Meet Greg and Pat Samata, the designing duo who put funky sunglasses on the three-piece ”suits” at the Long Grove-based Kemper Reinsurance Company, told the guys to chill out, get a little goofy, and act as if they were having a blast penning insurance contracts.
The result: a slick-looking annual report that conveyed an important company message: Kemper sees each of its clients uniquely and through different eyes (colored glasses). Catchy. Credible. But also, totally cool.
It`s that sassy but never silly approach to the normally staid sphere of capital earnings and expenditure books that has won this husband and wife team rave reviews in corporate circles. It has also made Samata Associates one of the hottest graphic design agencies in Chicago.
Only get this, they`re turning out these mega-marketing masterpieces-20 to 25 a year, to the tune of more than $3 million in annual revenues-in a renovated bowling alley 45 miles outside of Chicago in the tiny hamlet of West Dundee.
Hey, why not?
They have created a booming business and year after year capture top honors in the competitive design industry (eight in the past two years alone, among them first place in Communication Arts magazine`s June 1990 competition; first place in The 100 Show of 1990, sponsored by the American Center for Design; and several creative excellence awards from Flash, a graphic arts industry publication) by scooting stodgy stuffed shirts out of the boardroom and replacing them with a pig, horse, cow and cat. And they`ve put a smiley face with a candy-cane nose and gumball eyes on the cover of a corporate profile. So who cares if their design firm is juxtaposed between the VFW Hall and a row of froufrou shops just off Main Street in a picture-book town of 3,800?
Their client roster includes such business biggies as Motorola Inc., based in Schaumburg; First Colonial Bankshares Corp. in Chicago; Georgia-Pacific Corp., based in Atlanta; and Adia Services Inc., the Menlo Park, Calif.-based temporary personnel giant.
When the Samatas are willing to fly themselves and a camera crew to Paris to capture a guard talking into a Motorola cellular phone in front of architect I.M. Pei`s pyramid entrance to the Louvre, hit the Denver slopes to portray an Adia temp pursuing his leisure-time passion, or at a moment`s notice hop on a plane to San Francisco to check for typos, who needs a primo locale off Michigan Avenue.
Call them what you will, enigma or a couple of vanguards, but the Samatas purposefully set out to distance themselves from the Chicago agency pack and its pricey rents and carve out a niche, in of all places, a bowling alley in the Northwest burbs.
From the start, they maintained that ”if we were good, it wouldn`t matter where we were located,” explained Greg, who grew up in Palatine and always preferred the suburbs. He`s also quick to add that they`ve never made their off-the-beaten track location become a burden for clients. Initially, they traveled to corporate headquarters. Increasingly, however, clients are finding their way to West Dundee, enjoying the respite from the city.
”They think it`s great to come out here,” Pat said. ”It`s something unique.”
Industry experts applaud Pat and Greg`s gumption.
”The Samatas` work, how they make the usually boring annual reports look fun, is vibrant and exciting, really standout stuff,” said Patrick Coyne, editor of Communication Arts magazine, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based bible of the graphic design industry.
He added that though Chicago has had a stormy design history, having once been popular before World War II, the Samatas and their creative corporate designs (annual reports, company identity programs, newsletters and logos), have been instrumental in turning that backward image around. ”They`re on the cutting edge of a new breed of designers that is putting Chicago on the map again.”
But what`s perhaps most unique about Pat and Greg Samata is that they are equal partners. It`s not your typical wife lending a hand in hubby`s business, hunching over the kitchen table doing the books while he`s at the office creating and masterminding the operation. Or vice-versa. Far from it.
”They`re both creative geniuses,” Coyne said.
It is that former eschewed image that angers Pat. ”I was Greg`s partner long before I was his wife,” she insisted. ”I hate when people think I`m just the little wifey helping out.”
Indeed, their office illustrates the positive association between the duo and their design staff of 14-a friendly, we`re-all-one-happy-fam ily style that exists at all levels.
Step into this 10,000-square-foot renovated bowling alley, catch your breath from your disbelief that a joint like this really exists down the street from a recently shuttered Ben Franklin store, and look straight across the bowling lanes (now pushed together without gutters) and the ficus trees to the back: There`s Greg`s and Pat`s adjacent and equally sized glass-brick-framed offices.
Client meetings rotate between the two offices: Sometimes Pat takes center stage behind her desk. Other times, Greg mans the helm next door at his. Family dog-office mascot, Pica (as in pica pole, a printer`s line guage), usually has his nose in on the action. The golden retriever greets all visitors and is often camped out below either Pat`s or Greg`s desk taking a snooze.
Above them lies the loft that houses the most important partner in this design team, the little guy and his vast collection of Fisher Price who holds the key to the Samatas` hearts, almost-2-year-old son Evan.
Since he was 4 months old, the toddler and his nanny, Laurie, have accompanied Mom and Dad to work. Telephone calls and meetings occasionally are interrupted by urgent requests for Mommy or Daddy. But the Samatas say they wouldn`t do business and parenting any other way.
”At first, I didn`t like the idea of him coming to work with us, because I thought having a crying baby in the background didn`t sound so professional,” Greg said. ”But now I think it`s kind of cool that he`s able to have more time to spend with us and bring this added dimension to our lives. Nine out of ten times, if a client hears him in the background, they think it`s fine. Some are even envious that we get to bring him to work.”
If the Samatas sound like a scene out of ”thirtysomething,” in some ways they are. Only Pat is hardly a sniveling Hope, biding time at a homeless shelter. If anything, this sharp fashion-model-thin 38-year-old, who at one meeting is decked out in an aqua striped tunic and matching leggings, the next in a tailored city shorts ensemble, looks strikingly similar to CBS hot shot Paula Zahn. And 41-year-old Greg, with his balding in the center but slicked back on the sides jet black hair, beard and flashy multicolored tie, oozes with enthusiasm for what he does. You won`t find him veering for an exit off the fast track.
But the yuppie-personified comes alive in the workers with spiked dos who don Bermuda shorts and Polo T`s; Greg`s silver Mercedes, with the ”S. Design” plates, parked out front; Pat`s matching Volvo wagon; the cases of bottled Evian stacked on the counters of the kitchenlike employee lounge, complete with highchair for Evan and dog bowl for Pica. There`s also a second kitchen and formal dining room up front, where clients dine on catered lunches and discuss layouts while peering out the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at the Fox River. Art work is a nine-foot-tall beach ball in oils, a bright-yellow bowling ball on Pat`s desk and antique three-foot-tall miniature airplanes (Greg`s collecting passion) positioned throughout.
A tad too avante-garde or snotty? Those are images likely to be conjured up before one meets these two who`ve earned a ticket to ride in the fast lane. But clients and employees, most of whom become their close friends agree, Pat and Greg are genuinely nice folks. Christmas cards, for example, usually contain a $100 donation to a favorite charity in a client or buddy`s name. And the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and a handful of other not-for-profits get the Samata touch pro bono.
And, unlike the television series and its creative advertising team, there`s no horrible Miles-like bossman lurking over employees` shoulders. At Samata Associates, there are no titles.
”If you have titles, everyone just spends their time jockeying to get a better one,” Greg said. There`s also no room for politics. ”If we ever find out someone is doing something to undermine someone else`s job, he`s out the door,” he added. That`s happened three times.
Away from the office, at which they arrive at 6:30 a.m. weekdays and sometimes don`t leave until 8 or 9 p.m., the couple`s 105-year-old Victorian house, just two blocks away, is very much in contrast to their working environment.
Pat decorates. Greg does the cooking. Pat hates cooking. Greg hates mowing the lawn, doing windows and any housework, all tasks they`d rather pay someone else to perform. And do. There are, however, no drawing tables. ”We try very hard not to bring the work home,” Pat said. The long hours are packed in at the office, with the family taking a break for dinner each night with Evan-usually to a local eatery-and then it`s back to work for the evening.
On weekends, the family flees town for their cottage on Lake Geneva in Williams Bay. A much-appreciated oasis, there are no phones. Said Greg: ”That place saved my life. I was getting way too stressed out from this. And even though I don`t mind working until midnight here, there`s a no-work rule there. The first three years we owned the place, I lugged along my briefcase every time. But I never opened it.”
Nowadays, weekends are spent sailing, soaking up the sun, devouring trashy mystery novels and some beers.
But life for the Samatas wasn`t always so fairy-tale perfect. After graduating from The Chicago Academy of Arts in 1974, the Palatine native Greg decided to wing it and open his own design firm in a two-story house down the street from his dad`s coffee shop, The Bread Basket, in downtown Barrington. The first year`s sales were $20,000, split between himself and his then two partners.
Greg`s breakthrough came in 1981 when his firm landed its first big client, Kemper Reinsurance. Word of mouth spread like wildfire, and Kemper has been a steady client for a decade, a long record in the volatile graphic arts business.
”We have come back to them every year because of the great job they do,” said Janice Kalmar, public relations officer for Kemper Corp., the parent company. ”All of our clients look forward to their books.”
Said Tura Cottingham, corporate communication specialist for the Northbrook-based IMCERA Group Inc., the company that put the animals in the boardroom to illustrate their animal health product line: ”The graphic arts industry is very competitive, and we`re getting calls all the time from other firms wanting to do our books. But the second we tell them we work with the Samatas, they`re like `Oh, yes, yes, we understand. They`re fabulous.”
But success didn`t come easy. ”In the beginning, our clients never saw most of the good ideas we had, because we were afraid they were too wild, too much for the whole corporate thing,” explained Greg, who, for the first few years, went with the whole gray pin-striped look. ”But when we started getting less paranoid and less afraid to share our ideas, we started succeeding in the business.”
Like the Samatas do with all their clients, the Kemper sunglasses inspiration came during a brainstorming session with the company`s head honchos. A Kemper exec actually dreamed up the thought of ”seeing clients through different eyes.” But it was the Samatas who chose lemon-colored 3-D glasses and fuschia and black spotted shades.
Several years before that breakthrough, Pat, also a Chicago Arts Academy alum-they`d never met there-joined the firm as a freelancer. Both married to other spouses, the two immediately became best friends.
But after both their first marriages dissolved, the Samatas tied the knot in 1983. ”One day we just kind of looked at each other and realized we were soulmates and destined to be together,” Greg said.
They both admit that drawing that fine line between co-workers and married couple isn`t always easy. Said Greg: ”Was I Pat`s boss anymore? Is she mine? Sure, our relationship changed when we became husband and wife, but we`ve always worked together very well. I`ll start something; she`ll finish it. And we`re not afraid to tell each other if we adamantly feel some work is really horrible … and we try hard never to fight.”
