucked
Jeff
So I would advise them to become really good at AI. There is an artistic pleasure to making things in AI. You just have to get good at it.
You know, if you resisted and think of it as something that's just junk - and most of it is now - but you can use it really well.
Also I'll send you another thing that we did: we made a film based on an idea that Salvador Dali had in 1937. It was a film that was never made.
And so we are making it. AI is really good for doing things like surrealism because, you know, if the sky is red and it's a BMW commercial, you're fucked. But if the sky is red and it's a surreal scene in a Salvador Dali movie, that's cool.
I would say get in that part of the business and learn it because it's that where the art is going to be going forward. People that are good at AI are not people that just give it up to the AI and let it do what it wants. The people that worked with me to make this Dali film they worked in Gemini, they worked in Photoshop and whatever Google's new Photoshop is that Savannah Banana or whatever it's called.
LAJOS
Nano Banana.
JEFF
Yeah, they worked in that stuff in order to make images to feed into the AI to get what they wanted. So they're artists in that respect. They were painting with the AI and it would do things you didn't expect and you would judge those things, throw some away, make some better. You know, that's the way you go.
And I would say get into that part of the business and learn how to do that: it's artistic, it's filmmaking, but it's also a writing thing because you have to be able to write prompts properly.
LAJOS
And you got to have good taste, because you get presented so much options with let’s say Midjourney that taste would be the big differentiator.
So when you would start these days, what sort of company would that be?
Probably an AI company then, no? Or would you start another advertising agency these days?
Jeff
No, I don't think I would. I think strategy is still interesting though… I think studying companies and coming up with strategies for them to grow is fascinating.
That's what my daughter liked about the business. But, you know, she also wanted to see a beautiful thing or a successful company come out of it.
She didn't have enough feeling of success and accomplishment at the end of the day.
[laughs]
So she changed to consultancy or what is she doing now in terms of strategy?
She had a child.
Oh, I see…
She's dealing with the kid right now and trying to decide if she wants to go back into this business or not. I think she will.
And you, have you started any businesses other than the one that you're in?
No, that's the only one.
Well, I've started a couple.
I started a tequila business.
LAJOS
I know about that and want to come back on this later, but let’s stay for a moment at your agency… there are some independent agencies who are trying to build an independent network, like Wieden + Kennedy did or Gut for example. Were you not interested in doing so as well?
When I write him notes now, I sign them 'The Clownfish'
Jeff
Yeah, I am. I think you'll see us, I just hired a new CEO. She came from Droga5 and she was basically David Droga's business partner.
She worked at my company years ago, for five years, when she was in her 20’s. But she's very aggressive and growth-oriented, and she wants to do what you're talking about. And I bet she will.
LAJOS
A network within a network could be also a smart strategy to keep the Goodby Silverstein brand alive as we see more and more great agency brands getting killed by their networks ...
Is Goodby Silverstein & Partnerss not in danger?
Jeff
I don't know. You know, we're part of Omnicom. And that might happen.
I've said to John Wren, who's the head guy at Omnicom, listen, there's a thing called the clownfish in the ocean. Very colourful little fish.
He leads all the other fish over to the reef where they all get eaten. But the clownfish never gets eaten. We are the clownfish. Don't eat the clownfish. (chuckles)
So when I write him notes now I sign them ‘The Clownfish’.
LAJOS
That's funny.
Jeff
But you know what? They might still eat the clownfish. They might.
LAJOS
Let's hope not!
Though you said you probably wouldn't start an agency these days, others think different. To me it seems like every week five new agencies pop up...
Do you observe the scene? Like which agencies are interesting or whom to pay attention to?
Who is really good these days?
Jeff
I love Greg Hahn's agency. But also I like a lot of the smaller ones, for example High Dive. They do things that are admirable, that are inspirational.
Sure, they probably have to do a lot of things that aren't inspirational, as we all do, but some are really great and I applaud them for that.
I think that's great. And they're not necessarily big, famous things, you know?
Like Greg did the Goldfish thing, changing the name of Goldfish to Chilean Sea Bass Fish, so that they would appeal to grownups.
That kind of thing. That's a funny idea. But as we discussed: you see it, it's written up, and then it disappears.
The taxi driver does not know about Chilean Sea Bass Fish.
LAJOS
What I love from Mischief is this gothic family, all dressed in black, maybe you've seen that, and the daughter has a blue tongue tattoo for Slurpy Day or something, and the parents freak out how she dares to bring colour into a gothic house.
I love that one. Maybe because I wear black most of the time... great idea, excellent execution.
Obviously, you did a lot of Super Bowl commercials as well. I guess that helps talking to the taxi driver about famous commercials.
Jeff
It's true - we're lucky that we've done a lot of those...
Awards? — I tell my people all the time: if you could see the way that it's judged in the process, you would not feel so good about winning and you would not feel so bad about losing
LAJOS
Who do you support, the 49ers, I guess...
Jeff
Oh, I grew up in the East. So New England Patriots.
Do you know American football?
Yeah, I do watch, I usually join in during the playoffs.
Do you have a team that you follow?
I didn't have a team for a long time, I was waiting for a sign and a couple of years ago I bumped into Travis Kelce (and asked for a selfie for the first time in my life) and since then it had to be the Chiefs. But I also have a fable for the Saints and the Bills.
Who will win this year, what do you think?
Buffalo.
That would be nice, actually.
LAJOS
Talking about Super Bowl commercials and awards... during the years I somehow became an award sceptic probably because I've seen so many people from the creative departments being so obsessed to win at Cannes or at other major shows that they would actually cut off their finger for a Lion.
I've always found that pathetic...
We would never do a piece of advertising just to win an award.
Jeff
Same here.
I think that's a bad way to go.
I tell my people all the time: I've been on the juries of all different award shows, all of them now because I'm so old and I say, if you could see the way that it's judged in the process, you would not feel so good about winning and you would not feel so bad about losing.
In a lot of other countries, winning an award is the way that people get famous in their business. Brazil is the really best example or think of places like Spain or Thailand.
There's good advertising from those places where people like emerge and the world knows about them through awards.
You wouldn't know about Thai advertising without awards.
Argentina is another good example.
Yeah. Argentina is good.
So, you know, awards are good for something. But I don't put as much pressure on them anymore.
I did this bad Photoshop of your thing and put a horse in it.
It's a lot better
Jeff
Also, by the way, a lot of the best things that I've done in working in this business for 45 years didn't win any awards or they won very few awards. I mean, the things I'm proudest of didn't always win a lot of awards. They were too weird.
LAJOS
Do you still write stuff?
Jeff
Oh yeah.
And I certainly oversee the work and complain about it and change edits.
[laughs]
You know that was how I started to learn technology really was to communicate with people that were in my creative department so I could go,
you know, I put this in Premiere and I switched these two scenes around. Watch. It works better.
And it makes them crazy, of course. But you have to be able to do that.
Or I did this bad Photoshop of your thing and put a horse in it.
It's a lot better.
[laughs]
LAJOS
But is there a piece of work not done by your agency that you really think it's amazing and you are jealous you didn't do that?
Jeff
You mean forever? I mean, there are lots of commercials that I'm envious of, sure.
Going way back to the 1984 commercial. I was looking at that Levi's Odyssey commercial.
You probably remember that.
Sure. It was shot in Budapest actually...
Was it?
But I'm much more like low production value things over the years. The modern era of having to shoot things on an iPhone doesn't scare me at all. I like it.
Some of the best things that we've done over the years were real low-fi things... we started our business with a thing called the Mill Valley Film Festival.
You can still see it online. It was about a little film festival in a town outside San Francisco. We made believe that the people in the town were all really smart, esoteric film critics. Basically the garbage men and everything. All knew about like deep focus. It was really funny. But very low budget. We just went in the back of a pickup truck around the town just taking pictures and talk to people here and there and had them do these lines that they really couldn't say. And it was really fun.
Or that thing that we did for the skateboarding part of Nike. We found out that skateboarders really, really disliked being kicked out of public places.
They would skateboard in a public square and the police would come kick them out or arrest them or give them a ticket or something.
And so basically the campaign was: what if we treated all athletes the way we treat skateboarders? So we showed people getting kicked out of tennis courts, with a sign that says no tennis here, and people that were jogging, getting things thrown at them.
I've seen that, I clearly remember this one, loved it.
Back in the day when there was only one Grand Prix at Cannes, it won the Grand Prix.
I like companies that run on jealousy
LAJOS
I was growing up on these agencies, I've always been a fan of BBH, Fallon, Goodby, Wieden, Crispin... These were my heroes, actually. But my observation is - and I don't know if you agree - if the founders leave or stop being active, their agencies change for the worst. Wieden has been not the same after Dan passed, or BBH is not the same since Hegarty left and the same applies to Crispin or Droga5. The work is simply not the same anymore. And I don't know if it's just the spirit of the founders who are there, or because they are not involved in daily operations or writing stuff anymore...
Jeff
I'm not sure what Crispin is anymore. But I think it helps to have a living founder around.
LAJOS
As a living conscience perhaps.
Jeff
A conscience, yeah. Or it's also a little bit of fear, a little bit of jealousy, I mean people wanting to be you. And that's good.
It's a business of rejection
LAJOS
How would you describe the company culture at Goodby?
Jeff
I like companies that run a little bit on jealousy. So they're like, I saw this thing that you did and I've got to step my game up and be as good as you are... and that works up and down, like you see your boss does something cool. You want to be like her but also if you see some junior guy do something really cool and you go like, wow, I better get my technology shit together. So I think looking over the fence that people doing good work and being jealous of it is good.
But during COVID we lost all of that when we weren't in the office. Now we're back in the office a little, it helps. Wieden has that thing 'fail harder' or something. I think that's true, you have to, but call it forgiveness.
You have to have that since it's a business of rejection, right?
I mean you're sitting there, you reject yourself. Then you show this stuff to your partner and she doesn't like it. Then you get it together and you take it to the creative director and he doesn't like it. And then you do, you fix it and you go to the client and she doesn't like it. And then you produce it and put it on the air and your kids tell you that it's shitty.
You've got to be able to get up and do it again. Starting over is a real blessing if you can do it, if you can embrace starting over. Cause a lot of times it comes out better, you know? A lot of times you do a better thing or also by the way, when you start over, a lot of times the client will go, "Hey, you know what? That first idea is starting to grow on me."
LAJOS
How much do you focus on the presentation itself: do you put much effort into that or you rather say that the work should sell itself?
Like if it's good enough, it will sell itself probably.
Jeff
No, no, you have to put it in the right context. I'm sure you're a good presenter. You have to be a likable person too at some level.
That helps definitely...
Jeff
It does. It helps to be a person that people like and want to trust and feel good with. But beyond that, you do have to think about what the world looks like through their eyes. As my partner Berlin said at one point, you got to take your own head off and put on the head of your client and think the way they do for a while and look at yourself across the table and go, what is, what do I look like? I look like an idiot trying to do this.
You know, I'm not setting this thing up at all.
You’ve got to be critical of yourself and learn what works and what doesn't. I certainly learned about what doesn't work over the years.
We've done spectacular new business presentations, some of which worked and some of which didn't work, we've broken the rules of new business things and people liked us breaking the rules. We broke the rules and they really hated us breaking the rules. You know, I've learned over the years to kind of judge whether these people can handle something crazy.
A spirit of dumbness and silliness is really important
LAJOS
Did you become a businessman during the years? Do you have a more entrepreneurial attitude now? Or you stick to the creative part of the agency…
Jeff
I’m still doing all that stuff. I'm making work. I'm chasing some clients. I'm looking for new business things, hiring people.
I didn't think of myself as an entrepreneurial person when I got talked into starting this agency because we had a freelance accountant.
Andy Berlin (founding partner) didn't like his job but Rich and I were just fine. He was like how we're his favourite team. We probably could have continued there.
But we went off and the feeling of making your own decisions and stuff was so fun and so liberating for me.
And that you could do dumb stuff that was funny, just because it was fun to do.
And you know, there wasn't anybody to tell: no, don't do that. And so a spirit of dumbness and silliness is really important in that.
I have a great PR woman and she would encourage me to do different things, like this year in the United States, I don't know if you follow this very much,…
I do, actually very closely…
… so my governor Gavin Newsom in California is doing social media that makes fun of Trump's social media. So Meredith said why don't you interview the people that do his social media in Cannes? Don't interview Gavin. I said I know Gavin and he likes me. She said, no, no, don't interview Gavin. Interview his social media people. I think that's a really good idea. I think I'm going to do it in Cannes…
Also, we do these holiday videos every year at our company. People act and make fun of each other. Mostly making fun of the people that run the agency.
And it's really important to do. And those things are incredibly important to the culture. Around the holidays for most of December people are working on stupid videos to show at the Christmas party… And some of them have been really good, really elaborate but it's important that they still want to do it. Part of the culture.
LAJOS
Originally you come from journalism, right?
Jeff
Yeah.
LAJOS
So I wonder if you still buy newspapers, actual printed newspapers?
Jeff
You know what? I get the New York Times Sunday edition —
[picks up a copy from his desk]
and I don't get around to reading it until it's Wednesday. I still haven't read it. I read the New York Times online every day.
That's the only real paper when I get that. I shouldn't get it. It's stupid.
LAJOS
I buy magazines, I'm actually a magazine junkie.
I like magazines too.
I spend a lot of money on magazines because I am addicted to the smell of paper and flipping through the pages of a hot off the press quality magazine is heaven for me...
Yeah. Plus you can have it with you in the backpack and read it on a train and stuff. It's nice.
May I smoke a joint at the agency?
LAJOS
Do you feel any inner obligations to consume your client's products? I don't see any Doritos or Cheetos on your desk...
Jeff
I do eat them. But not because they're my clients.
One of our clients is BMW and when we got BMW, I had a Tesla and the guy who is the North American president, Helmut Kunt, calls me up in the car and he says, um, are you in your Tesla? Yeah. How do you know that? He said, I cannot hear an engine. So they gave me shit about having a Tesla for three years. Finally I got a BMW. It's actually a nicer car than the Tesla was.
LAJOS
And Rich Silverstein? How is your contribution different from Rich's to the agency?
You still see yourself as a creative team?
Jeff
No, we work on different clients, he tends to work on cars and bicycles, more elegant stuff. And I work on things like the thing I'm going to send you and I work on a financial services place and we do funny stuff for and I do a lot of new business exploration, get other people to do it after we win it
[chuckles]
I find that Rich and I agree on the work all the time. We like the same stuff. And you know, it's pretty rare. But sometimes I like things that are ugly and he doesn't like ugly things at all. You know, that junkie film that I was talking about, he doesn't like that. He was not a fan of that. He came around and he likes things like the Nike skateboarding now, but when we did it, he was like – 'Oh, it's really ugly.'
LAJOS
One more question on the company culture: am I allowed to smoke a joint at the agency? It's legal in California, right? Do people smoke here?
Jeff
Well, they have forever. Even when it was illegal they have. I wrote a memo once about this and people think it's funny, but I said, we can't really take a stand against marijuana because we don't hate it, but you know, it's not good to smell it in the office because clients come here and it seems like we're not working that hard.
So if you're going to do it, you got to figure out a way to go outside or don't do it in the agency. That's kind of what I tell them. I wrote a memo about that once that people thought was really funny, but I meant it, you know, some people just don't like marijuana, so you got to be careful.
Have you ever asked someone for a selfie?
LAJOS
One last thing: may I ask you about the hair?
Jeff
My hair?
LAJOS
Yes. I think you have the most constant hairdo in this entire industry. I haven't seen a single picture of you not having the long hair…
Is that some hippie or surfer genes? I have long hair as well so I have great sympathy for that.
Jeff
I think it's a hippie thing, it goes back to being a hippie, you know?
I was looking at myself the other night going, you know, I wonder if it's time to cut my hair, I look like a homeless person. Just a bit.
[laughs and shows a selfie on his mobile]
LAJOS
Speaking of selfies, have you ever asked someone for one?
Jeff
I did it once with Alice Waters, the famous cook from Chez Panisse.
She chided me – 'Jeff. Really? Must you?'
So I stopped dead in my tracks. Never did it again.
LAJOS
On that note, Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time!
Jeff
That was great fun!
— The End.