It might be 39 years old, but there is nothing legacy about Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

See all of Ad Age's 2022 A-List winners here.

The Omnicom Group shop is about as versatile as it gets: It churns out fun, culturally smart work for the likes of brands like Doritos and Cheetos that play as well on the Super Bowl as they do on TikTok. It has advanced diversity within its ranks and was responsible for a provocative social justice effort early this year that asked what would have resulted if the insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol were Black. It has created a formidable new-business machine with its Brand Camp offering—credited with raising its revenue 66% last year.

And GS&P thinks beyond the screen, bringing Lunchables literally into toy stores and creating a “Daily Bugle” newsstand in New York tied to the release of "Spider-Man: No Way Home." The pitch? Client Liberty Mutual insurer can “protect what villains destroy.”

This breadth of thinking allowed the San Francisco-based agency to notch 14 new pieces of business last year, including IBM, Bic Razors and Autodesk, despite the agency turning down 76% of pitches that came its way.  The shop retained 97% of its clients last year.

Snap to Steal

A particular skill set of GS&P's is delivering multiscreen experiences. Its 2021 “#FlatMatthew” Super Bowl spot starring Matthew McConaughey, and the “It Wasn’t Me” spot for the Big Game featuring celebrity couple Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher for Frito Lay’s Doritos and Cheetos, respectively, could have stopped there.

Buy your ticket for the Ad Age A-List & Creativity Awards Gala at AdAge.com/ACGala.

Instead the Cheetos campaign extended on mobile with "Snap to Steal," the first Super Bowl TV commercial during which you could “Snap” a free product, according to GS&P. The effort required Snapchat to input every frame of the commercial into the camera’s machine learning software—all 1,440 frames, said the agency, so that when a Snapchatter held a phone up to the 60-second Super Bowl spot, the camera recognized the content and unlocked a free bag of Cheetos snacks.

“It’s so important to have an agency partner like GS&P that’s innovative," said Rachel Ferdinando, chief marketing officer and senior VP of Frito-Lay North America. "When you build that integrated partnership and go beyond transaction, that’s when the magic happens.”

The multiscreen experience is inspired by the fact that “you’ve got this captive audience and it’s the one time a year that everyone is watching the same thing, everyone from little kids to grandparents,” said Margaret Johnson, partner and chief creative officer at GS&P. “You kind of have to meet the people where they are. Not everyone is locked into the screen like Gen X or Boomers, the younger people are on their phones a lot. So, you have to make sure that you’re on those platforms too.”

GS&P continued its social media partnerships with #FlatMatthew by making people flat on TikTok, and on Snapchat it used augmented reality to place scenes from the spot in people’s living rooms, where they could buy a snack from the AR vending machine.

GS&P's Sam Adams regional Super Bowl spot “Your Cousin From Boston”—shown only in Boston and New York—crowned itself “Beer Commercial Champions” and launched merchandise commemorating the ad, which tweaked Big Game sponsor Budweiser. The merch sold out in two days. In 2020 Sam Adams saw growth for the first time in five years after the launch of the campaign; its sales were up double digits and it is now the fastest-growing craft brand, according to the agency.

The idea of bringing on the lovable yet irritating cousin from Boston was presented to the brand in GS&P’s pitch, which is something that Lesya Lysyj, chief marketing officer at Boston Beer Company, says never happens. 

“I remember we were sitting there and they presented the cousin from Boston and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have a home run from the start,’” Lysyj said. “We got a character, we got great writing, it’s really funny and connected to the brand. It was presented pretty much in its full form right at the pitch, which is very unusual.”

The “cousin” also was put to work this year by GS&P to encourage vaccination, as the character got his shot in a commercial. The payoff for viewers: Sam Adams would buy them their first beer back at the bar after they were vaccinated. The brand gave $7 via Cash App to people who posted a picture of a Band-Aid, a sticker or a vaccine card on social media with the hashtag #ShotForSam.

The agency also built on its 2020 “Not a Gun” campaign for the Courageous Conversation Global Foundation (CCGF)—an organization dedicated to improving racial equity in the country in wake of protests and racial unrest—with “What If They Were Black?” whose limited collection of airbrush-style memorial shirts, created by artists Timothy Bluitt Jr. and Cassandra Burrell, reimagined several white rioters as Black.

GSP walks the walk when it comes to diversity. Some 33% of its overall staff are people of color, as were 55% of new hires and 73% of creative hires in 2021.

This diversity clearly shows in the work: The idea of tackling pressing issues usually starts from within the agency, said Jeff Goodby, who is co-chairman. When the agency is passionate about something, such as the Jan. 6 insurrection, it finds a client “that wants to make that point with us.”

Its in-house innovation lab, GS&P Lab—whose creative technologists serve up different technology—has been a part of many campaigns. One was the “Deja Tu Huella” campaign from Cheetos featuring Bad Bunny. One facet of the campaign was a limited-edition Adidas clothing line that could be accessed only through CheetleiD.com, where your “Cheetle-covered” fingertips were required for initial access. 

GS&P's six-week program called Brand Camp brainstorms with brand and agency leaders to develop quick marketing solutions. Blackstone is Brand Camp's biggest client, through its work with companies in its portfolio, and did the program for one of its companies, Link Logistics. The Link Logistics leadership team huddled in a hotel with the agency without cell phones for two days to discuss the business and help shape and evolve the company's positioning, according to Jonny Bauer, head of brand strategy and transformation for the Blackstone. 

“I thought it felt like a very thoughtful, methodical approach that can allow the right discussions to surface with the right people,” Bauer said. 

Brand Camp also sparked an idea for client Kraft Heinz—the “Built to be Eaten” campaign for Lunchables. The popular food item and FAO Schwarz partnered to create an immersive experience for parents and kids. The “Lunchabuilds” kits sold out on the toy store website in less than two minutes. 

“It was a really interesting strategic challenge because you had to go after parents and kids and very few things in modern life, you know, are shared by parents and kids,” said Bonnie Wan, partner and head of brand strategy at GS&P.

See all of Ad Age's 2022 A-List winners here.

In 2022, GS&P followed last year’s Doritos Super Bowl commercial with another nostalgia-driven TV spot with Megan Thee Stallion and Charlie Puth taking the form of an animated songbird and fox, along with the use of Salt-N-Pepa's iconic “Push It” song. It also brought on Arnold Schwarzenegger as Zeus and Salma Hayek Pinault as his wife, Hera, in this year's BMW spot. Both commercials made it to the top 10 in USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter.