Advertising: Zeus Jones to Open San Francisco Office

Zeus Jones to Open San Francisco Office

Leslie Plesser

Gareth Kay, center, who will lead the new San Francisco office of Zeus Jones, with the agency's founders, from left, Christian Erickson, Eric Frost, Adrian Ho and Rob White.

ZEUS JONES, a consultancy that specializes in tasks for brands like digital, design, social media and content creation, is joining a parade of advertising agencies opening in San Francisco by hiring a well-known senior executive based in the Bay Area.

The principals of Zeus Jones are to formally announce on Thursday that they are expanding by adding an office in San Francisco, the first outside their Minneapolis headquarters. The office will be led by Gareth Kay, who will have the title of founding partner of Zeus Jones San Francisco.

Mr. Kay, 40, will also be an owner of the office with the founding partners of Zeus Jones, according to Rob White, one of those founders. Mr. Kay “will become a partner in due course in the total enterprise,” said Mr. White, who is chief executive of Zeus Jones.

Until recently, Mr. Kay had been associate partner and chief strategy officer at a leading San Francisco agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, part of the Omnicom Group, which he joined in 2009. He previously worked at agencies that included Modernista, Lowe & Partners, TBWA and Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters.

The announcement will end speculation that began when word circulated last week that Mr. Kay was leaving Goodby, Silverstein. He may have stimulated some conversation by editing his profile on the social media platform LinkedIn, where he changed his current status to “Person at Company in Stealth Mode.”

The hiring of Mr. Kay is emblematic of moves made as each year draws to a close and firms seek to prepare for the challenges of the next year. Along with adding or rearranging chairs in executive suites -which has also taken place this week at agencies like Arnold Worldwide, Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Erwin Penland - agencies and consultancies are forming divisions and making deals.

“We recognize fully that we haven't and can't make the kind of impact we want to in one place, with one office,” said Adrian Ho, a second founding partner of Zeus Jones. “Hiring Gareth gives us the benefit of launching immediately with credibility” in the competitive San Francisco market, he added. Since Zeus Jones opened in 2007, many of its marketer clients have been based in the Midwest, among them Nestlé Purina and 3M. Like others seeking growth by coming to San Francisco, the principals of Zeus Jones are attracted by an opportunity to land assignments from marketers based in the West.

“We want to test our beliefs against different brands, different clients,” said Christian Erickson, a third founding partner, adding that because “our process is heavily collaborative,” it is “extremely beneficial” for Zeus Jones and its clients to be close geographically.

Also appealing is the creative ferment permeating the Bay Area as a result of Silicon Valley. “San Francisco is where businesses are being created faster than anywhere in the world,” Mr. Ho said.

Mr. White said that had Mr. Kay “been in New York or Austin, it might have been interesting” to join with him, “but not as interesting” as being in San Francisco.

“It's a combination of Gareth and the Bay Area,” Mr. White said. “It doesn't mean we're not interested in other markets, but we felt, ‘Let's do this one right.' We want to make sure San Francisco is strong before we consider any other markets.”

Mr. Kay's entry point to Zeus Jones was Mr. Ho. “For a decade, we had conversations about our futures,” Mr. Kay said, that recently turned into more concrete discussions centered on a philosophy that the Zeus Jones founders call building “modern brands” through methods that go beyond traditional advertising efforts like commercials into realms that include designing packaging and solving marketing problems.

“Our beliefs are so aligned, it made sense to do this together,” Mr. Kay said.

Mr. Ho said, “We tried to recruit Gareth before,” to join Zeus Jones in Minneapolis, “and he told us, ‘No, no,' very clearly; he didn't want to be here.”

Mr. Kay interjected, “I've fallen in love with San Francisco.”

Mr. Ho resumed: “This came about by sitting down over the course of a month and realizing there was a way for us to help Gareth do what we wants to do, and for Gareth to help us do more of what we want to do.”

However, before Mr. Kay opens Zeus Jones San Francisco, he will spend a couple of months in Minneapolis.

“I thought I'd go for the frozen treatment,” he said, laughing. (What else could he expect at an agency where a founding partner is named Eric Frost?)

Plans call for Zeus Jones San Francisco to open with three or four employees in addition to Mr. Kay and help from what he called “reinforcements from Minneapolis,” where Zeus Jones has about 45 full-time employees. The San Francisco office is opening with a clean slate. “We think it's good discipline to start with absolutely no clients,” Mr. Ho said. “It builds character” - not unlike a Minneapolis winter.

The founding partners of Zeus Jones are also promoting three executives in Minneapolis to partners. Two of them - David Annis, head of production, and Brad Surcey, head of design - are partners with responsibilities for both Minneapolis and San Francisco. The third new partner, Peter Petrulo, a designer, becomes a member of the management team in Minneapolis.

A version of this article appears in print on December 12, 2013, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Zeus Jones to Open San Francisco Office.