Many Canadian advertising folks Ron Woodall helped to mold refer to him as though he is some kind of creative guru. Others speak of him as a coach who took his team from the bottom of the standings and led them to the championship. Now they can all refer to Woodall, Palmer Jarvis DDB’s executive VP of creative strategies, as the 2003 Spiess Award winner for furthering excellence in TV advertising.

The Spiess honor is a slam dunk for Woodall when one considers his influence on PJDDB’s creative output for the last decade. The agency continues to deliver award-winning, globally competitive creative and has nurtured some of the best creatives working in the business, many of whom have left the agency to do comparable work elsewhere. And despite these departures, PJDDB never seems to miss a beat. Much of the credit for this should go to Woodall, according to those who have worked with him.

‘There is a close correlation between effective advertising and award winning advertising and that has always been so,’ says Woodall. ‘It’s been measured. Ninety percent of all award winning campaigns have better than industry average effectiveness. So from my point of view the idea was to train to do award winning work.’

His resume is eclectic to be sure. After an advertising career that began at McKim in Montreal in the late 1950s before moving to a young J. Walter Thompson in Vancouver for a decade-long tenure beginning in 1963. ThenWoodall ‘dropped out,’ as they say, and became a painter. Then he became a writer, and a photographer after that. These are the kinds of career moves that would leave most in the business shaking their heads, but Woodall tried them all, had varying degrees of success, and moved on.

‘He’s a huge influence, both creatively and for how to live life,’ says Marc Stoiber, VP, executive creative director of Grey Worldwide Canada. ‘He could have stayed in advertising until he was 50 and gotten out of it with a huge salary, but he threw it all in and said, ‘Nope, I’m going to be an artist now.’ Each time he was taking a huge risk and just said, ‘Why not?”

He returned to creative life as the CD of Vancouver’s Expo ’86, and took a stab at running his own production company in GGR/Woodall, among other ventures. His exploits and successes caught the attention of Palmer Jarvis Communications head Frank Palmer.

In the early ’90s, Palmer was growing increasingly frustrated by the lackluster creative coming out of his agency.

‘We were doing okay for our clients, but we weren’t being recognized for the work we were doing because it wasn’t very good, and I was getting very tired of going to most of the award shows and not winning anything,’ says Palmer. ‘I told [Woodall] why we were looking for a new creative director and asked him if he’d be interested. He asked me, having been out of the business for many years, what had really changed. I said, ‘basically nothing,’ and he said under those conditions he’d come work for us.’

Woodall came to PJ as more of a creative coach than creative director, says Palmer, and as such he played a significant role in turning the agency around, shifting Canada’s creative advertising power balance from central Canada to the West Coast.

‘Vancouver went from being a regional B market to a market that’s consistently leading the country in creativity,’ says Chris Staples, a partner at Vancouver’s Rethink Advertising. ‘He’s a big part of that, and although he’s never gotten the credit for it, he deserves a lot of it.’

How did he do it? Apparently by acting as a sounding board for those who sought his counsel. Stoiber, a former CD and senior writer at PJ, says the ability and willingness to listen is one of Woodall’s best qualities.

‘He’ll listen to a lot of people and then form things together, not in an obvious way, but in a disconcertingly fresh way,’ says Stoiber. ‘He’ll take [an idea] that seems perfectly obvious to you and make it seem fresh, like you’d never thought of that before. He has a way of making the people who work with him look really smart by twisting their ideas a little bit, passing them back and saying, ‘You thought of it first.”

Another creative heavyweight who credits Woodall as a major influence in his career is former PJ Vancouver creative director Staples. Palmer recalls a time when Staples was reluctant to fill the agency’s vacant CD position, and Woodall, a champion of Staples’ potential and existing talents, convinced him to give it a whirl.

‘He was the most influential mentor I’ve ever had,’ says Staples. ‘If it wasn’t for Ron, I wouldn’t have been made creative director at Palmer Jarvis. And what’s more, I would have never believed I could have done the job and I wouldn’t have been successful at the job. It’s not that he taught me so much about advertising – although he did a lot – it was more that he taught me about human nature and how to implement change in an organization.’

Even after the departure of Staples, Stoiber and others who would leave the agency, PJDDB continues to absorb awards and accolades, thanks in no small part to Woodall’s influence on the creative department. Although he only comes into the office a couple of days a week now, Palmer says the 67-year-old Woodall’s presence is still felt every day.

‘It’s in the paint on the walls,’ says Palmer.

As for Woodall, he says helping to rebuild Palmer’s agency and helping to shape some of today’s creative heavy-hitters over the last 10 years was very rewarding.

‘It was the greatest way to end a career and I’m ready to go to my island now,’ says Woodall. ‘I told [Palmer] that whatever the circumstances I’d love to have a tiny office downtown and contact with the department, even if I wasn’t working for the agency. I’d love to be able to drop in and sit in on creative meetings like the retired teacher who comes back to class. I think that’ll always happen. I’m almost 68 years old, but I have the interests, thoughts and attitudes of a much younger person, because they’re the only people I ever get to see.’

-www.pjddb.com