The agency's U.S. headcount grew slightly last year to 1,075, up
from 995 on Jan. 1, 2013. The big growth came in its Los Angeles
office, which swelled from three employees to 40. It's there, in a
15,000-square-foot space in the Playa Vista neighborhood, and in
the New York and London offices where much of the editing and
creative work for TV production will take place.
R/GA did broadcast-quality production work for Samsung, Beats by
Dr. Dre and Bailey's last year, according to Mr. Greenberg. Having
an agency that can "move at the speed of culture" is key, said
Beats By Dre Exec VP-Marketing Omar Johnson. The brand -- which has
worked with R/GA since 2011 -- accounted for 72% of the $99+
headphone market in the U.S. during the five-week holiday period
(Black Friday- Christmas week), according to NPD's Weekly Tracking
Service.
Mr. Johnson pointed to "Hear What You Want," a campaign that
debuted at the end of last year with spots featuring NBA player
Kevin Garnett and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick,
who mute unwelcome noise with their headphones. More spots
iterating on that idea, including one featuring a soccer star, are
in the pipeline.
"We haven't created ads -- we've built platforms," Mr. Johnson
said.
The agency is also developing services such as its
business-transformation practice, which Mr. Greenberg describes as
a consultancy to compete with the likes of McKinsey or Accenture.
For the AARP, it built a social platform called Life
Reimagined, where people can find content to help them plan for
retirement. The group also recently won Volvo's business as its
digital-strategy agency.
R/GA's digital business continues to fire on all cylinders. Its
U.S. mobile revenue jumped to $60 million last year from $40
million in 2012. For spice-maker McCormick, it built a product
called FlavorPrint that serves up recipe suggestions based on input
from users on what foods they like and ingredients and cookware
they have. And for Nike, it pushed out a
redesigned Nike.com with better e-commerce integration, which
yielded a 33% increase in sales on the site within eight months of
its launch.