SUPP O RT I NG PRATT
TRUSTEE
PROFILE: STAN RICHARDS
5 4 p r attf o lio
photoS: Dan Walbridge/Greg Booth + Associates
I
t is late Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, and 78-year-old advertising legend Stan Richards is still at the office. Even after more than 50 years, Richards continues to enjoy running The Richards Group, the largest independent advertising agency in America. “I have no desire to hang it up and go rest somewhere,” he says. “I love what I do. I want to keep doing it and to keep getting better at it.” Richards founded The Richards Group only a few years after graduating from Pratt in 1953. His company now employs 650 professionals and bills over $1 billion annually. It is also one of the world’s most prestigious agencies, having been named Agency of the Year by Adweek five times. Known as a creative genius and a brilliant businessman, Richards himself has received countless awards and accolades. The Wall Street Journal named him one of the “Giants of Our Time” in 1986; he was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 1999 (joining such luminaries as Walt Disney, Norman Rockwell, and Andy Warhol); and Inc. magazine dubbed him an Entrepreneur of the Year in 1995. Richards remains modest about his achievements: “Talent and persuasiveness played a role, but much of my success can be attributed to good luck.” Richards attended Pratt in part because it was the only college of art and design in the country with a basketball team, and he considers that choice one of his biggest strokes of luck. “Pratt was the single most pivotal influence on everything that followed in my career,” says Richards, noting that Pratt Professor of Advertising Design Herschel Levit had a “profound effect” on his life. Richards recalls one day when Levit marched his entire class into Memorial Hall, sat down at the piano, and explained composer Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone row composition structure. “It was an unconventional way of getting there, but the lesson was that if we were going to be strong designers, we had to understand not only our own craft but music, sculpture, poetry—all cultural influences.” Richards says he learned as much from his Pratt classmates as he did from the faculty: “It was competitive but collaborative. Students cared enormously about their craft but were also anxious to help and critique each other. At Pratt, I learned I was good. When you know that, you Trustee Stan Richards (’53), principal of The Richards Group, in his office in Dallas, Texas make decisions for the right reasons. You also develop an armor and take criticism from that perspective.” His years of playing (and later, coaching) basketball also allowed him to develop his team-player spirit into a personal trademark. He is known specifically for creating a collaborative workplace environment that inspires innovative thinking among the most talented creative minds in the country. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have approached him for management advice, and his firm is consistently ranked one of the best companies to work for in the country. A book on his philosophy, The Peaceable Kingdom: Building a Company without Factionalism, Fiefdoms, Fear and Other Staples of Modern Business, was published in 2001. These days, Richards is busier than ever, immersed in an industry that is at “just the beginning” of an era of the most transformative change he has witnessed in his career. “We focused for so long in television, radio, print, outdoor, and then suddenly, there’s this new medium—the Internet —that can be the most powerful of all,” he says. But his personal commitment to looking forward, and the drive to do good work that was instilled in him at Pratt, allow him to embrace the opportunities that come with new technology. “I never look back; I am concerned only with this moment forward,” he says. “At Pratt, not only was I imbued with the skills I needed to be a successful art director, but I came away with the confidence that if I could compete successfully in an elite school filled with immensely talented kids, I would find a way to do noteworthy work no matter the circumstances.”