Jamie Barrett and Matt Hofherr on Being the ‘Biggest Small Agency in the World’

In March of last year, 'the biggest small agency in the world' underwent a name change. 

San Francisco agency Barrett became Barrett Hofherr after two years of its biggest ever growth in its 10-year history. President Jamie Barrett said the addition of Matt Hofherr as partner and chief strategy officer two years prior and an expanded leadership team played a significant role in that growth. The name change is reflective of that. 

Jamie and Matt are long-time good friends and competitors. Matt founded fellow San Francisco agency MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER, so naturally they’ve gone toe-to-toe on business in prior years. These days, they live two minutes from each other and enjoy spending Sundays walking their dogs, Nala, Leo and Bailey, while prepping for the week ahead. 

“The glue to our relationship is that we both love advertising,” they say. “Not everyone loves the constant hustle and the highs and not-so-highs of this business. We’re betting our future on people who do.”

Since Matt joined the business, he and Jamie say that while their focus of great thinking and great work remain the same, the process of getting there and the metrics of their clients’ success involves a daily pursuit of evolution. “We constantly look to improve and reinvent,” they say. They’re also investing more in their own success. They’ve doubled the size of Barrett Hofherr’s design group, added a director of analytics, and expanded their post production and AI capabilities. They have also launched several five- to 30-day ‘sprints’, where they work with clients in a ‘hyper-collaborative way on an accelerated timeline’. “We ask clients to take intelligent leaps every day. More than ever, we’re challenging ourselves to do the same,” say Jamie and Matt.

Jamie and Matt are proud of the fact that in ‘a turbo-charged, post-Covid, let’s-date-not-marry advertising world’, Barrett Hofherr is growing. The agency has enjoyed 12 wins since the rebrand and bigger assignments from big brands are appearing. “But it’s about the work and always will be,” they stress. “Do powerful and effective work, and you will succeed ‘in a business sense’. In our minds, the two goals remain inseparable.”

To that end, the duo are particularly proud of the work that Barrett Hofherr has launched in the past 90 days. The agency has created two brand relaunch campaigns – one for The Habit Grill and another for DXL Big & Tall stores. Both are showing great early results, they say. A Special Olympics campaign just won a national Effie. Its experiential and design work for VideoAmp debuted at Cannes, and next month, they’ll shoot the second instalment of its new 360 campaign for Sutter Health. It has also launched Friday Beers, a new light beer aptly named after the social media phenomenon Friday Beers. Finally, Jamie and Matt are excited for North America to see their new integrated launch campaign for Niantic and their soon-to-be-released work for footwear and apparel brand Ariat featuring 49er quarterback Brock Purdy.

As long-time independent agency founders, Jamie and Matt believe that the US agency work is having somewhat of a watershed moment right now, as new, founder-led agencies are becoming more ever-present than ever. “Competition is everywhere and we’re held accountable as an industry more than ever before,” they say. “What you did even two years ago is borderline meaningless. It’s all about currency and performance. Arguably, that makes it an interesting time to launch.

 

“The thing is,” they add, “every agency should be in launch mode, all the time. You need to renew yourself constantly, even daily. The world has been screaming that message for a while now, and it’s getting louder all the time.”

As we head into Q3 of 2024, Barrett Hofherr is readying itself to publish two white papers about its new ‘Brand Momentum Score’, which measures the value of brand growth. Traditionally, they say, brand momentum has been a one-dimensional question within a brand tracker. So, the agency is building a new multidimensional score, which is set to launch later in Q4. Jamie and Matt are also dropping the first season of their podcast, ‘Optimism, always’, featuring some of the industry’s most prominent CMOs.

However, the main thoroughfare through all of that is a continued ambition to operate as ‘the biggest small agency in the world’. “There are tangible ways we maintain that mantra,” they say. “It starts with forming strong and trusting relationships with our clients. When that’s in place, anything’s possible. We’ve also built a best-in-breed network of local and global partners, allowing us to take on larger projects while still giving every client the attention they deserve.

 

“Beyond that, we just want to be the best at what we do. To quote a line Jamie wrote back in the day: You don't win silver. You lose gold.”