GSD&M

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GSD&M
Type	Public
Founded	Austin, Texas (1971)
Headquarters	Austin, Texas
Key people	Steve Gurasich, co-founder Roy Spence, co-founder Judy Trabulsi, co-founder Jim Darilek, co-founder Tim McClure, co-founder
Industry	Advertising
Employees	Approximately 750
Website	www.gsdm.com

GSD&M is an advertising agency located in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1971 by graduates of University of Texas at Austin. Since 1998, GSD&M has been part of the Omnicom Group.

The main office of GSD&M is located on 6th Street in Austin, across the street from the Whole Foods Market headquarters. Satellite offices are located in Chicago, Illinois and New York City, New York.

[edit] Clients

Of their 25 current clients, some notables are: AT&T, BMW, Southwest Airlines, the U.S. Air Force, Chili's and AARP. In 1986, the agency created the Don't Mess with Texas slogan for the Texas Department of Transportation.

The agency started with local retail accounts and expanded to more regional work. In the early '90's it started getting more and more national brands outside of Texas and was regarded as a "creative hot-shop."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Wal-Mart

From 1987 until 31 January 2007, GSD&M was one of two agencies that held the Wal-Mart account. In October 2006, Wal-Mart moved its $580-million account to Draftfcb, but the agency soon lost the account when, on 7 December 2006, Wal-Mart fired two marketing executives who had led the account review and initiated a second review, alleging that the executives had accepted gifts from the agencies under consideration.

DraftFCB was not permitted to participate in the second review. GSD&M was invited to take part, but declined. "We helped build Wal-Mart from $11 billion in sales to $312 billion," said one of the agency's founders, Roy Spence, "We declare victory, and we are moving on."^[1]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Stuart Elliot, "Why an Agency Said No to Wal-Mart," New York Times 15 December 2006, p. C4.