The advertising community was saddened in April by the news of the passing of another of Adland's true icons, Hal Riney, after a battle with cancer. He was 75 years old. Riney was a legend of American advertising, helping to cement the West Coast as a veritable advertising hub. Credited with creating inspiring, heart-warming Americana advertising for brands like Gallo Wine's Bartle & Jaymes, Henry Weinhard's and Saturn, he also worked on Ronald Reagan's iconic "Morning in America" re-election campaign in 1984. A hugely gifted writer, in 1969 Riney wrote, with friend Dick Snider, Somebody's Waiting, which was nominated for an Academy Award that year.

Born in 1932 in Seattle, after graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in art, he worked as a public relations officer for the US Army in Italy. His advertising career began in the mailroom of BBDO, San Francisco, where he rose to become creative director. In 1976 he was tapped to head up the new Ogilvy & Mather office in San Francisco, which he bought out in 1985, renaming it Hal Riney & Partners. He sold the agency to Publicis Group in 2003 and stepped down to become chairman emeritus.

Boards spoke to Riney's former colleagues to find out more about his character, his work, his legacy and his notoriously tough creative standards.

Rich Silverstein
ECD, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco
I was a young art director at Foote, Cone & Belding, San Francisco when I got a call to put the 10 best things I'd ever done together and send them to Hal. My first meeting was very intimidating. He pointed to my book, which had a hand-written note attached from Jerry Andelin, his art director, saying it was pretty good. Hal made a point of showing this to me [as if to let me know that] I should be impressed with the message and it really didn't matter because he'd be the final judge. I got the job. It was hard to keep up with Hal. He was part mentor, part hard-ass, part perfectionist. I loved it. You never thought, "I hope the client likes it", because it was first and foremost, "Did Hal like it?" He was larger than life. He would always get his way if he wrote it. If you did and the client didn't like it you'd change it. The best advice he ever gave me was, "TV is a visual medium. God is in the details." His legacy is building brands with a craftsmanship and storytelling that is unmatched and unrivaled to this day. He hated when we walked around in our softball uniforms at around five o'clock, as this meant no more work for the day. He'd shake his head in disgust as he walked down the hall to pour himself another scotch and bang away on that manual typewriter. He always treated Jeff and I with respect though, and I'll never forget that.

Paul Mimiagi
senior copywriter, Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco
I met Hal in 1976, when he took over the San Francisco office of Ogilvy, and I worked for him for about 21 years. We met and talked about me coming up from Los Angeles, and haggled about salary. I said OK and we shook hands, and on his way out he turned around and asked, "By the way, are you an art director or a writer?" I though it was funny then. What was revealing about that for me was that all he cared about was the generation of ideas. Hal was really tough. You'd get a chance to do really great work with him, but boy, the ratio of what he didn't like to what he did was very high. He could be helpful; he talked on a level that was, while simple, not where you had been thinking at all. It was like a new writer might have been with Maxwell Perkins, who edited Hemingway. They're so far above you that it's not even intimidating; you're not even sure if you can play on their level at all. You went through a lot of work, but when you got something, you were very confident. You'd feel like no one could stop it, not an account guy, not a client, because Hal liked it.

David Verklin
CEO, Aegis Media Americas
When I first met Hal in 1986 he was wearing a pair of blue jeans on the porch of the set of a Bartles & Jaymes commercial. There was a Hemingway-esque quality about Hal; they shared the same kind of mustache, he loved to hunt and fish and shared that kind of rough and ready self-confident persona. I started as the media director around 1987 when Hal and a group of us purchased the San Fran office of Ogilvy, and by 1993 I was the managing director of the agency. So I spent a lot of time with him and in many ways he was a bit of a father figure to me. He helped move the center of gravity of the creative business west, and showed that great advertising could be done outside of Manhattan. He really was an advertising entrepreneur: he helped prove that you could go out and start your own shop. If you look at how many of us have gone on to start our own shops, it was Hal who pioneered the independent successful creative agency model which is still in place today. I've never met someone in our business whose talent was so obvious, so often. He could state what he thought was the core problem in an advertising situation much faster than anyone I've ever met. I'm sure it was what it was like watching Joe DiMaggio hit a baseball or Michelangelo create a sculpture: that's just the way his neurons worked. God gave this guy a gift for commercial persuasion.