Richards strikes the same quiet demeanor with clients. He's friendly but prefers talking strategy to jokes and backslapping, says Leigh Killeen, who runs advertising at the Florida Department of Citrus, a Richards Group client until 2010. Richards and his team "aren't suits," says Killeen. "These guys and gals are very down to earth, smart people. Good listeners, and good with research."
Richards has been cultivating this singular style for his entire career, but it can be traced back to one man: Hershel Levit, who taught Richards's advertising design class when Richards attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1950s. In that class, he learned to meticulously craft layouts of type and images. When reviewing his students' work, Levit would line them up and, squinting at their papers, gesture accusatorily at extraneous elements with a thick middle finger. When he encountered work he considered lazy, he would tear it in half in front of the class.
But Levit's unforgiving attitude belied his own boundary-pushing creativity. An acclaimed illustrator, photographer, and designer whose work went on to be displayed in museums and galleries nationwide, Levit would regale his students with tales of composers Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg -- whose album covers he had designed. For Richards, it was a powerful lesson. Creativity and drudgery are not mutually exclusive, Richards deduced as he toiled away. Instead, they enable each other. A good idea can come from anywhere. Expressing it in a way that jumps off the page—fresh, elegant, exciting—requires, first and foremost, relentless hard work.
By 22, Richards was making the equivalent of $97,000 in today's dollars as a creative director at a Dallas advertising agency. He sped around town in a flashy white Porsche. But he was unhappy. The agency's account executive nixed anything a client might find unsettling or risky, which felt like everything Richards produced. After a year, Richards quit the agency and set out on his own. He called himself the "poorest Porsche driver in Texas."
Richards didn't remain poor for long. As the oil business boomed throughout the '50s and '60s, he soon found himself freelancing for firms all over town. The heavy workload caught up with him in the form of a particularly massive annual report for an electric utility. With an SEC-enforced deadline looming, one all nighter turned into two all nighters. After 50 hours straight of work, his stomach upset from too much coffee, he threw up. He returned to his desk and got back to work, until he was sick again. The vomiting and working went on for another 13 hours, until he finally finished.
Richards decided he wouldn't do that again. Instead, he began keeping scrupulous time sheets, which were designed to provide the data he needed to project how long similar projects would take, preventing another 63-hour workday. Besides, his wife, Betty, who managed his books, had long bugged him to clock in more diligently, for billing's sake.
By the early '70s, Richards had formed a tight cadre of like-minded designers. In 1976, an executive from Mercantile Bank asked Richards to pitch a campaign. Almost overnight, he went from design shop to full-service advertising agency. Richards hung a shingle for The Richards Group and began hiring like-minded copywriters, media buyers, and account-service people, too. The young staff, impressed by Richards's accomplishments and too green to question him, adopted his zealous and regimented style. They dressed sharply in shirts and ties, arrived bright and early, and filled out their time sheets diligently. And they learned to revere advertising as an art form.
Soon, The Richards Group boasted a roster of impressive clients, including Time Inc., T.G.I. Friday's, and Motel 6. The agency never had to pitch; business came to it. But as the agency grew (and grow it did—sixfold from 1978 to 1987, to $13.4 million in revenue), Richards faced a new obstacle. The larger the agency became, the less control he had—and the less control he had, the greater the chance that the work would suffer.
Richards already insisted on approving all advertising. But his attentions hardly stopped there. Offices, he believed, should be immaculate. Staff members should be at their desks early, before clients need them. They should be dressed to impress, in case that client walked in the door.
With the head count growing, the agency had moved into new offices on multiple floors. Richards fretted that he never knew for sure when people arrived. He did know that some new hires were bending an unspoken shirt-and-tie rule, coming in dressed in ties and jeans or ties and shorts. One flippant art director, Bryan Jessee, sported a tie that looked like a dangling fish. Richards found the garment appalling. He exhorted the staff in memos to take the dress code more seriously.
He felt the same way about the 8:30 start time and the time sheets. In July 1985, a memo announced that anyone filing time sheets late would be fined $8.63 a day, the cost to the agency of tracking down stragglers. Other rules were less operational than aesthetic. The tops of cubicle walls were to be kept clear, so that the stations looked clean and uniform. The blinds were adjusted to uniform angles.
Some people grew frustrated and left. But those who remained continued to perform. And in 1986, a campaign for Motel 6, written by 29-year-old David Fowler and smartly placed on the radio, where highway travelers would hear it, launched The Richards Group onto the national stage. That summer, as the "We'll Leave the Light on for You" campaign blared from car radios nationwide, millions of weary travelers began checking in—and Motel 6's fortunes soared. Five straight years of sales declines turned into higher occupancy levels and record revenue. The ads won radio spot of the year from several industry groups. Richards's peers at larger advertising conglomerates began to take note.
One of those admen was Marvin Sloves, the CEO of the New York City agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves. Known as Super Mensch for his schmoozing skills, Sloves rolled up to The Richards Group's offices in a black limousine. He wanted to acquire the agency and was prepared to offer some $10 million.
Most anyone would have considered Sloves a godsend. By 1987, plunging oil and real estate prices had left the Texas economy in a shambles. A consolidation wave was sweeping the advertising industry, meanwhile, leaving many to wonder whether smaller agencies would survive. But when Richards listened to Sloves, he felt the same heartburn he had experienced when he saw the fish tie. If he ceded control, the agency would be ruined, he sensed. So Richards declined Sloves's offer. His wife was not pleased. But his staff was impressed. "I was proud," says Doug Rucker. "We were the underdog, and Stan believed we could still win."
