“We can combine today and yesterday for tomorrow.”
No, that’s not the tag line to an advertising campaign. But you’re close.
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It’s adman Jerry Gregory explaining why he and partner Sandra Cooney relocated from what he called a “whispery clean” office on Johnston’s Hartford Avenue to a renovated factory building in Providence’s once-thriving Jewelry District.
The 2,300 square-foot space, with its hardwood floors, interior brick walls and exposed piping, is a better fit for the five-person company formed in 1993, Sandra Cooney said.
“It’s very conducive to creativity,” she said. “I think it helps get the juices flowing more than wall-to-wall carpeting and plain white walls.”
Gregory and Cooney knew they wanted to move to Providence last spring when the lease on their Johnston office expired. They wanted to increase their visibility to an eclectic client list, ranging from a Warwick computer company to a luxury resort in Whitefield, N.H. They considered the refurbished Foundry Building, with its gritty exterior and tidy, cubicled interior; but settled on One Allens Avenue for reasons not obvious to people without vision.
“This was all one room with an industrial sink in the back and the floor was pitch- black,” Gregory said. “You would look at it and say ‘get me out of here. This is Beirut.’
“Sandy took one look at it and said ‘it’s beautiful,'” Gregory recalled.
Aside from its inherent funkiness, the space spoke to Gregory and Cooney about the qualities they said their clients look for in an advertising and public relations agency.
It’s inspirational. The more than 150-year-old building was the perfect setting for a permanent, rotating exhibit of advertisements from years gone by. Cooney’s brainchild, “Memory Lane” gallery is marked by a street sign over a center hallway. It is open to the public Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The first quarterly exhibit runs the gamut from an 1898 ad for Singer Manufacturing Company’s “House Wren” to one for Rockwell International aircraft that appeared in a 1973 edition of the Saturday Evening Post.
It’s fun to look back, as these ads “really mirror our culture,” Gregory said.
Consider a 1942 ad for Chesterfield cigarettes in which actress Rita Hayworth is proud (and surely well-paid) to associate her name with “a milder and decidedly better-tasting cigarette.” Or one that appeared a week later in Liberty magazine for Ticonderoga pencils – the brand “in the thick of the total war America is now waging.”
It’s egalitarian. The one-giant-room scenario also gave Gregory and Cooney carte blanche in erecting walls for offices. They chose to do what Gregory called “the communist thing.” Each of five offices and a conference room are the same size, so that “everyone has an executive office, basically,” Cooney said.
“We don’t set ourselves apart,” Cooney said of herself and her partner, adding that a close working relationship among the company’s five employees promotes equal parts hard work and fun.
Unpretentious furnishings – including a wooden, kitchen-style table in the conference room – also lend an air of relaxation. Gregory is responsible for much of the original artwork scattered throughout the offices. A former member of the U.S. State Department, he served 15 years in the Foreign Service to such countries as England, Russian, the Congo, Mexico and Chad.
It’s collaborative. Gregory and Cooney like to talk about their neighbors in a nice way. They’ve already employed the services of a couple of tenants. Old Harbour Framing mounted and framed the ads comprising “Memory Lane” and Basic Screen Printing & Embroidery made T-shirts for a client. Other tenants are a children’s theater group, an architect, an antique book binder, and an office furniture store, among many others.
A creative environment breeds creativity, Cooney said. “This is just a great building for us.”
