• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, November 30, 2020

It’s official: Goodby: Silverstein & Partners is back in New York. The San Francisco-based agency has opened an office in a downtown location with 20 employees and clients that include Liberty Mutual insurance company. 

This is GS&Ps second try at full-fledged office in the Big Apple in recent years. It established an outpost in 2013 only to close it in 2015 when its biggest client at the time—Comcast—cut back on a significant portion of planned work when its merger with Time Warner fell through. 

The new GS&P NYC has 20 employees with four creative teams. Thirteen of the 20 staffers worked at GS&P SF prior to GS&P NYC, including Cam Miller, creative director on the Liberty Mutual work. 

“This wasn’t an office started just because there was a client need for on-the-ground resources,” says Brian McPherson, managing partner at GS&P, part of Omnicom Group. “It was an office started by people who cared for GS&P and wanted to re-create that culture in NYC.” 

Danny Gonzalez and David Suarez, who joined GS&P from the now defunct Barton F. Graf, are co-leading the office. The duo joined GS&P’s San Francisco office in 2014.  

“I moved back East because I wanted to be closer to my family, but I never really wanted to leave GS&P,” Gonzalez. “When I got to NYC, I found a lot of ex-GS&Pers who felt the same way. So we’re doing our best to bring it with us.” 

That’s nice. What’s even nicer is seeing an agency buck the trend and expand at a time when contraction (thank you pandemic) has been more the norm.