R/GA

Summary

• Founder and Executive Chairman: Bob Greenberg
• Global CEO: Sean Lyons
• Founded in 1977, the agency has been a pioneer at the intersection of technology, design, and marketing with work spanning web, mobile, social, retail, product innovation, brand development, and business consulting for the connected age
• R/GA has more than 2,000 employees globally with offices across the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia-Pacific
• Is part of The Interpublic Group of Companies (NYSE: IPG), one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing services organizations
• Some main clients are McDonald’s, Samsung, Nike, Banana Republic, Shiseido, Sephora, LEGO, Ubisoft, eBay Fashion, Mercedes-Benz, Uber, ESPN, PepsiCo, Cosmopolitan, Jordan, Emirates, Google, Guinness, Hyundai, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, and Unilever
• In over 40 years of history, R/GA accumulated more than 3000 international awards, with several winnings every year in the most prestigious categories

R/GA

R/GA is a pioneer agency at the intersection of technology, design, and marketing, part of The Interpublic Group of Companies (NYSE: IPG), with offices across the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia-Pacific.

R/Greenberg Associates was officially founded in 1977 by the siblings Richard and Robert Greenberg, with an initial investment of $15000. Before the opening of R/GA, Richard was a designer and Robert was producer and cameraman.

Because of a certain belief and passion for numerology, their business model had to be reinvented or restructured every 9 years. In this process, the company acted like a computer-assisted filmmaker, then moved to a digital studio, then to an interactive advertising agency, passed to an advertising agency with a digital focus, and, in 2012, started services in brand consulting, campaigns, and product innovations.

From 1977 until 1985 R/GA acted as a design company focused on video production, motion graphics, and live-action films, including services like trailers, opening title sequences, films’ promotions, and special effects. R/GA was a pioneer at computer-assisted production processes. Some movie titles that present R/GA’s services are Superman (1978), Alien, Ghostbusters, Xanadu, Beverly Hills Cops, Zelig, Predator, The World According to Garp, Weird Science, and the Altered States.

In 1986 the company reinvented its services and started acting like a digital studio, on the field of media combination, uniting television commercials, print, and feature films into one unique roof. Until 1994 the company produced around 400 films, like Dirty Dancing, The Untouchables, Die Hard, Seven, Goodfellas, Braveheart, Home Alone, and Silence of the Lambs, and more than 4000 television commercials, for example, the Diet Coke’s and Rebook’s. In 1986 the company won a technical Academy Award and, in that same year, Richard Greenberg, one of the founders, left R/GA to pursue other paths. Almost 10 years later, in 1993, they created the R/GA Interactive, as a part of R/GA Digital Studios, searching for a bigger scope of services, including original interactive content.

Is in the period of 1994 till 2004 that the company transformed itself into an interactive advertising agency. One of their first clients in that modality was IBM that asked R/GA to redesign their 5-million-page website. From that, the agency started developing websites to other brands like Levi as well as Ellis Island Museum. From 2001 to 2003 R/GA expanded, even more, their service’s models and list of clients, including Nike and Verizon. The company also did retail practices and built location-based interactive displays.

In the fourth nine-year cycle, from 2004 to 2011, the agency changed its business model to provide exactly what its clients needed in the new digital era. The company expanded globally, inaugurating offices all over the world, and brought a bunch of new offers of services, like brand development and social, mobile, and digital advertising. They developed the Nike+ platform and attracted a list of new clients like Taco Bell, Nokia, Ameriprise Financial, L’Oréal Paris, MasterCard, and Walmart.

From 2011 and up until now the company began to act like a consultant, providing services like event marketing and data visualization, that were announced at first by the New York Times. The company also helps its clients in the development of product innovation. In 2012 the global CEO and founder Robert Greenberg thought that the company had become too large to manage and decided to split it apart into 150 people groups. He also prefers to hire new people that can expand his business globally through new offices instead of acquiring already existing business.

R/GA Brazil

• Fabiano Coura, SVP Managing Director Brazil
• Saulo Rodrigues, VP Creative Director
• Marcio Oliveira, VP Business Development
• Edson Sueyoshi, VP Technology and Production

R/GA São Paulo, located in Vila Madalena with 1200m2, led by Fabiano Coura has implemented a fresh model in the Brazilian market, with world-class creative storytellers working side by side with innovative product designers and technologists. Since R/GA, São Paulo opened in 2010, the office has helped propel R/GA’s expansion into Latin America. Our Brazilian office has also won numerous prestigious awards and is now established as a full-service networked office, creating innovative work for top local and global brands.

The office space was built on the concept of "Connected Spaces", previously tested at R/GA's headquarters in New York, making it the most connected office in the world. Combining architecture, engineering, technology, data, and behavior analysis, the environment was entirely designed to provide greater collaboration and integration between the teams.

Employing intelligent and innovative construction systems, infrastructure, and design with a people-focused approach are some of the premises of the office architecture, which result in greater engagement and cooperation between the teams.

Entering the agency, visitors are not faced with a reception, but with a free space, a café, and a grandstand, which promote interaction and informal meetings. The visitor is greeted by a check-in system that connects them directly with the person they are looking for at the agency through the Slack app. There is also the Journey Display, a communication platform composed of four panels connected with the other offices of the network showing everything that is being created in real-time.

In addition to receiving office visitors, content playlists, all created internally, still provide various services to the team and visitors, providing traffic information, public transportation status, FutureVision content (global R/GA trends area), Google Trends in real-time, and even the menus of neighborhood restaurants.

To increase collaboration between the teams, small automated meeting rooms were created and called huddle rooms, designed to function as mini isolated capsules for work and communication.

Scandinavian furniture, together with canvases spread around the agency, was designed to be mobile, promoting flexibility and fluidity so that space fits the needs defined by the teams. The project also received exquisite acoustic treatment, with a floor made in Brazil to order using a non-toxic rubber imported from Germany.

In New York, the experience provided by the new space has already begun to generate results, increasing the retention of more than 800 employees and leading the company to create a new service offering, called Connected Design, which last year already generated additional revenue $ 20 million, helping the agency to further diversify its sources of revenue.

Services

R/GA is a full-service company that works with Transformation at Speed, accelerating the brand’s growth through innovative and agile changes. That way of service helps to continue business in a world that is constantly changing, with new disruptive technologies, the declined influence of traditional media, direct-to-consumer models, and another strength that redefine the business’ market.

Business Transformation: that service is ideal for C-Level companies to evolve through the development of strategies to implement a future vision of the business. However, R/GA already transformed every type of company, developing new digital products, services, and brands in a way that is unique, not like any other concurrent. Some successful cases are the reinvention of AdventHealth’s medical assistance, the development of Walmart’s retail business, and the support to PepsiCo in creating more disruptive brands and launching them faster into the market. This is not only a consulting service, but it also helps to build artifacts that put the necessary changes into practice rapidly so that it can be tested, understood, and adapted. This consulting model is based on results instead of workload and selling hours. For every project, R/GA builds a new consulting team from scratch, with a diversity of talents, skills, perspectives, and specializations.

Experience Transformation: to be able to win a customer that has an infinity of possibilities and 24/7 access to information is essential to present high-level experiences. The digital era revolutionized the way that people discover and buy products and services: the companies must revolutionize their business model as well. Some successful cases are the integration of Nike+ and Apple Watch to transform the app data into extra motivation, the development of Next, a Bradesco’s fully digital bank, and the creation of the first world experience in a connected cycling studio for Equinox. To sum up, this service provides a transformation in the way that the brands communicate with customers, putting them in the center of every action taken.

Marketing Transformation: the consumers are spending less and less time in contact with traditional ad-funded media, a vehicle resistant to the brand-building model of marketing. Nowadays presenting only one creative idea alone is not enough, the brands need systematic storytelling based on data, so the client really understands and connects with the company purpose and services in the right platform, in the right language, and in the right way. R/GA makes sure that their clients-brands don’t ever sacrifice human empathy for marketing efficiency. Some successful cases are the launching of products through video games for Samsung, the TikTok campaign for Nike to get young athletes attention, and the Shiseido talk about aging through visual stimulation and 3D facial data. In order to create brand campaigns and reinforce them through social media and tell the real story of that product, R/GA can work with multiple partners, collaborating with other agencies, as well as integrating teams from R/GA and their clients, aiming agile and efficient deliveries.

R/GA Ventures

R/GA Ventures is an Acceleration program launched in 2013, the first one outside R/GA’s New York office,  that goes beyond capital investments and allows traditional lead companies to bring an innovative spirit into their business, exploring new technologies and trends. This is possible because R/GA connects companies with startups, so they both can draw a combined path to the future. In that way entrepreneurs find support and opportunity to enlarge their business with agile methods, gaining even more relevance in the market by showing that a traditional company can also be innovative and bring exceptional solutions. This service has already been provided to companies in several segments, such as sports, commerce, media, hospitality, marketing, IoT, infrastructure, and pet care, creating a network that connects all these types of services with the startups that better fit their goals. The Venture’s Studio provides its clients with an analysis of emerging techs, consumer behavior, and business models through research, networking, and events. They also have a Data Studio, that thinks the best strategies and explore data value exchange to connect companies and emerging technology-enabled data startups selected from across the globe.

One example of a solution that was developed by Ventures, in a partnership between R/GA, a technology startup, and the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas Hotel, is Rose, an interactive voice experience. The chatbot helps guests in several services, like make reservations in restaurants and spas, buy tickets for events or excursions, give information about the hotel’s services including secret items on the menu and sales. More than 1000 conversations were developed to promote an efficient interaction between Rose and guests. The voice was used to create a deeper connection and intimacy with clients: the brand comes to life. It’s a different form of thinking about how the brand expresses itself.

R/GA and their technology startups partners have also been developing blockchain solutions, a database system that does not belong to any company and search for a new dynamic in the data field, commerce and privacy.

Future Vision

Is the R/GA blog, inside their website, that publishes contents about the business world in several formats, like Perspective, texts that clarify the vision and analysis of some specialists, Conversations, a series of podcasts, Trends, and Magazines.

The company also updates frequently their Medium blog and the Design team has their own Medium to publish content more specifics in this area.

With the Covid-19 crisis and the implementation of home-office due to social isolation, R/GA created the “Future Vision: Best Practices”, a series of contents that shows their strategies since that model of work was forced implemented, in order to help other companies in this process. This is a collaborative initiative made by the company’s strategic teams all over the world that bring practical tips on adaptation, collaboration, creativity, and technology, so the companies can keep operating, producing, and effectively communicating. The project was initially shared only with R/GA’s clients but, after a while, was available for all public because the company believes that, in this difficult moment, all collaboration is more than welcomed. In the handout R/GA also affirms that this is not the moment or an opportunity to capitalize and the brands shouldn’t be linked opportunistically to moments of crisis.

R/GA New York

A project done by Foster + Partners brought several R/GA’s New York offices together into a single location, transforming it into the headquarters of the agency. This head office is distributed in two loft floors within the new Manhattan West development. In order to fit the goal of a collaborative environment, the 165,000 square-foot warehouses were fully restructured resulting in floors that are bigger than a football field, with room for more than 1000 people. Space promotes a largely digital experience for the visitors and staff, with monitors all over the place that bring information about the company worldwide. The project also aimed to blend these digital experiences with face-to-face connections, creating rooms that are optimized for the use of video-conferences but also spaces that promote social interaction between employees, clients, or visitors. The central focus of the plan was the collaborative form of work, with several spaces organized around a dining area and coffee bar. The workplaces were made with the purpose of being flexible, in a structure and arrangement that can be changed according to different needs. The two floors are connected by a town-hall-style staircase, also to stimulate meetings and interaction. The offices also include prototype and specialist content studios and a technology accelerator space, where partners companies or startups allocate part of their team to create innovative solutions with or for R/GA, developing new technology and products.

Space was the main subject of filmmaker Gary Hustwit’s Workplace documentary, which shows how the company is rethinking its physical spaces to stimulate collaboration and creative thinking.