Dream Teams: Brutal Honesty and Twin-Like Telepathy with Quality Meats

Long-time creative partners Gordy Sang and Brian Siedband are co-founders and co-CCOs at Quality Meats, an integrated ad agency based out of Chicago with creative, strategic and production capabilities. After being “semi-arranged-marriaged” by the senior team at FCB Chicago in 2007, Gordy says they immediately realised they were “advertising-styled soulmates” and stuck together, eventually bringing their sizzle and steak to their own company in 2020, alongside head of production, and former colleague at Deutsch, Kacey Hart.

“The first thing I noticed about Gordy was his Ellen DeGeneres-styled haircut, and the fact that he was one of those two-earring guys,” jokes Brian. “No judgement though, it was the mid-2000s.” 

Blurring the lines between copywriter and art director, the pair has always been most comfortable with a “unique” combination of intelligence and stupidity, which gradually evolved into a “weird twin-brother telepathy”, as Gordy describes it. This dynamic even expanded to an unconventional setup - still employed today - where they share screens and sit in a virtual Google office while working. 

“Early on in the process,” says Gordy, “it would be me breathing on him as he typed words, and him on me as I Photoshopped pictures. Then it evolved into mirroring each other’s screens and co-writing/co-art directing almost everything we do.” He continues, “We keep each other honest. It’s similar to a real-life marriage, where open and honest communication is the key. We both have strong POVs, and if we don’t agree, we’ll air it all out until we find a happy medium.”

Brian believes that his ‘overthinker’ personality balances out the more impatient Gordy, generally resulting in nuanced and well thought out choices. “Of course we have disagreements and get annoyed with each other at times - we’re like brothers in that sense. [But] we always resolve them quickly between us, and find a way to get aligned as a unit. It’s pretty rare that we don’t present a united front.”

“We hash it out almost immediately,” adds Gordy. “And never let any frustrations linger for more than like 7 hours and 34 minutes.” 

The pair’s stint at FCB was followed by four years at Deutsch and four more years at Leo Burnett, before the pair found themselves diving unexpectedly into the freelance world in 2019. Describing the process of shedding the bureaucracy of agency life as “liberating”, Gordy admits that they both soon longed for the creative conversations and satisfaction that comes with delivering a long-term execution with a team.

Still pre-pandemic, they chatted with mutual friend and producer Kacey Hart about starting a virtual agency to create project-based work. And when covid hit and the freelance work began to dry up, the team was catalysed into action. Quality Meats was designed with a production company framework in mind, with built-in scalability that could provide an “agency of all-stars” around each specific project. Starting, admittedly, with a “façade” of an agency and no real clients, they began working on small projects and delivered high-quality work with an ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality. “And so far,” says Gordy, “it’s kind of worked!” 

“We mainly focus on trying to remove all the bad stuff and BS that we collectively experienced at our previous agency lives, which got in the way of delivering the good stuff. And that ‘stuff’ comes in the form of layers, politics, quality of relationships and quality of work - basically any unnecessary parts or red tape.” He adds, “Then we’ve surrounded ourselves with people who have that same approach. Our goal is to work alongside good humans, work with good human clients, make really good work that actually works, have a decent work-life balance, and make enough money to keep our families happy. It sounds simple and shouldn’t be that hard to accomplish in this industry, but it is.” 

Brian explains that their key principles as creatives and leaders are “working efficiently and not swirling”, and “brutal honesty”. The pair fosters a transparent environment where people feel comfortable speaking their hearts and minds - even with clients - and where they craft relentlessly to elevate the work. “I like to hope our partnership is inspiring to our teams,” says Brian, “trying to lead by example how you can create great work in an open, honest and highly efficient way.”

This bar for creative partnership and leadership was set high for the duo by the pair that introduced them at FCB - creative directors (at the time) Berk Wasserman and Todd Durston. “Genuinely good guys” who could push for great work “without being total assholes”, the Quality Meats CCOs agree that Berk and Todd made everyone feel like equals and refused to play politics with agency hierarchy. 

“We learned a lot from other creative leaders [too],” says Brian, “some inspired us to embrace the chaos of the process and thrive in it; others did the opposite of inspire us and created more chaos, but ultimately taught us what we value in leadership. This led to how we approach Quality Meats.”

He continues, “We’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of smart leaders who advocated for and believed in us, not only opening doors for us, but instilling a sense of confidence and self-trust. We didn’t always fit into the bigger agencies, the way we pushed and challenged things constantly, so probably the best advice we’ve gotten was from our former Deutsch CEO (and metaphorical uncle) Mike Sheldon, who told us to believe in that approach, force those uncomfortable conversations, and never stop doing that.”

“Another person who embodied a similar approach would be Gavin Lester, current CCO at Zambezi,” adds Gordy. “All of these people just felt like ‘one of us’. Where we don’t take ourselves too seriously, but still pathetically care too much about making the work great.” 

And making great work, of course, isn’t without its challenges. Recent projects that tested the pair creatively include ‘The Alphabutt Book’ for Huggies, which involved collaborating with 26 unique illustrators around the world, getting a book designed, printed and shipped within a few weeks, and brokering a deal between Huggies and a major publishing company.

[Above: Huggies - ‘The Alphabutt Book’]

“All of these challenges would have killed this project multiple times at any other agency we’ve worked at,” says Gordy. “But we try to eliminate any red tape and find non-traditional ways of solving the specific problem at hand… so we found a children’s book literary agent to help quarterback the process with all the artists, and then another book publishing consultant to help pitch and negotiate the deal.”

Another challenging project was Quality Meats’ film for gun safety advocates, March Fourth. In just nine business days, they called favours from a variety of industry friends to shoot the PSA in two cities, helping mobilise a protest in Washington DC to urge the US Senate to pass a ban on assault weapons. “The final film was widely shared not only for the march but also for the midterm election, and racked up two million views with zero media dollars,” shares Brian. “[It] was organically shared by the likes of Katie Couric, Elizabeth Banks, Mary Trump and Billy Baldwin, and ended up winning an Emmy. Which is great and all, but we’re still hoping for the real result, getting an assault weapons ban passed.”

[Above: March Fourth - 'I’m Not Gonna March']

One project back in 2012, in fact, had the potential to test their very friendship - a campaign for PlayStation and ‘MLB The Show’, where they brought to life the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. As a die hard Cubs fan, this was the ultimate fantasy project for Brian; for Gordy, not so much.

“I personally hate them with a passion (I’m a White Sox fan),” he says. “That being said, it may have been one of the most special projects we’ve worked on together for a few reasons.” Having recently returned to Chicago from LA, they enjoyed celebrating the intricacies of their beloved hometown, and playing up to the heated baseball rivalry that links their favourite teams. “To me (and many non-Cubs fans) it was laughing at the lowly Cubs fan who could only win via a video game… and for Brian, it was giving hope to the city and team of what could be.”

Unfortunately for Gordy, his nightmare came true four years later in 2016, when the Chicago Cubs won the world series for the first time in 108 years. “To top it off, according to a Sports Illustrated article the team used footage from the ad to recruit some of the key players on that 2016 squad,” says Brian, rubbing salt into the wound. “So I like to think that maybe we had a little something to do with that. Which is also something that will probably torture Gordy for the rest of his life.”

Gordy adds, “[The Cubs winning] ultimately ruined the timelessness of the film and also happened to open a black hole to our universe allowing Trump to take over and lead us to the chaos we currently live within.” Eight years removed, it’s safe to say there’s still some healing to be done.

[Above: PlayStation x MLB The Show 12 - 'Cubs Win']

Fortunately, they haven’t let this disrupt their creative partnership, and the pair continue to add creative and production muscle to their fine cuts of Quality Meats. Slowly and methodically adding more like-minded people to their team, Gordy says the process of running their own agency thus far has been “refreshing” and a valuable lesson in the importance of finding “your people” in work and life.

During this time together, Brian says that Gordy has pushed him out of his comfort zone, helping him embrace - and even seek - discomfort to ward off complacency and encourage healthy risk taking. “The other big thing would be the importance of self-awareness,” he adds. “In our case, being honest about our strengths and what we’re really dumb at (which is a lot), and surrounding ourselves with smarter people who excel at those things. It’s a POV we’ve developed and honed over the years, first applying it to our work, but ultimately driving us as an agency and as humans.”

Reciprocating this notion that their business and creative partnership has shaped the duo as people, Gordy says, “I’ve learned that 1 + 1 = 3 (at least). Both quality and quantity, we make each other better in every facet of work and, frankly, often in our respective lives. We don’t just make each other better creatives, but much like a real, good marriage, we make each other better human beings.”