Riney Agency Looks Ahead to Life After Gallo

He wanted a name that didn’t sound like a wine cooler. So the ad agency chief sat down at his desk, thumbed through the San Francisco telephone directory, and stopped at a spot in the “B” section.

There it was. The first name that caught his eye: Bartles.

Hmmm. Something was still missing. So the ad executive continued flipping through the phone book. This time, he stopped in the “J” portion. And the finger of fate stopped at the name Jameson. “That just didn’t sound quite right,” said Hal Riney, chairman of the San Francisco ad firm Hal Riney & Partners. He wanted a slightly more unusual name. “So I changed that to Jaymes.”

That is how two of the best-known names in today’s advertising were born. That fortunate find was more than five years ago. Since then the business of running an ad agency has become far more complex for Riney, who has not only created some advertising legends, but who seems to be fast becoming one himself.

While the name Hal Riney probably doesn’t ring a bell for some, who hasn’t seen at least one of the 150 Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler commercials he created for E&J; Gallo Winery? And his ads for clients such as Perrier and Security Pacific National Bank have also been memorable.

A recent Perrier ad, for example, shows the countryside of France with a man peacefully tending to his gaggle of geese. And a Security Pacific Bank ad he made shows a kid expecting to be punished when he comes home with a bad report card. But instead, his father takes him up in the attic and shows him a lousy report card that he once brought home.

Riney is also known for helping to turn around the overall image of Gallo. Despite its position as the state’s biggest winery, Gallo’s advertising seemed to reinforce its image as a producer of wines that you wouldn’t serve at a fancy dinner.

Riney worked hard to undo that. His ads portrayed Gallo as a company that wins the highest awards in the wine industry. Another Gallo ad shows a family happily toasting the bride and groom at a wedding. The detail-minded Riney even selected the music for that Gallo commercial, written by the same composer who wrote the score of “Chariots of Fire.” Riney’s grandfatherly voice narrates many of his television commercials.

Second Thoughts Remain

But there’s a hint of anticipation in Riney’s off-camera voice these days. And that may be because his agency is at a crossroads.

It lost nearly half of its business when it resigned the Gallo account last December. But next month it could pick up a huge block of new business from one of the nation’s biggest advertisers--General Motors. Last week, Hal Riney & Partners was named one of three finalists for the account of GM’s newly created Saturn division, which plans to make compact cars at a Tennessee complex by 1990.

(The other finalists are the New York ad firm N.W. Ayer, which created the current “We do it like you’d do it,” ad campaign for Burger King, and the Boston-based ad agency Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, which created those Wang commercials that are filled with technical computer jargon.)

Riney’s decision to dump the $70-million Gallo account still nags at him. “I continue to have second thoughts about that,” Riney said in an interview last week. But he insists that he has no desire to get the account back. Gallo is a notoriously difficult client, demanding much of its ad agency’s time.

“I have no hard feelings about Gallo,” said Riney, who had the account for seven years. “They paid us well and made us visible, but we, in turn, had a very positive effect on that company’s image.”

Similarly, Riney helped put the name of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream in the news. But when he did, the reaction was not all favorable. Last year Riney decided to use convicted Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman in a tongue-in-cheek ad for Dreyer’s ice cream. The idea was to use “unbelieveable” spokesmen to promote Dreyer’s “unbelievable” product.

Bought Out the Business

“We were expecting and hoping for a certain amount of controversy,” said Riney. When Ehrlichman appeared in the spot, however, Dreyer’s received dozens of protests and quickly yanked the ad. Nonetheless, the company pronounces itself satisfied with the overall results. Sales have nearly doubled since the spots began, according to a spokesman.

But the most important thing on Riney’s mind these days isn’t ice cream. It’s Saturn. In a bid to pick up such big national clients, Riney recently opened branch offices in New York and Los Angeles. That national growth, however, is what Riney says got him into hot water with former client Gallo, which disapproved of the agency making bids for other large clients. Now, Riney wants to replace the lost Gallo business with Saturn. And in the process, he hopes his firm can help put an end to what he calls the “pathetic” state of new car advertising.

“Auto advertising is extremely bland and invisible,” Riney said. “Considering all the money that is spent on it, that’s a crime.”

In the ad business, the chances of a relatively small ad agency--with annual billings of less than $200 million--picking up a big auto account have historically been about as likely as snow in Sudan. Of course, Riney’s firm wasn’t always that size. Until 1986, it was the San Francisco office of the giant New York ad conglomerate, Ogilvy Group. Then Riney bought the office--which he managed, took along its clients and renamed it Hal Riney & Partners.

With independence, however, comes headaches. While small agencies may have top-notch creative staffs, they rarely have the media buying power and the international offices that big clients such as auto makers demand.

Last year, however, Nissan broke that mold by handing its $150-million account to the Los Angeles ad firm Chiat/Day, which at the time had annual billings of less than $300 million. And now General Motors has narrowed a list of 50 prospective ad agencies to three--of which Riney’s is by far the smallest. By 1990, Saturn plans to spend more than $100 million annually to advertise its cars.

Right now, Riney’s firm is gaining some auto advertising experience by creating ads for the Sterling, a British car imported by Austin Rover Cars of North America. The ads, which rarely show the car, mostly feature people discussing the Sterling as a good investment.

Riney knows that winning Saturn will likely cost him the Sterling account, with annual billings of $20 million. But if Saturn goes to another agency, this could be a very bad year for Riney. “We won’t lose any money,” he said, “but we won’t make much either.” If the agency walks away with the Saturn account, however, Riney’s firm would suddenly be a contender in advertising’s big leagues.

“Selecting Riney would probably be the smartest move GM could make,” said Jay Chiat, chairman of Chiat/Day. “Not every one of his ads is a winner, but every year there are several of his campaigns that make you stop and say, ‘Gosh, I wish I’d done that.’ Hal’s always striving to do great work.”

But some former employees say Riney is hardly the soft-spoken fellow that he sounds like in his commercials. Rather, they know him as a demanding employer who constantly puts workers on the defensive. “He has an ego the size of the Transamerica pyramid,” one former employee said.

Riney brushes off such comments. “Sure, it may seem like I have an ego problem, but most of us in the creative business are actually plagued with insecurities,” he said. “The thing the drives us on is that fear that we’re really no damned good.”

Riney has at least proven that he’s good. Perhaps even among the best. “As an American copywriter, Hal has no equal,” said Andrew Berlin, who formerly worked for Riney, and who is now a partner in a rival San Francisco ad firm, Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein. “But what he still has to prove is that he can build a big, national agency.”

Some in the industry speculate that Riney is just trying to build up his agency in preparation for a sale. “Naw,” Riney said. “I’m just trying to get back some of the (Gallo) business we lost.”

Several employees at the firm say they’ve noticed that Riney has cut his hours since he became a father last year. And there is even some talk that Riney is eyeing early retirement. “I’ll never retire,” said the 55-year-old Riney, with a grin. “I don’t know what I’d do.”

If he picks up the Saturn business, Riney knows that he will probably have to work harder than he ever has. And Riney also knows that paging through phone books for ad campaigns probably won’t keep General Motors happy for very long.

Of course, he confesses, if his Bartles & Jaymes characters came out of a phone book, his Gallo wine campaign--the one with the musical wedding scene--came out of desperation. “We were short on time and kept having disagreements with the client. That’s when we decided to go with all music and no words. We figured if the ads didn’t say anything at all, we’d have nothing to argue about.”