Gary Buck

What We’ve Done So Far

GB EXPERIENCE

In 1999, Agency.com’s Vail office was growing steadily, both in size and quality, since their merger with Eagle River Interactive. I had been promoted to Vice President, Creative Services and was making significant strides towards building an phenomenal team. We were creating excellent work for 3M, Toyota, Hyatt, Sprint and General Motors and our star was rising in the organization. But the larger firm was run by strange people with even stranger ideas about how to hire, train and manage employees, attract new clients and adapt to the rapidly changing business landscape. So I left. And then a few weeks later, so did the entire office. Agency.com closed the Vail office, and along with many other interactive firms across the country, began a quick downward slide as the internet bubble burst.

The idea of creating and overseeing a virtual agency that would include my most talented colleagues was born, partly of “bursting bubble” necessity but more from the desire to do great work for great clients without the onerous overhead of big agency life. Like the Mission Impossible television series, I assemble the best team for the job, from the most qualified pool of talented “agents.” It may sound like just a campy TV spy drama from the ‘70s, but by utilizing the brilliant talent available from these burst bubbles, our teams are providing amazing results for our clients. We create VIBE for our clients by doing the job better, faster and more efficiently than big agencies or consulting firms with big overhead, big staffs and big egos.

I’m proud to say that we are very rarely “one and out” with our clients, but have developed long relationships, both professional and personal, with many of these firms. Deloitte Consulting, for example, has hired me to be their Subject Matter Expert (SME) in the area of creative direction and user experience design on over ten projects since 2003. Other clients have brought me in as their “ad hoc Chief Experience Officer” to develop strategies and execute critical campaigns. The Case Studies blog will grow as I add more past work to the website, but here’s a list of clients with whom my teams and I have worked recently: