Cory Berger.
Goodby Silverstein & Partners has hired a chief growth officer for the first time in the agency's 40-year history.
Cory Berger, who also becomes associate partner, joins the San Francisco-based shop from Grey Group, where he was global chief growth officer for more than four years. He will report to president and partner Leslie Barrett and co-founder Jeff Goodby.
The need for the role came as the agency seeks to be more proactive about how it prospects new business. The agency’s founders and other executives previously approached new business organically.
“We can reach out into the community a lot better than we've been doing, and kind of know people [more] and put our names in front of people better than we've been doing,” said Goodby in an interview.
Berger joins amid a competitive new business environment for agencies, especially as clients have trimmed budgets throughout the pandemic. Despite those challenges, there has been some pick up in opportunities recently, according to consultants, who are looking to the end of this year and the beginning of 2024 for bigger creative opportunities.
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“We could talk for decades about how clients' budgets are getting smaller and paying agencies less,” Berger said. “Those are the challenges that I think all agencies face. There are plenty of big juicy accounts out there. You just have to be able to compete for them and then ultimately win. For me it's more about a competitive landscape and making sure that you're on the radar for clients when they are looking for new partners.”
Berger helped Grey achieve its biggest new business year in a decade in 2021, when it picked up clients MassMutual, Modelo, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, IHG Hotels, Activision Blizzard and Georgia Pacific.
Berger said he always had a "huge admiration" for GS&P. "When they reached out with the opportunity..it was too hard to pass up," he added.
Goodby said that there are “misconceptions” about the agency that Berger will be tasked with changing as he approaches new business opportunities. “All agencies have reputations [that they are] ‘this or that’ that they have to overcome,” Goodby said.
For GS&P, he said, they include the misguided belief that the agency is too traditional, too focused on Super Bowl ads and that it isn't sufficiently equipped to handle global clients.
Goodby said that far from being traditional, the agency was one of the first to launch a campaign using generative AI tools. Goodby himself was also on a panel at Cannes this year with OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap.
Goodby said that the agency has increased its business with half of its clients so far this year and has posted double-digit organic growth. Its clients include PepsiCo, Kraft-Heinz and Blackstone Group, and the roster has mostly stayed intact over the last year (Truly Hard Seltzer returned to the agency in June as a creative AOR client after hiring Ogilvy in January).
It's also expanding its global reach. “We're getting global assignments from PepsiCo and we're starting to think more globally than we did before,” Goodby added.
The hiring marks the latest executive move from the Omnicom Group agency, which named Barrett president in May. In September 2022, the agency also hired a new lead, Eric Solomon, for its Brand Camp offering.
Berger will be based in New York, where GS&P has been looking to expand. The office's clients include Comcast and Liberty Mutual. Earlier this year the office’s lead executive creative directors, David Suarez and Danny Gonzalez, departed the agency.
“I think the offices have their own personalities,” Goodby said. “One of the things we want to do is establish a really solid presence [in New York]. And I think we'll get the right combination of people soon going forward.”
Prior to working at Grey, Berger served as managing director of Pereira O’Dell, where he established and led the agency’s New York office.
Having that managing experience was crucial for Goodby as he searched for an executive to take on the role.
“He is going to help go after the right things and have the agency go in the right direction,” Goodby said. “The things that we decide to think about and take on are going to determine the place five years from now, 10 years from now. It's a big job. We talked to lots of people about this job, but Cory stood out because he’s a manager, he knows the job beyond just talking to people and chasing and going in the bushes. He knows that it's a profile for the company.”
