Funny thing is, Upshot honchos love to brag about their smashing relationships with the ad agencies they share accounts with, such as Goodby Silverstein on SBC, Chiat Day on Absolut, and Grey Advertising on Seagram. Upshot has been known to whip up a little advertising itself, having created outdoor and broadcast for Coca-Cola and SBC, to name a few.

“Do we like to do advertising? Yes. But at the end of the day, there’s one winner or loser – the client – so whatever we can do to contribute, we do,” says Davidoff.

“Above the line, below the line, that’s so much a part of the past,” adds Kelley. “We’re absolutely what we call ‘on the line.’ What the client needs to get the job done, that’s what we deliver.”

And Upshot goes well out of its way to ensure it’s got the goods. “They usually come back with three different concepts,” says Coca-Cola’s Buczkowski, “First, what we asked for; second, what they think we should do; and third, something in between. We have gone with their thinking a number of times.”

Griseto explains the process that develops some of those ideas. “A lot of times, a client gives us an assignment, but we pull it apart and analyze it and say, you know, maybe this assignment was the wrong one. Maybe the assignment should have been this instead.”

Like blowing up buildings? That’s the central, big, noisy, and risky idea for the Sony car stereo’s Xpl-od on the Road campaign. Here’s the concept: Pull a car with a Sony sound system up to a condemned building, crank up the tunes to eardrum-disintegration level, and blow the sucker sky-high. Xpl-od-themed premiums and a sweepstakes tie in at retail.

Absolut Kurant was a poor sister to Absolut Citron in the flavored vodka segment, mostly because Americans thought “currant” was something that went with their events, not their shooters. “We obviously had to do sampling on-premise,” says Davidoff, “but we needed something to give the brand personality.” The answer came in a walk past an el stop in Chicago, where Upshot staffers spotted street performers tap-dancing to hip-hop music. Thus was born the Absolut Tap on-premise tour, with those very same buskers as stars. And don’t laugh. “It succeeded in moving cases,” says Seagram’s Shapiro.

To bring personality to call-forwarding for Pacific Bell, Upshot erected living rooms on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, intercepting passersby with ringing phones and saying, “This call’s for you,” in order to explain the service to them. The idea of the century? Hardly. Annoying? Perhaps. But the big idea here is the nature of the deal with client SBC Communications. (CFOs at retainer-based agencies, cover your eyes.) Upshot’s remuneration is a percentage of the activation fees.

“It’s a unique compensation model, but it’s where it’s all going,” says Kelley. “You’ve got to be in business with the client. Even ad agencies are going to have to go there.”

Likewise, Kelley holds that Upshot has a no-secrets policy with clients. “We go in and say, ‘Here’s our complete G&A.’ Accounts all know what they are contributing to the agency’s business, and they know what our expenses are, and what our profit is.”

Lou Weisbach thinks the Upshot approach is unique. That’s why he and the giant promotional products company he heads, Niles, IL-based Ha-Lo, bought the agency last year. “Things change so quickly, and the people who will succeed are not from the old school. They don’t look at things the way they used to be,” says Weisbach. “John Kelley and Carol Griseto are those people. They approach promotion as no one else does. I’ve been with them on presentations and they absolutely capture the client. Their work is so incredibly strong.”

Spoken like a proud papa, and far be it from us to say he’s wrong. But will the kids from Chicago be able to keep the bonfire raging? Will the Eighties, ad boutique-style culture they’ve installed in their new digs on East Wacker be stoked by the procession of top-drawer clients walking through the doors, or will it devolve into some corporate creative factory? A big test is underway right now that could provide the answer: The attempted transfer of “Upshotty” (as staffers call it) attitude to the more old-line, 40-person Siebel agency in New York City.

Jeff Davidoff gives his agency a fair chance. After all, he says, Upshot has The Formula, and he’s not afraid to share it.

“Want to know what our secret is? Hire smarter, more talented people and let them run wild. It’s okay if everyone knows it.”

He smiles, then says, “Try to recreate it.”

A similar open-book policy for employees could be one of the keys to Upshot’s ability to attract and keep more than 100 new people over the past two years. Financial results are presented to staffers on a regular basis. “An account guy we had just hired away from Ammirati came out of the presentation and said, ‘I can’t believe you just showed us what the agency made,'” says Davidoff. But, as a result, he maintains that, at Upshot, “a creative person is just as focused on net revenue as the account supe.”

Likewise, account people are encouraged to contribute to creative idea generation. “Account people are our safety net. They are a sounding board for our staff, and we take creative ideas from them,” says creative chief Dygas. “There are not a lot of big egos around here. Everybody is expected to take an interest in everybody else’s work.”

Upshot’s employee compensation plan fuels this teamwork. Staffers’ base salaries are equal to or slightly above industry norms, says Kelley, but they are awarded spot bonuses based on performance. “We don’t wait until the end of the year to reward performance,” he points out. “We want our people to have the feeling of being independent business contractors.”

True to its “give the clients what they want” orientation, Upshot’s personnel directive is to bring on people with the experience needed to get the job done for today’s consumer marketing companies. Last year, the company hired two market research veterans to staff a Consumer Planning Group that does qualitative studies to aid in “creative planning” – corporate-speak for unearthing the proverbial lollapalooza idea. It also hired ex-Philip Morris trade marketer Rich Olsen to head up a new Retail Planning Group to add oomph to the many in-store branding and event programs it runs for clients.

“You need people with the proper sales and marketing experience,” says Davidoff. “You can’t pass off a typical agency account guy to retailers.”

Aside from other promotion agencies, Upshot pulls new hires from ad agencies, direct shops, and clients. “We’re attractive to client-side marketers because clients don’t do marketing one hundred percent of the time, and we do. If they did, there wouldn’t be agencies,” says Kelley. “And,” he notes with a sly smile, “we do our best not to hold it against applicants that they were in advertising.”