Greg Hahn on Ad Psychology & Golden Retrievers

Greg Hahn, CCO, BBDO New York has a rock star style and a psychology professor’s demeanour. The quiet man of advertising’s creative actions speak louder than his words, however, using psychological insights, a wealth of experience and great creative instincts to produce iconic work, such as Herding Cats and United Airlines’ healing post-9/11 letter to America

With his battered leather jacket, heavily be-ringed knuckles and shock of dirty blonde hair, Greg Hahn looks more like the frontman of an alt-rock band than the chief creative officer of one of New York’s oldest and most venerated advertising agencies. But cradling a coffee in his office above bustling Manhattan streets, the softly-spoken Midwesterner exhibits no lead singer-style swagger – in fact he’s rather shy and retiring. In an industry full of extroverts, Hahn seems more interested in studying personalities than becoming one himself – he read psychology as part of his degree and is an avid disciple of behavioural economics: “It sounds kind of dry and academic, but it’s fascinating how you can change people’s behaviour by very small tweaks.”

This self-effacing demeanour, however, belies an exceptional creative force, which over the past decade has helped grow BBDO New York into an advertising powerhouse that consistently tops US agency rankings and boasts an impressive roster of big-ticket clients.

This year’s output has bolstered the agency’s creative credentials: as well as excellent new iterations of their long-running campaigns for AT&T (The Unseen) and Snickers (‘You’re Not You When You’re Hungry’), there’s a huge awards buzz around Evan, a PSA for anti-gun charity Sandy Hook Promise, which dominated Facebook feeds late last year.

Framed as a high school romance, the film uses a classic bit of misdirection and a hidden plotline to highlight the warning signs of a troubled youngster turning to firearms. While Hahn is quietly confident of the campaign’s prospects on the Croisette, he’s prouder still of its popular impact. “When people on the streets are talking about it, when you see it in your social media from people you went to high school with… To me, the biggest measure of effectiveness is that it becomes ingrained in culture and conversation.”

It’s not what you know…

The son of a dentist (whose creativity only extended as far as implants), Hahn was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. On graduating with a degree in psychology and journalism from Ohio State University, advertising was, he thought, a pragmatic career choice: “I wanted to do something creative, and it seemed like a place where you could be creative and also get paid for it.” Getting a foot in the door proved tougher in practice, despite stellar grades. “Had I known how little my grade point average mattered, I wouldn’t have studied at all,” he smiles ruefully.

Eventually, he met a friendly art director at San Diego agency Franklin Stoorza, who got him an internship and a place on an evening portfolio class. Armed with a “down and dirty” book of Xeroxed samples, he moved to Los Angeles and got his first copywriting job at now-defunct shop Mendelsohn Zien, before moving to Rubin Postaer. In 1997, he got a call from Fallon Minneapolis inviting him for an interview. This was the agency’s heyday, and though Hahn was loving life in LA he felt compelled to take the gig. “You could not resist [that opportunity] as a creative at that stage of your career.”

In the end, Hahn spent almost a decade at Fallon, honing his craft alongside the likes of Luke Sullivan. “I learned so much just from the stuff coming off the printers, and the people I was around,” he says. That period also produced two of his biggest career highlights. A Super Bowl smash in 2000 – trouncing offerings from Pepsi, Budweiser and FedEx in the USA Today Ad Meter Top Ten – Herding Cats used a faux documentary on feline farming, literally bringing the metaphor to life, to explain their client EDS’s business.

At the other end of the spectrum was a simple letter, “the most personal piece of work” Hahn has ever made. Three days after two hijacked planes flew into New York’s Twin Towers, when “the world was upside down and no one knew what to do”, United, whose plane was the second to hit the towers, contacted Hahn and told him they wanted to run a letter from the CEO in the New York Times in response to the tragedy.

“They sent over the draft, and it was pretty dry, so the assignment was basically ‘clean it up’.” He did that, but also wrote an alternate, more heartfelt version – “I had so many thoughts rolling around my head, I just wanted to throw it out there” – and sent over both. No prizes for guessing which version was chosen. Entitled Monday September 10, it’s that rare thing: a piece of marketing that brings a lump to the throat, almost 20 years later.

It was during his stint at Fallon that Hahn met the man who would become his long-term mentor. After David Lubars was drafted in to “take things up a level”, the duo forged a strong relationship, so much so that when Lubars moved to BBDO New York in 2004 Hahn followed him, despite initial misgivings. “Moving to a big New York agency didn’t seem like my kind of thing, and to be honest, BBDO had kind of a frightening reputation,” he says. “But I’d worked with David for long enough to know that if he thought something was good, I would trust that. The way he framed [his vision of the agency] to me was like ‘a 21st century version of a badass 1960s New York creative agency’. So I made the decision to go for it.” 

It is a leap that Hahn has never regretted and he has done much to help realise that vision, including the campaign which first shattered the perception of BBDO as a traditional TV-centric agency, the risqué Grand Prix-winning Voyeur, for HBO. In 2013, he was promoted to CCO of the New York office, a move which was “really eye-opening” for the holistic vision it gave him across accounts and the ability to work with a broader cross-section of people.

These days, he still “works very closely” with Lubars but while the latter’s time is increasingly eaten up with international travel and meeting obligations, Hahn’s job is to “focus on the work” instead. And he gets his hands dirtier than you might think: “I’ll take an assignment that no one else wants, or come up with an idea for a client that they didn’t ask for, and see if we can get it made.”

Work with animals and children

When it comes to making the work, Hahn happily embraces communication plans, data and behavioural science – tools creatives usually view with suspicion, given the often lacklustre results. Hahn says it’s all in the application. “You can uncover really interesting insights with data, but it’s what you do with it… If [the output] isn’t creative, then that’s not the data’s fault. It’s the creative’s.” He thinks micro-targeting is “a step too far”, however, preferring to think in terms of tailoring “universal truths” to different markets.

There’s no truth more universal than a fluffy mutt bringing out the best in people – in fact, BBDO has built an entire platform for Pedigree Chum on it. So what better way to test this truth than during the emotionally-charged US presidential election?

A Vote for Good involved sending a Hillary T-shirt-toting “supporter” to a Trump rally, and vice versa, both times accompanied by a “lost dog”. “It was an interesting sociological experience,” says Hahn, “at first we thought they’d need bodyguards, but people immediately focussed on the dog, and that started breaking down all the barriers, so other conversations could happen.”

Psychological insights and behavioural science are all very well, but sometimes, says Hahn, “you have to forget what those 20 slides are saying, step back and look at it from a child’s point of view.” Luckily for Hahn, he has a seven-year-old daughter he can turn to. “Because she takes things so literally, it’s a reminder not to overthink stuff.”

On a recent trip, Hahn’s daughter remarked that the posters in the airport were the same as a previous visit. “I’m like, ‘How do you even remember that?’” says Hahn, “and she said ‘Because I have memory foam in my shoes.’ An adult would never think of that, but it’s such a cool idea.” Is it worth bringing her on as a permanent consultant? “Well, I once gave an ad assignment to a class of kids and they came up with an idea I still want to sell,” he smiles.

In over two decades in the ad business, Hahn has seen plenty of changes, but says the main difference is how many more tools and platforms are available to creatives. “It used to be ‘Here’s the three medias that we’ve bought. Fill them with things,’ and now we say: ‘Here’s the problem. Here are the tools. We don’t have to use all of them. What’s the best way to solve this problem?’”

The solution won’t always be bleeding-edge innovation: it could be a beautiful piece of filmic storytelling, like Evan; or a smart new way of using an existing platform. A recent project for Bacardi, Instant DJ, is a case in point. Working with Facebook Creative Shop, BBDO hacked the skip function on the brand’s Instagram Stories channel, allowing followers to turn their smartphones into turntables and remix tracks. “It was pretty cool and cost us nothing to do,” reports Hahn.

Of course, it’s increasingly about pre-empting a problem and working outside a client brief. “Agencies need to be more entrepreneurial,” Hahn says, pointing to how BBDO is actively investing in innovation via its XLAB initiative, which develops product and app prototypes.

At its heart, though, the ad business is still about people. “All we have to remember is that human instincts haven’t changed since the days we sat round a fire. So, as long as we have people that can understand human behaviour and stories, then we’ll be set for the future.”