Michael Boychuk likes the critically acclaimed TV show Mad Men as much as anyone. It’s not inaccurate, he says, just romanticized.

He should know. Boychuk, who cut his teeth at venerable Seattle ad agency WongDoody, now runs Little Hands of Stone, an independent creative agency with a modest office in the Fremont neighborhood, with partner Matt McCain. Industry trade publication AdAge named Little Hands its “Small Agency Newcomer of the Year” in 2020.

Along the way, Boychuk also worked at global ad agency Leo Burnett Worldwide and, as executive creative director of Amazon’s in-house agency, played a key role in the marketing strategy of the first-ever Prime Day back in 2015. He also had a  hand in the introduction of the now-ubiquitous Amazon “Smile” logo, as well as four Super Bowl ads.

Current work includes a brand campaign for senior housing provider Aegis Living (the billboards are all over town); Seattle Children’s Hospital (the agency created a public service announcement around teen suicide); and pet-sitting company Rover.com, a campaign AdAge recently recognized with the provocative headline, “15 Creative Campaigns To Know About Today.”

“Our foundational approach is something we call ‘radical empathy.’ We look to get into the same mental headspace our customers are in.”

Boychuk understands if you’ve never heard of Little Hands. For starters, it’s a small agency with just five employees. More to the point — despite global companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco, and Boeing — Seattle isn’t what he calls “a big ad town.”

“There are definitely ad agencies here,” Boychuk says. “But to us, it’s kind of crazy. (Those companies) definitely don’t have advertising in their DNA.”

The media landscape is now broken up into a million pieces. Boychuk calls that “scary,” but it also presents an opportunity because ideas can stretch into “many different directions.”

“Our foundational approach is something we call ‘radical empathy,’” Boychuk says. “We look to get into the same mental headspace our customers are in.”

Aegis, for instance, told Little Stone it wanted a campaign to stand out from its competition, so the agency hired a creative team whose parents were in the process of getting into an assisted-living facility. For the Seattle Children’s anti-suicide campaign, Boychuk and company talked with the Gen Z demographic (those born between about 1995 and the early 2010s) and brought in a Gen Z creative team. For Rover, it reached out to passionate pet owners.

Boychuk notes that the fundamentals of advertising haven’t changed over the years. Nobody, for instance, thinks about particular brands while they’re showering or doing routine tasks.

“The vast majority of advertising is invasive. It’s an invasive species that just wants to jump out and grab you,” he says. “There’s an art in the strategy and the psychology and the craft of doing something. Cracking that code to me is really interesting.”