ARTICLES

Dynamic Duo
Marketing Magazine
By Eve Lazarus

Chris Staples is Messier. Ian Grais is Gretzky. Together, the Rethink partners keep their agency's winning record alive

It's 9 a.m. at Coast Mountain Productions in Vancouver's Yaletown and I suspect Chris Staples and the Rethink team-creative partners Andy Linardatos and Martin Kann, account director Jason Holley and Lynn Bonham, a broadcast producer-have already been here awhile.

They're engrossed in the final edit of A&W Restaurant television spots and they are expecting the client in an hour. There's no sign of Staples the manic, pacing creative director. This morning, his lanky frame is instead folded up into a leather couch and he's taking an advisory role, throwing out the odd comment here and there.

For now it's mostly Linardatos and Kann's show.

These current A&W ads are the culmination of months of work&\#150;of focus groups, of peer review&\#150;and it's evident that the Rethink team has seen them all dozens, if not hundreds, of times. But, while they are still rough cuts and in need of tweaking, there's a confidence in the room that the ads are otherwise dead-on strategy.

Staples and Ian Grais, co-creative director and partner, have agreed to let me follow them around for the day, but right now Grais is back at the office working on Maclean's magazine's campaign. Both he and Staples involve themselves in every account, but usually one or the other takes the lead.

Tom Shepansky, the other partner in the Rethink triad (all three left Palmer Jarvis DDB to start Rethink in 1999), arrives at the edit session at 9:30. He adds his comments to the mix, some shots are changed, others are discussed ad nauseum, and by the time A&W's vice-president of marketing, Don Maunders, arrives, everyone is ready.

Now it's Staples' show. Maunders is placed on the couch, directly in front of the screen and flanked by Kann on the left and Shepansky to the right. Staples has moved to an armchair where he can watch Maunders watch the spots.

Staples cautions Maunders against "edit shock," but otherwise seems happy to let the ads sell themselves. Maunders watches each ad a half-dozen times. He has a few concerns that Staples has clearly anticipated.

It's all about Plan B, Staples says later.

"My whole philosophy in life is just anticipating what they are going to say," he says. "There was no flim-flam today. People always say you are selling ads, and if that was true then nothing would ever get approved because you can't sell anything to anybody if you don't believe it. All I really try to do is explain things&\#150;clients just want to know your thinking process."

While Staples may be creative director, he is also half suit. I've heard from former employees, employers and clients that he can sell ice to Eskimos, that he's a born persuader, that he's a true believer. I don't doubt it. Over the years I've interviewed him dozens of times, reported on his industry presentations, watched him load up on awards and now seen him in action with a client. The guy is enormously charismatic, he's almost childlike in his enthusiasm, and he's, well, likeable.

"I remember when I was working at PJ he'd walk into a room and he'd sit down and he'd start talking to the client about what they had to do," says Marc Stoiber, now creative director at Grey Advertising in Toronto and a PJ DDB alumni. "It was unbelievable, it was like religion. Everybody thinks that Chris Staples is this supreme creative guy and he's not. Chris Staples is like Mark Messier. He clears the rink of opponents. He pushes everybody around, gets them softened up, beats them up and then Ian Grais skates in like Wayne Gretzky. Ian is the artist and he will score. Together they are unbeatable, because Chris is the ultimate persuader and Ian is the ultimate artist."

A few days before the editing session, Maunders tells me that Staples is "a fairly intense guy with great passion for what he's doing," and that he's always on the point strategically. "Even if he doesn't agree with you, he is always tremendous in terms of his energy and passion. He is a very powerful salesman of his ideas and position and doesn't take them lightly."

While clients use words like "effervescent" and "flamboyant" to describe Staples, fellow creatives say he has "high energy" and call him "fair and just." Friends say he is both "funny and spontaneous" and "modest and shy." Grais, on the other hand, seems a polar opposite. Former colleagues and employers describe him as "sensitive," "meticulous about his work" and "a quiet craftsman."

Says Stoiber: "Ian is very much an intellectual and Chris is a student of advertising. All I know is I'd like to model myself after Chris and I would like to hire people like Ian."
Later that day, I comment that Staples' cell phone rang only twice during the morning&\#150;he checked phone messages once. He says he's not nearly as compulsive as he used to be, but he still returns phone calls at lightning speed.

"I got 200 voice mails a day at PJ. At Rethink I get 10," he says. "Rethink has made me a lot less intense and neurotic about some of these things."

"Sometimes," adds Grais.

"Sometimes," agrees Staples.

"Ian on the other hand, used to be Mr. Calm."

"I used to be so Zen."

Grais has gone from working on creative projects all day at PJ DDB to spending a third of his time on management and strategy. "It's certainly more intense for me, but it's very rewarding," he says.

Adds Staples: "We are very aware of our individual strengths and weaknesses and we chose each other not because we were the best friends in the world&\#150;we rarely socialize&\#150;but we realize that without this particular mix we wouldn't be nearly as successful."

Their backgrounds are also yin and yang. Grais, 36, was born in Winnipeg. His father, a civil engineer, moved the family to West Vancouver when he was five. He excelled at drafting in high school, then took economics at the University of British Columbia. "I hated economics, hated UBC," he says. "But it's funny because all that learning, all that economics naturally percolates into business strategy now."

Grais has lived away from Vancouver only once to study at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. and take a job "in a crappy agency" there for a brief period. He returned home in 1993 and eventually started working at Palmer Jarvis.

Grais and Jennifer, his wife of 10 years, and daughters Madeleine, six, and Lauren, 18 months, live in West Vancouver. He takes the bus to work, passing the time sketching portraits of fellow commuters. "I'm a big believer in making the form fit, whatever your limitations are. I didn't have any time, I didn't have any space, so I needed to come up with a form that works."

Two years ago he had a showing in a small art gallery of 400 of his drawings.

Staples, 41 and looking maybe 30, grew up in Devon, Alta., population 1,200. Both parents were school teachers and he was surrounded on a weekly basis by everything from Atlantic Monthly to Harper's and Newsweek magazines. But instead of being intrigued by the editorial, he was fascinated with the ads. Four years at Carleton University's journalism program led to a copywriting job with Frances Williams and Johnson in Edmonton. They hired him on a letter he wrote titled "10 reasons why you should take a chance on a green kid like me."

After three years and at age 26, he was named creative director at Intergroup Advertising, working on national accounts like Esso. Then, after visiting Expo 86, he and Steve Rosell, his partner for the past 18 years, fell in love with Vancouver.

"I came to Vancouver with my terrible book and showed it around all of the agencies," he says. "I got the door slammed everywhere except at Palmer Jarvis."

Staples says he took a 50% pay cut, went from being VP and creative director to copywriter, paid for his own move, loaded up a U-Haul and drove out to Vancouver.

"Two years later, Ron Woodall came in and looked around and said, 'Who can be creative director here?' He said, 'This guy can talk in front of a big room, maybe it should be him.' I was 32 years old and I had no good ads in my book."

An avid traveller, in the last year Staples has been to Greece, London, Paris, Mexico, New York, Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

He may also have the city's largest collection of snow globes&\#150;the tacky plastic kind&\#150;from his travels. He and Rosell, an elementary school teacher, now have over 200 in their Yaletown home.

Both Grais and Staples at one time wanted to be architects. They jointly designed the office space and want to break down the barriers between advertising, art and industrial design.

"A lot of times advertising demands so much less than you have to give," says Grais.

To that end, the team brewed up Rethink Beer, which is now well established, and Grais has designed a light shaped like a traffic cone.

Says Staples: "We don't do these things as stunts, we do them because one of us will have a great idea. It takes your mind in a different direction, it gives you new skills and you learn all sorts of things that you can apply to your business and your clients. The beer was one of the most amazing experiences of my career."

There are 12 creatives out of a staff of 30, and of those Heather Vincent, the sole female, Linardatos, Mark Hesse, Staples and Grais all came from PJ DDB.

Says Grant Fraggolosh, who left Rethink to become creative director at Young & Rubicam in Vancouver: "It's all about the work. They go out of their way to really give you the opportunity to do the best work that you can do. The great thing about that shop is there are so many creative people&\#150;more than PJ has. It's completely out of whack with the rest of the agencies."

Grais and Staples are co-creative directors on every account, but have different roles. Staples is a creative/ account person hybrid, while Ian takes on a more creative director/art director function.

"Chris is always ahead of the curve, and I'm more like the absent-minded professor, I like to be behind the curve," says Grais.

"No, it's good," interjects Staples. "You've got somebody looking back and somebody looking forward."

Media menu

Ian Grais always has six books on the go. This day he has Noam Chomsky's 9-11, a book on understanding your children, a Saul Bellows novel, a book on post-modernism and a couple of art and design books.

Magazines: Doesn't read them.

Movies: "I see movies as often as possible. I love all kinds of films&\#150;foreign films, Japanese cinema." Can't give a favourite movie off the top of his head, but says Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is in the top 10.

Music: "I was very influenced by my older brother. He is a drummer and carpenter, and when I was 12 and he was 17 he had over 1,000 records."

Chris Staples, a self-professed pop culture junkie who channel hops through television programs, asks if anyone caught "Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People" the night before. Right, like who'd admit to it.

Movies: He goes to a movie at least once a week and says Double Indemnity is his favourite.

Magazines: Can't walk past a magazine stand without buying at least five. "I'm a sucker for first editions of any magazine&\#150;Rosie&\#150; whatever the magazine is. It's one of the reasons that I love working on Maclean's," he says. "I read everything from design magazines to architectural magazines to Entertainment Weekly to really obscure magazines like Nest."

Last Book: Prey, by Michael Crichton. Loves pulpy best-sellers. "I've always got something on the go."