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PEOPLE 25
Tor Myhren made those talking babies famous
– and now he’s intent on putting advertising at the heart
of the cultural conversation. By Alexander Garrett
PROFILE
Grey’s prince
of pop culture
2015 WAS truly a spectacular year at
Cannes for Grey, with 113 Lions, including
21 Golds and no fewer than four Grand
Prix, a haul beyond anybody’s expectations
of an agency network once regarded
as unexciting. The spoils spanned 18
countries and 20 categories, with New
York, London and Berlin taking the top
honours. But for Tor Myhren, Grey’s chief
creative officer, the icing on the cake was
that “every time one of our agencies won,
all the others were on their feet with a
standing ovation.”
That mutual support is emblematic of the
team spirit that pervades Grey’s agencies,
says Myhren. “I think we have a very special
thing going right now. I really believe we are
the best agency in the world, by almost any
criterion. A couple of agencies at Cannes
won more awards than us, but none won
better Lions than us.”
Success in the south of France provided
further endorsement of the remarkable
Grey’s chief creative officer, Tor Myhren: “The
premium on a great creative product is at the
highest point it’s ever been in our industry”
I really believe we are
the best agency in
the world, by almost
any criterion
transformation in Grey’s reputation that
has occurred over the last seven or eight
years, masterminded by Myhren in a close
partnership with Grey’s veteran CEO Jim
Heekin. Recognition started in 2010 with
Grey New York being selected by Fast
Company as one of the 50 most innovative
companies in the world, and has culminated
in a string of Agency of the Year awards.
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Grey’s prince of
pop culture
Myhren arrived as CCO at Grey New
York in 2007 and became president three
years later, then worldwide CCO in 2013.
From the outset, no campaign did more to
put the agency on the map than the E*Trade
‘Baby’ campaign which for five years was
probably the most talked-about campaign in
North America. “I had no idea it was going
to be as big as it was,” says Myhren. “In fact
I was terrified as it was my first campaign
at Grey. I started in October and it ran in
the Super Bowl in January.” The first ad
featured poorly-produced webcam footage
of a baby talking about buying shares, a
deliberate stand-out from the customary
Super Bowl extravaganza. “A talking baby’s
been done a hundred times, but we did it
a little differently, certainly gave it a less
expected voice, and for whatever reason it
just hit like a bomb in pop culture,” reflects
Myhren. He credits client Nick Utton for
sticking with the campaign after the first
two ads.
Further waves were made with work for
NFL and DirecTV – remember the oligarch
with the miniature giraffe? But Myhren
Five minutes with Tor Myhren
WHO’S influenced you most in
your career?
WHEN you’re in search of ideas,
where do you find them?
My parents were by far the most
influential people in my life and in my
creativity. My Dad’s a businessman, my
Mom’s a social worker and a writer, so
they’re about as different as two people
can be. I learned a lot on the business
side from my Dad, and I learned a
lot from my Mom about free creative
expression. I was always into expressing
myself and what they both did was to
be incredibly supportive of whatever
creative endeavor I was getting into.
I get inspired by walking around the
streets of New York, seeing what’s going
on, seeing the fashion, going to art shows,
movies, plays.
WHAT advice would you like to
have given your younger self?
The same advice my father gave me.
He said: if you do what you love the
money will come, if you do it for money
you will never love it. I’ve always
followed that.
HOW do you spend your
downtime?
I spend a lot of time with my wife and
my daughter, she’s four years old. I am a
very avid skier – I recently went helicopter
skiing in the Canadian Rockies. But I
grew up in Colorado, so I’ve been skiing
since I was three years old. Oh, and I’m a
movie junkie.
WHERE does your name come
from?
It comes from Norway. My Dad’s family
is Norwegian – his name is Trygve, and I
guess he got to name me.
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The only way we’re
going to stay ahead
of the industry and of
the other industries
encroaching on our
livelihood is to come up
with really brave ideas
that are provocative and
break through in the
cultural conversation
picks out another award-winning campaign
– ‘Breathe Happy’ for Febreze, in which
blindfolded members of the public were
taken to squalid locations that have been
sprayed with the freshener – as a second
turning point. “That was a huge moment
because it proved to our agencies that we
can do world-class work on Procter &
Gamble. We’ve done a ton of great work for
P&G brands since.”
The measure of success is not just in
awards, though, or a stellar record on new
business. Since he pitched up on its door
step, Grey New York’s headcount has risen
from 350 to 1,100; even more remarkable,
where there were three account people for
every creative, now there is parity. “The
biggest thing we have achieved is convincing
everybody in the agency that what we sell is
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a creative product, and that’s what people
are buying from us,” says Myhren. “That
sounds super-obvious but when everybody
knows that the creative is the thing that has
to be great, it really changes the way people
go about their job.”
He created the Heroic Failure Award,
to ensure that great ideas are supported
whatever the results. He explains: “The only
way we’re going to stay ahead of the industry
and of the other industries encroaching on
our livelihood is to come up with really
brave ideas that are provocative and break
through in the cultural conversation. And to
do that, it has to be something we’ve never
seen before.”
And taking on the role of agency
president was hugely significant in the
process of building a creative culture, he
believes, by making the creative department
accountable and at the same time giving
creativity representation in the meetings
where key decisions were made. It’s a
modus Grey has since adopted as far
afield as Ecuador, one of the network’s
top Latin American offices, and London,
where CCO Nils Leonard recently became
chairman. And while the creative revolution
started in New York, the bigger challenge
– and achievement – has been to roll it out
globally. Like other major networks, Grey
has a 20-strong global creative council that
meets bi-annually to drive up the standard
of work around the world. “Ours is unique
in a few ways; we’ll talk about our biggest
new business win of the last six months,
get the team up and ask them how they did
it; or if there’s an amazing piece of work
everyone’s talking about, we want to share
the insights.” Every agency in the world is
ranked and when Heekin visits, “he only
has two pieces of paper in his hand when
he sits down with the CEO,” says Myhren,
“the P&L and the creative ranking.”
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Continued from page 27
Grey’s prince of
pop culture
It might seem a given that a creative
leader would champion the power of ideas,
but it is a theme that Myhren has addressed
with unusual clarity and articulacy, not
least in one of his two TEDx talks. “The
premium on a great creative product is
at the highest point it’s ever been in our
industry,” he argues. “If you look at the
brands that are most successful in the
world, in terms of effectively selling,
those brands are often attached to a really
buzzed-about famous campaign.” Brand
owners and CMOs cannot ignore ideas that
resonate with the public at large, regardless
of personal preferences. “I talk to clients
about the importance of both of us really
truly understanding pop culture, what’s hot
and why. It doesn’t mean you have to agree
with it, or like it, but understanding why
things are happening, why things go viral,
is super important to our business now,”
says Myhren.
Grey’s credo of ‘Famously Effective’ is
more relevant than ever says Myhren; it’s
just that the nature of fame has evolved
from being talked about in newspapers and
late-night talk shows to blogs, social media
and going viral.
In the meantime, advertising has become
a mainstream pillar of pop culture, he
believes. “We’ve tended to look at ourselves
as being on the outside looking in, but right
now the advertising industry is smack dab
in the middle of it, working hand in hand
with music, Hollywood, Bollywood, Silicon
Valley, the gaming industry. We are sitting on
boards with those people, collaborating with
them everyday. We’re incredibly influential
now. Songs you couldn’t buy for 10 million
bucks, now they’re calling us, saying we have
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a new single, we’d love it if there’s a brand
we can attach it to, because advertising is one
of the best distribution models for music.
Now we are sitting at the nexus of all those
creative industries so it is a great time to be
in advertising.”
Myhren’s own journey to contemporary
Mad Man began as a sports reporter on the
Providence Journal in Providence, Rhode
Island. He became a copywriter in his home
town of Denver, Colorado, then worked at a
couple of Los Angeles agencies, Wongdoody
and TBWA Chiat Day, before joining Leo
Burnett in Detroit, and moving on to Grey
New York.
Songs you couldn’t buy
for 10 million bucks, now
they’re calling us, saying
we have a new single, we’d
love it if there’s a brand
we can attach it to
He was drawn into advertising, he says,
by the desire to tell stories. He’s never been
shy of putting himself out there, whether that
be mimicking Sinead O’Connor, recounting
how he lost his virginity for a talk on social
media, paying a cringe-making musical video
tribute to Jim Heekin in the style of Abba’s
Fernando or recording the baby’s voice in
some of those E*trade commercials.
“I think that all comes from the fact that
really, really I have always wished I could be
a rock star,” says Myhren. “I am a terrible
singer, I have no musical skills. But to this
day I go to shows, watch and I think I would
do what that person is doing even if there
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were only five people watching. I do love to
present, get up in front of people.”
He readily admits to harbouring artistic
aspirations outside advertising and has
already made a documentary for ESPN
– City Lax: an Urban Lacrosse Story.
Film-making and writing fiction are in his
sights, but for now, advertising is where
he’s happy to be. “Many have predicted the
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death of advertising, but it’s been incredibly
resilient, and I think that’s because of the
people and the unique talent we have to
tell compelling stories in a concise and
digestible way. When you step outside our
industry and you see other people trying
to do that it’s tough. It is the people that
make this industry so great and that’s what
keeps me interested.”