His way seems to be working. In 1999, Marshall killed the idea of trying to find one person to wear Riney's creative crown and toppled the hierarchy. Then he went searching for writers and art directors who've worked on big brands at the hottest agencies. Marshall knew the best creatives would relish working at Riney in a flattened organizational structure where they wouldn't have to jump through endless hoops to get good work produced. And without an executive creative director at the top and lieutenants several rungs down, "you don't have all the creative teams underneath fighting for recognition," he insists.

But Marshall also knew, from working on both coasts, that if he was going to lure and keep the smartest creatives and push them to the wall for breakout work, they would need total freedom from the managerial chores and administrative niggling it takes to get advertising out the door. "On the East Coast, creatives are judged on their management credentials," says Marshall. "If you run a large group of creatives, you've got stature." The West Coast is just the opposite. "Nobody cares about your title or how big a group you run. If you can't show a reel of work that makes people salivate, you're a horse's ass." What are the chances of finding a great creative who's also a great manager?" Out of "hundreds," Marshall cites only five who measure up-Hal Riney, Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein, Lee Clow at TBWA Chiat Day and Dan Kennedy of Wieden & Kennedy.

Today, eight Group Creative Directors in their thirties and forties-four teams of battle scarred vets-run an estimated $870 million in billings for some tough hardballing clients facing brutal competition-GM, Sprint PCS, Hewlett-Packard, America West Airlines, Evergreen Mutual Funds and First Union National Bank. Their mandate: solve the client's business problems and don't shuffle papers and sweat the details.

So what is Hal Riney's role today? The admaking machine who has been coming in at 6 am for 40 years, pecking out copy on his antique Underwood, now comes in one, maybe two days a week. Usually, he sits quietly, monastically in his corner office with its waterfront views, working on the flagship Saturn account. A Northwesterner from Longview, Washington, and something of a loner, Riney doesn't waste words in conversation or copywriting. At 69, Hal Riney is the lion in winter, leaving Marshall to tame a new pack of creative tigers. (Riney did not respond to Graphis' requests for an interview).

It's no exaggeration to say that Riney himself single-handedly changed the face of television advertising in America. He didn't just humorize commercials, he humanized them. He is probably the first creative to realize that people spend money on product brands that make them feel good, secure and emotionally connected. And he's proved it over and over again with brand-building advertising that tunnels into the brain without a hard sell, screaming copy or dazzling graphics and visuals.

It was Hal Riney who launched Saturn in 1989 as a "Different kind of company, a different kind of car" and he's still driving home that premise today. He built the wine cooler category for Gallo with folksy Frank Battles and Ed James sitting on a front porch. He perfected his trademark geezerchat by turning Oregon's own Henry Weinhard beer into a cult brew nationwide. Riney's simple, soothing words and his reassuring voice put Alamo Rent-A-Car on the map, and some say his "Morning in America" TV commercials put Ronald Reagan in the White House. His print work, meticulously executed, has mirrored the same human values. In a world of advertised hype, Hal Riney's print and broadcast work has been a tiny island of soft-spoken honesty and chuckles.

Marshall is plenty verbal. A boyish 49, and clearly the man in charge, he has a lariat on his desk in his smallish, cluttered office in the middle of the creative department. But it's more of an old west artifact than a management tool to rope in the talent. A bison head hangs on the wall along with pictures of Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, Gene Autry and his dad, handsome in his World War II Navy dress whites. A western leather saddle occupies one corner and a computer on a high table dominates the other. The lanky, 6 foot 3 inch agency boss who writes standing up, prefers stovepipe jeans and bizarre shoes like red Nikes to pinstripes and Florsheims. He doesn't even drive a Saturn; his 1950 Ford pickup has the pole position in the agency garage.

It wasn't always parked there. Marshall was working at Ogilvy & Mather's New York office while Riney was running Ogilvy's San Francisco outpost when they met 16 years ago. "Ogilvy New York wanted me to get Hal to work on a beer account but anybody who knows him knows you can't talk him into anything," says Marshall. "I came out, met him and at that time he was the only guy in advertising talking about brands and image advertising. In New York, they were still in the `we've gotta say the brand name 15 times in a commercial' mindset. But Riney was saying `that doesn't mean a thing. We need emotion, imagery, great design and filmmaking."'

Sure enough, Marshall couldn't convince Riney into taking on the beer account but he learned a few things. "Hal's advertising works because he talks only to decision makers who got to the top by taking a risk. The beer account sounded like there were too many lawyers involved so he said `forget it. If we're not going to talk to the real hitters we're not going to get the ads we want.' But he offered me a job and kept on offering it."

Marshall moved west in 1990 to head Ogilvy's Cole & Weber unit, a Seattle-based advertising and public relations agency with a strong creative reputation. The job made him physically and spiritually closer to Riney who grew up in the Northwest and majored in art at the University of Washington. By this time, Riney, who left Ogilvy in 1986, had his own agency in San Francisco. "It was an incredible learning experience. I learned from Hal that advertising's biggest business problem is recruiting and retaining the best creative talent," Marshall recalls, "and that you have to pay New York prices to get the top creatives. He was the first agency head outside of New York to understand that."

Marshall eventually joined Hal Riney & Partners as president in 1995, before it was sold to Publicis three years later. But he didn't come aboard as the next Hal Riney. "The road is littered with a lot of bodies that tried to replace Hal. I don't even pretend to be a creative nor do I have any aspirations to be a creative director. When I read and go over your work I'm not judging you as a writer. But I'm able to connect with creative guys, focus on their great ideas and sell their best work."