John McClave, Creative Director & Copywriter

Fresh out of an ivy league college with a degree in Romance Languages, and desperate for work in the thick of a recession, I took the first paying job offered to me – as the mailroom attendant in a small San Francisco ad agency. The CEO used to stand behind me as I sorted the mail, and when a check appeared he’d grab it. 

Technology would eventually render the “mailboy” extinct. But I managed to parlay the experience into a varied, 20-plus-year career in advertising, marketing and corporate communications, broken only by a brief stint as a bilingual tour bus driver (that degree came in handy after all.)

For 12 of those years I held creative director posts at three agencies: Grey San Francisco, the SF office of London-based Citigate, and Thunder Factory. (I also ran the Citigate office for a year. The year, alas, was 2001, when the dot-com bust led to an exodus of global agencies from the Bay Area, mine included.)

In 2004, I undertook a reinvention for the digital age and launched JMc Communications. Now I am the one going through the mail looking for checks. 

Thanks to the terrific clients and agency partners who have kept this enterprise aloft.