Bob Garfield of AdAge thinks Cheetos and the makers of their latest campaign, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco are sending consumers, especially young ones, inappropriate messages.

Entitled "Random Acts of Cheetos," Chester Cheetoh convinces people to mess things up a little. But Garfield sees the spots as anti-establishment.

"Alienated teenagers and young men chafe against authority. So frustrated and resentful are they about their humiliating powerlessness, they tend to lash out — or at least fantasize about lashing out — at the powers that be."

Hmm. So Bob thinks the spots are bad for kids, tweens, teens etc. Well you can decide for yourself, after the jump.

continued...

Guy Seese is joining Grey San Francisco as Executive Creative Director. Seese abdicated his title of Creative Director and Associate Partner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco earlier this year. He told Creativity that:

"I've been freelancing for a while, in New York, some work with the Barbarian Group out here in San Francisco, and I kind of liked the idea of being the Lone Ranger. But what I missed was the opportunity to build a team, and the camaraderie that went with it. Jeff Goodby is a good friend, and he told me that I needed to start my own agency, and I got started on that through these side projects, but ultimately it's a really difficult thing to do. It's very difficult to find the right people you can trust with the right business acumen for the job."

Everyone bailing on Goodby. Feh Tarty and Pat McKay departed for W+K London recently. Mark Wenneker bailed for Mullen in March. Guy Seese said,

"I was really impressed with the people here at Grey SF. All the integrated pieces are already in place, we just need to throw some fuel on it and fire it up. Our goal here is to be nothing less than a creative powerhouse in the new media space."

Right. Um, was it the money, Guy? You've still got to partner with Betsy Sperry to lead the agency, so it had to be the cash. Sure, I get that. Cash talks. Possibly, Seese realized he was never going to shine beneath top dawgs, Goodby and Silverstein and left. Failed to get his own shop of the ground and then went straight for the cash.

Bravo to Grey for trying to revamp the deathstar. First, with Tor Myhren in New York and now this move. In his new role, Seese will lead Grey San Francisco's integrated creative department and oversee all the work -- from traditional advertising, to interactive, to web development. Prior to GSP, Seese spent five years as Executive Creative Director, Partner at Cole & Weber/United in Seattle working on Nike and Dell among others. Guy Seese is a Cannes, Clios, Kelly and One Show winner, too.

If you want to check out Seese's work, Grey has set up a website to cure your curiosity. Check it out here.

Word on the street is that Hyundai is all ready leave Goodby with a "Dear John" letter and jump in bed with someone else. Namely, the Richards Group in Dallas.

That's right. Their ex.

Hyundai is actually thinking about gutlessly running back to their ex. Just remember Hyundai - after a break-up, you only remember all the good times.

This should get interesting.

Hmm... there's been some buzz about Hyundai and Goodby's rocky relationship as of late. Kinda makes you wonder if the shop actually got too much of a good thing when it won Sprint and the aforementioned car manufacturer back to back.

Apparently, Hyundai Motor Company's dealers don't want Goodby as their agency. They feel the advertising currently being done doesn't properly connect with their consumers.

And dealers ALWAYS know what's good for business, right?

Hopefully, Goodby can address their concerns and show them how to do right by their business. Steering around dealership associations is a tricky business, unfortunately. They cause the deaths of more good automotive campaigns every year...

A dealer couldn't acknowledge good creative even if it rabidly ripped off his left butt cheek, slapped it down on his lap, and then said "hi. I'm good creative. I'm the one who just ripped off your left butt cheek."

Sad but true. Let's all not forget the unfortunate dealer-butt-cheek-dismemberment incident at Fiat in the late 70s.
(Kidding.)

Hewlett Packard is supposedly unhappy with Goodby, Silverstein + Partners. That's the word on the street. The computer maker is apparently shopping around for a new agency, but for which part of the business? Who knows. We do hear that an agency pitched them just this week. Was it your agency?

Rumors are always flying around about Goodby. It's the haters. When you're agency of the year, everyone will always speculate on when and where you will miss a step. Last time, it was the Sprint account. We didn't believe it for a nanosecond, so didn't bother posting it here. HP, well maybe... Calls to HP went straight to their giant media inbox. An email to Goodby, naturally, got us nowhere.

You know the deal. Send us an email at agencyspy at mediasbistro dot com or there is always the comment section. The only agency we know of that is monitoring emails sent to us is Idea City - GSDM. Can you believe it? Note to Greed, Sex staffers, please just use your personal accounts at home if you've got something to say, yeah?

Goodby Silverstein is in the midst of an call for entry for the 2008 Radio Mercury Awards. Yes, yes, radio still exists and with ads! The agency has launched a site called Make Radio where users employ a virtual mixer to create their own :30 radio spot. The entry with the most votes will win an award at this year's show. It's a nicely designed experience, very friendly, slick. We can't wait to see how many folks actually create a spot though.

Feh Tarty who has just returned from blogging the Andy's judging process has changed teams according to the W+K blog. Bye to Goodby, hello to WK London. Okay, now look down below this posting. Yes, not to far. Right there. See that there? That's a posting about Mark Wenneker leaving Goodby for Mullen.

Now, if we can just get one more body to bail today, it'll be a sign that all is balanced in the advertising eco-system. Oh wait. We didn't fully read the subversive print, as we were blinded by the news about sweet faced Tarty. Pat is also sayanora. When we say Pat, we mean Pat McKay.

Well, that's that then. The prophecy has been fulfilled and all is well in advertising (for some people).

Mark Wenneker has said bye bye to Goodby for greener pasture as ECD at Mullen. Mark was at Goodby, Silverstein for nine long years, which is two life times in this business. He will be number two at the shop behind CCO Edward Boches.Wenneker is known to be a renaissance man - he creates, pitches and was credited with closing the win for Goodby on the Comcast account. He's pulled stints at McCann and The Martin Agency.

Congrats to Mark.

AdWeek has named Goodby, Silverstein its agency of the year. All the regular fan fare is there, but we do like how AdWeek mentions that earlier this year the seven partners of Goodby were thinking about laying off 40% of it staff after losing the Saturn account.

"I was carrying around this list of people that we would have to lay off,"

says Robson.

Yet, the shop rebounded by getting more digital, changing up some of the internal processes and focusing on bringing in new business (Hyundai, Sprint, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia). The shop ended 2007 "with $2 billion more in billings than at the end of 2006, a 14 percent increase in revenue and more than 200 new employees."

Congrats to Goodby. For once, we're going to agree with AdWeek. Do you? Comments? Send to the anon tip box or email us direct at agencyspy at mediabistro dot com. Sorry about that.

In the mean time, enjoy the video above. We post it because that music in the background is to perfect for our subject matter to pass up. It just perfectly captures the agency who had a tough year and yet, made good. The kid in the video is Brad Mead. Neither here nor there really, but again, that music? Almost made us tear up thinking about Robson carrying around a hit list in his pocket. Heavens.