"The story I always like to tell is that my job as a creative is 'Every day, I have a baby that's an idea,'" Smith said. "I go to a meeting, and I put that baby on the table, and 12 people hit it with sticks. My job as a writer is to come up with the baby, and my job as a creative director is to help keep it alive and help it survive the meeting and the process thereafter—the many more stick beatings that are to come."
Smith received his B.A. in Advertising from Penn State in 1994. He said that he always wanted to write and be creative. He attended Penn State in hopes of pursuing a journalism career. However, after a semester or two, he realized that students with that major were usually discouraged from making things up, so he switched to advertising. People may be surprised to find out that Smith also received a second degree—a B.A. in History.
"What's funny is that I use the history major probably as much as the advertising major because the main thing you do as a history major is read and then write. So you read an awful lot, and you read a lot of good writing, and then you have to synthesize all those thoughts into a paper. So that's actually where I learned to write—more so than the advertising degree," Smith said.
Smith started his career at MBRK, a small advertising firm in Dallas, and worked there from 1994 to 1997. In 1997, MBRK was bought out by The Evans Group, which was bought out by Publicis in 1998.
Smith stayed at the firm for a few months after the buyout but quickly realized it was not a good fit. He had always wanted to work for The Richards Group, he said, so he called up a friend who was working there, got an interview with company founder Stan Richards in January 1999, and subsequently got the job. He became a group head in 2005.
Smith said that his desire to work for The Richards Group stemmed from a creative class he took in college. During class, the professor would show reels from various production companies and agencies. When the day came for the professor to show a reel from The Richards Group, one of the Motel 6 reels was selected.
Now, years later, his wish has come true. He inherited the Motel 6 ad campaign five years ago. Having started when he was just in seventh grade, the campaign is now in its 20th year. It has gone through several writers and several different creative directors but still remains true to its roots.
"It's kind of the campaign that put this agency on the map," Smith said. "It's really just a ton of fun and a big honor to be the guy in charge of it now."
Other clients that Smith has worked for with The Richards Group include jewelry retailer Zales, dairy farm Shamrock Farms, Chick-fil-A, Red Lobster, Home Depot, and Bennigan's.
In terms of the future of advertising, Smith said that the agencies will definitely have to start taking a more nontraditional approach in order to be successful, particularly by using content as advertising via media like YouTube and product placement. He said that, in his opinion, ubiquitous branding is best; it is not intrusive, but "it just sort of fits and makes perfect sense."
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One of the best advertising campaigns Smith has seen is the Mini Cooper campaign. The campaign, which Smith called "really clever stuff," featured nontraditional guerilla campaigns with ads depicting the small car riding on top of a larger, more intrusive vehicle.
"Any time you can encounter advertising where you're totally not expecting it—you're expecting it on television, you're expecting it on radio, on billboards, whatever, but when you bump into it in the middle of the sidewalk or when you bump into it in the airport lavatory or whatever, you just weren't expecting it—that sticks with you," Smith said. "Most advertising is wallpaper, but if it's something that really catches you off-guard and makes you smile, then it stays with you and you like that product better."
Smith said that the best advice he ever got was from trombone player and jazz musician Doug Serdle, whom he took a class from. When asked if he listened to jazz, he told Serdle he did not, and Serdle replied, "You will never be a great jazz player."
Smith said that he realized something that day: if you really want to be great at what you do, you must immerse yourself in it. If you want to be great at it, you must study it and make it your hobby.
He encourages those who want to pursue advertising careers to subscribe to magazines pertaining to advertising and buy award annuals. He said they should take notes on what the major (and not-so-major) agencies are doing as well as collect ads they do and do not like in order to learn from them. Do not just TiVo through commercials, he said. Notice the nuances of the ads.
Currently, Smith resides in Dallas with his family, which consists of his wife and three young children (a three-and-a-half-year-old and two-year-old twins). He enjoys performing improv at local clubs. He also enjoys trivia, having written for the magazine Mental Floss and having appeared on Jeopardy, which he won twice.
