Tor Myrhren on Changing Cultures, Shifting Tactics

Tor Myhren on Changing Cultures and Shifting Tactics at Grey

In September 2007, Grey New York brought in Tor Myhren as its Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer.  The West Coast native had started his career at the L.A. office of the boutique shop Wongdoody, before moving on to a Creative Director’s post at TBWA\Chiat\Day.  From there he was named ECD of Leo Burnett Detroit, where he oversaw all of the agency’s creative, including its work for GM and Pontiac. It was at Burnett that Myhren began to build a reputation as a creative director at ease working outside the typical constraints of print and TV.  He began to incorporate everything from digital and interactive efforts to branded entertainment, product placement and experiential branding, particularly for Pontiac, where his work won two Gold Lions and two Gold Effies.  Examples include the “Apprentice” episode that sold out a year’s supply of the Solstice roadster in 40 minutes; the partnership with Google to create “Google Pontiac” TV ads that became the poster child for using TV to drive search; building Pontiac into the world’s #1 brand in Second Life; creating the first all-digital car launch (using no TV or print); partnering with DC Comics on the popular comic book “Rush City;” and forging Pontiac partnerships with Apple and Virgin. Since joining Grey, Myhren has led new business efforts that landed Grey the national BMW dealer’s assignment—putting him back in the automotive category—as well as E-Trade Financial and, most recently, US duties for Diageo’s Ketel One vodka.  He spoke with SourceEcreative about his success so far at Grey, and his attitudes about the future direction of advertising. 

What kind of cultural change has it been for you, going from the West Coast to the Midwest to New York, and to an agency like Grey?

It was huge. The change was pretty shocking. It wasn’t Grey so much as it was the size and scale of New York, and the advertising scale of New York.  All the biggest and best agencies are on this tiny island.  And they’re so competitive.  That’s really the first thing that struck me. I know this is so clichéd to say, but it kind of felt like, “This is the big leagues.”  As far as Grey itself, it was also a bit of a shock.  I had never worked in such an account-driven agency.  I don’t think creativity was ever the top priority here.  That’s not to knock the success they’ve had, but it wasn’t a priority.

The first thing I did was to move the entire creative department, which at the time was split up over four floors.  Every creative had an office. And that was the biggest culture shock for me. I came from a place with open architecture, and so it was really really hard to communicate and to get any sort of flow going within the department. Everybody always had their doors closed, and you never knew if anyone was there or not. Nobody seemed to want to share ideas, they were looking over their shoulders.

At the time we all had big offices and beautiful views of Manhattan. And I moved everyone down to the second floor, since it was the only floor in the building that had open architecture.  Nobody had an office, including myself.  I can’t tell you how many calls I got about that one.  No one wanted to do it. There was a lot of resistance initially, but I think it’s a benefit when it comes to a creative department, because then there are no doors or walls between the ideas. Within a week everyone realized this was the best thing we could have done. The work has gotten a lot better and we’ve hired great people, but I think the single biggest change was that move, because it forced people to work differently and be more collaborative, or you just couldn’t survive. And not everyone did. Some people left, some people didn’t work out. But that move really forced people to decide if this was the type of creative environment they wanted to be in.

Since you arrived, what campaign has the agency produced that you feel relies most heavily on non-traditional approaches?

The first one is E-Trade.  The problem with that answer is that most of the work we’ve done has been based on television.  But what happened virally with that campaign is fairly extraordinary.  I mean, just in the first two weeks after our Super Bowl spot ran, there were close to six million hits on this thing. And that’s just this year. Last year, in 2008, there was over 10 million. 

I think what this proves is sort of the connectivity between the media. You can’t make these sweeping statements that television is dead, or that digital is absolutely the future, although I think it probably is. But right now there is no question that if you can work all these things together seamlessly and have each one build on the next, it’s infinitely more powerful. There’s no way we could have had the digital or viral kind of phenomenon that happened with E-Trade had we not had the television.  (To view the agency’s E-Trade case study video—complete with the ’08 and ’09 spots, hysterical YouTube parodies and the voice of director Randy Krallman as the baby, click here.)

It was different when we helped re-launch the book "13 Reasons Why" for Penguin. We recommended no TV, because their budget was tiny. So we did a campaign made up of 13 films, but ran them only on YouTube. Once the bloggers found these creepy little films, with a little online assist from us, it was all over the web. Then the book took off. It's now #5 on the New York Times bestseller list (for chapter books in the Children’s Books category. But again, that was all using a traditional format of short films, and mixing it with new media like video sharing sites and blogs. (To find out more about this campaign, click here.)

It’s using the traditional tools but arraying them in a new way, right?

Exactly.  For me, this is where it’s all moving. I think we too often simplify things now, because of the power of the internet.  It’s become the biggest tool in our industry.  But using the other things surrounding that—like TV—to bolster what’s happening online, is critical.

The most stunning non-traditional campaign that we’ve done at Grey since I’ve been here was the Obama/McCain poster.  There was no client attached to it.  It was completely done in house at Grey, for free. And zero media dollars were spent on it. (See a video case study on the project and its online impact here.) It was like the Friday or Saturday before the election when we actually got the thing completely finished, and all I did was send it out to 70 people, and it was just unbelievable what happened.  Literally within in a couple of hours I got a call from the guy in Australia who runs The Cool Hunter web site, and he said this is going to be his top story. And he told me that by Election Day I will have done 100 interviews with the media because of this. I laughed, but I ended up doing about 30.  The minute it went up on the site, within five minutes it was on Gawker, and then it just took off.  And I didn’t send it to any web sites, I just sent it to 70 friends and asked them that if they liked it, to send it on.

What was interesting here is that this was the exact opposite of E-Trade.  This started as a purely viral thing—an email to friends—and then it went to web sites and then it hit TV, whereas E-Trade started as a TV spot and exploded virally.  It also showed up on the front pages of newspapers in the UK, France and Norway, and it did all this in five days. It was an unbelievable lesson. And I joked about it when I presented this case study to our entire agency—that while this is great, it could be the end of us. Because we didn’t spend a single dime on media. Not one penny.

When it comes to production, your department seems to be working both ends of the street. If something needs to be shot with your own people, you do it. Yet typically you go outside to top directors and production companies, like when you hired Fredrik Bond of MJZ to shoot your Crown Royal campaign, or your work with Smuggler's Randy Krallman on E-Trade. Do you tailor the production to fit the idea?

Yes, we do.  That part of our industry is changing as rapidly as anything else. I think there’s an old model to production that’s breaking down fast. There are a handful of guys who are going to continue to pull top dollar, because there are still going to be those kinds of projects out there.  But if you look around, there aren’t that many left.

It’s a tough thing, because I don’t personally take a lot of pride in saying, “Well, let’s just shoot it ourselves.” But Nick Childs, our Head of Content, who’s shot several things for us already, is a highly accomplished director. (See one of the spots from his Captain Morgan holiday campaign here, or his short film starring Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates for New York’s Blue Tree boutique here.) He’s directed documentaries and did a short film in 2007 that won at Tribeca. At times we have clients come in and say they loved our idea but ‘here’s how much money we have,’ so either we can do it for that or we can’t do it at all—since no production company out there can shoot it for what they’ve got. At that point we need to make a decision.

Now, you can look at what Fredrik did for Crown Royal, and obviously that’s a remarkable piece of filmmaking that we’re never going to be able to do at Grey. I completely understand this, since I came from the world of automotive, where we had humongous budgets and I worked with a lot of the best directors of the world.  And that has really helped since I came to Grey. I now have those relationships with production companies, and some of the directors like Fredrik, whom I used to shoot a lot with back at Chiat.  These relationships help when the economy is in the shape it is, and you are getting budgets that are smaller, and at the same time we’re working to improve the agency’s creative reputation. 

How would you best describe the changes you’ve made so far?

I have a lot of digital and non-traditional work in my background. But the trick with coming to Grey has been to come here and not change everything solely for the sake of change. Grey has been highly successful for over 90 years.  I wanted to hold on to what was working, and change what wasn’t.  And what wasn’t, as it turned out, was the creative product.  It was outdated, highly traditional and unremarkable—and this at a time when clients are begging to break through and get noticed.  Grey was truly in danger of becoming obsolete from a creative standpoint.  So part of the change I’ve been trying to make is building out the digital capabilities.  For example, we now handle one of the largest online advertisers in the US, E-trade.  We’re also now serving as digital agency of record for many of our clients, which is something new over the past year and a half.  And I’ve hired people like Don McKinney, who used to run Tequila, the digital arm of TBWA\Chiat\Day, and Todd Tilford, who helped run Crispin’s digital department. 

We’ve set it up where there is no digital or traditional—it’s just the creative department.  If you’re in it, you’re in it; we’ve removed all the labels and literally torn down all the walls.  We’ve tasked everyone with learning the skills they need to create and execute holistic campaigns, and are even offering classes and mentoring.  We want a department full of hybrids—critical, conceptual thinkers who also fully understand the role and importance of the digital landscape.

What are you telling your people to help them stay, focus, motivated and positive?

That’s a hard question to answer.  It is pretty dark out there right now. I think there are two things that never fail as motivators. The first is money, the second is great work. Since there’s not a lot of the first thing going around, I would flip the order and say the first thing is the work. I think people are highly motivated when they’re close to doing really great work. So the first thing you do is find projects which have that potential, get those in people’s hands and let them go at it. We have 55 clients here at Grey, and there are lots of opportunities with them for really great projects, despite the slowdowns in spending.

I’m also encouraging people here to do two things: If it’s just advertising that motivates you, then go find a client. And I don’t really care if they’re going to pay us that much or not. If you can do something cool, and we don’t have to throw a lot of money at it, then let’s do it. Let’s partner with clients that maybe in the past an agency such as ours wouldn’t partner with, and let’s do more pro bono work.  And I'm encouraging everyone to do something outside of advertising. If you’ve been wanting to paint, write longer forms, whatever it happens to be, then take some time and do it.

It’s hard right now, when you read the papers, to stay motivated and not question the future of our industry.  I do believe—and I’m an optimist by nature—that this current environment and the recession we’re facing is going to fundamentally change the industry, probably more so than how people might think. 

How’s that going to take shape?

My prediction is that downsizing will continue, and the industry will be a lot smaller at the end of all this. And I think that the production community will change greatly. With the proliferation of all this digital media, the need for super high-end quality isn’t nearly what it used to be.  When you’re watching something on a small screen, it will be more the storytelling that will prevail over anything else. I think the entire production community will have to change and adjust to that. The good news is—and I’ll throw another clichéd thought out there—that the best ideas will win, as they always have. I don’t think that has ever changed.  But I do think we are looking at a smaller industry at the end of this.

Now, that might sound pessimistic, but it’s really not.  I believe that this is actually the most exciting time to be doing what we’re doing. When I look back to when I started—and even over the past five years—there was so few options available to us. There really were the four mediums—print, outdoor, radio and TV—and that was the assignment. I think about that time and I compare it to today, where every assignment is so fascinating and challenging. There are so many different mediums, and different ways to communicate.  You’re able to target a niche audience now in ways you never could in the past.  It’s really fascinating. I love it.