The Ad Agency to End All Ad Agencies

Our challenge is, How do we maintain this culture as we get bigger? Every October 18, we go away and reinvent the company for the people who are in it that day -- not for the people in the past. This isn't a company that lives on the great heroic deeds of how we went to Madison Avenue and bought the company. That's irrelevant. What's relevant are the people in it today, their ambitions for it, and how they can make it work.

A lot of people say this is Utopia. It is a different way of working, but it's not some kind of hippie, freeloading operation. For example, we have two reviews a year. And the reviews are tough. Before we hire new people, each department head has to decide if they need another person. They then find a series of candidates who have to be interviewed by at least four other people from other departments. It's very time-consuming. But if you're going to give away a piece of the company to somebody, you want to make sure you get the right person.

And our advertising has to work. Our clients are tough. They're big businesses here; we don't have any small clients. So the advertising has to work -- and it does. It's more resonant. It goes further and deeper in the way it communicates.