Contemporary Marketing 16th Edition by Louis Boone,David Kurtz

Exercise 12

The popular image of an advertising agency is of a vibrantly creative place without much corporate structure, where copywriters, artists, and executives enjoy free rein, an anything-goes culture, and freedom to come and go at will. That picture usually doesn't include a list of rules employees must follow, such as punching a time clock, logging work time in precise 15-minute intervals, paying a fine for tardiness, getting closed out of meetings if late, and going home at precisely 6 PM. But those are some of the strictly enforced practices at The Richards Group, a successful independent 36-year-old Dallas agency recently named one of Advertising Age's Best Places to Work.
If the rules sound repressive, Stan Richards, the company's 78-year-old founder, will admit they aren't for everybody. One of his former writers says, "The genius of the place is completely counterintuitive." But that genius has produced a steady stream of memorable campaigns for clients like Chick-fil-A, Motel 6, and Corona beer, and it has kept more than two dozen creative group heads on board with Richards for an average tenure of 17 years.
Life at the agency isn't all about the rules, either. Richards learned early in his advertising design education at New York's Pratt Institute that creativity can come from any source, but that expressing it requires meticulous hard work and tolerates few shortcuts. Since founding the agency, he has relaxed a few rules, however, like the dress code, and he no longer personally approves every piece of work, although he still encourages face time with colleagues and clients over emails. And there are perks-though fancy titles aren't among them. In fact, there are no titles; instead, every employee is expected to be "a leader in every situation." Those who have the longest tenure get the best parking spots and the desks nearest the windows, but any of Richards' 650 employees can take the company's private plane to client meetings. And after 20 years with the company, they can take their families on a free trip anywhere in the world, even as far away as the Galapagos Islands.
QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL THINKING
1. Stan Richards believes that "the way you treat your people is exactly how they treat clients." Do you agree or disagree? Explain your reasoning.
2. Evaluate Richards's belief that creativity requires hard work. Do you think this is true? Does it apply only to marketing and advertising? Why or why not?