Ad agency scores national attention with MTV campaign

By Anthony Schoettle

Advertising agency Bradley and Montgomery launched an unorthodox campaign for cable television station MTV last month that is gaining the local firm - and its client - national acclaim.

A friend of a friend led BAM officials to the New York-based music television channel, which was looking to promote the release of its show “The Hills” on DVD.

BAM officials pulled video snippets from the show, enhanced them graphically, then uploaded the snippets to Web sites such as YouTube.com and Veoh.com. The resulting vignettes can be used - most often by teens - as a type of virtual greeting card.

The messages aren’t your typical Get Well Soon or Happy Birthday fare. Instead, they might allow one girl to tell another, in a creative way, that her boyfriend is a loser. Among the most popular messages BAM has made available from the show: “Sorry for the assault,” “He’s tainted,” and “Don’t be the girl who didn’t go to Paris.”

Presumably, the slogans mean more to fans of “The Hills,” BAM officials said, but they can also be used to pique the curiosity of people who don’t follow the series.

“We found through our research that viewers use language from the show as a way to communicate,” Montgomery said.

BAM made the rounds among social network Web sites to find hard-core fans of the show, and enlisted their help in spreading the word of the campaign. The agency reports that well over 300,000 clips from the campaign were viewed and/or downloaded in the first month.

“The 300,000 are just the ones we can track,” said Mark Bradley, who in 2000 founded BAM with fellow Young & Laramore alum Scott Montgomery. “Now that this has taken off, there are lots of clips on sites that we may not know about and can’t track. That’s the power of this campaign.”

The video clips called Emoticlips by Bradley and Montgomery can be sent embedded in an email or posted on a person’s page or social networking site, such as MySpace or Facebook.

Naturally, at the end of each clip is a short promo for the release of season two of “The Hills” on DVD.

Word of the campaign is spreading far beyond teen circles. BAM’s efforts merited mentions in AdWeek, The New York Times, US Weekly and E!Online.

The campaign’s budget is relatively small. There is no charge to put videos on sites such as YouTube and the series’ fans do most of the work.

While “efforts by ad agencies to whip up online-video trends are almost heartbreakingly dumb,” said Virginia Heffernan, who writes a TV and media column for The New York Times, she likes BAM’s MTV campaign “a lot right now.”

“Bradley and Montgomery has found a way to promote the DVD season two of ‘The Hills’ with sweet, sendable video clips from the season,” Heffernan said.

It’s quite a coup for a local agency to get such national attention, said Bob Gustafson, Ball State University advertising professor.

“Historically, it’s been very difficult to get even a small part of a national account,” Gustafson said. “It takes exceptionally talented people, and oftentimes a track record. The competition for these jobs is extremely intense.”

BAM’s deftness at using a variety of marketing tools has been key to its success, said Paul Knapp, CEO of local agency heavyweight Young & Laramore.

“This is a significant evolution for them,” Knapp said. “We’re seeing a shift toward a much more complex mix of communication tools and [BAM] is on top of that shift.”

Since 2004, BAM has pursued niche projects for large companies. That strategy, BAM officials said, has led to strong double-digit annual growth.

Montgomery has a clear vision of the firm’s target market, and said his staff of 23 could grow by 10 in 2008.

“The Fortune 500,” Montgomery said. “That’s our [client] universe.”

Posted on The Indiana Business Journal

“Rick & Steve” on DVD, Plus “EmotiClips,” Now Available

By Kilian Melloy

The DVD release, today, of the animated Logo TV series Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World will delight Rick & Steve fans, but so might the EmotiClips that Paramount Home Entertainment has brought out for use in promoting the show.

According to a press release for the EmotiClips, which are an innovation from Bradley and Montgomery (BaM for short), the EmotiClips—which were made available yesterday—“will be able to trade online messages of encouragement, love, and well… other stuff.”

A sample EmotiClip—titled I Want to Be Your Alternative Lifestyle Companion!—is available at http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1046397Tkmts3na

The EmotiClips were first employed to promote the DVD release of The Hills, Season 2.

Logo, which is part of the MTV Networks family of channels, is the first (and so far, the only) 24-hour LGBT cable network.

Logo is the newest channel from MTV Networks and the first and only 24-hour cable network for the LGBT community.

Said Ben Carlson, Chief Strategic Officer of BaM, the EmotiClips are “an immediate way for people to discover the show, get fans to introduce the show to their friends, and to take television beyond a passive activity and really use it to communicate.”

Continued Carlson, “‘Viral’ [marketing] has become a bit muddied as a concept. But we’ve found with EmotiClips that when you have compelling content and let fans know about organically through fan sites, blogs and social networking sites it really does take on a life of its own that isn’t artificial or forced.”

Scott Montgomery, principal of BaM, remarked, “EmotiClips takes the idea of being a fan of a show and turns it in a new direction.”

Added Montgomery, “By making it a part of electronic dialog, it ‘badges’ the sender. People already feel like a show they like is theirs;’ an Emoticlip can cement that relationship. Plus, we got to sort through episode after episode of funny stuff. Who doesn’t want that job?”

Bradley and Montgomery, an independent creative agency that bills itself as “focusing on unconventional projects for large and mid-sized brands,” was founded in 1999.

Logo’s Rick & Steve is an animated comedy that uses computer-generated imagery to depict a world in which characters that look like plastic toys get involved in outrageous situations. The pair at the heart of the show—voiced by Will Matthews and Queer As Folk alum Peter Paige—are a gay couple whose adventures are narrated by film director Q. Allan Brocka (Boy Culture).

The show’s five-episode first season (including segments with titles like “Damn Straights,” “It’s Raining Pussy,” and “Bush Baby”) premiered earlier this summer, and features guest voices Billy West (Ren and Stimpy, Futurama) as “Dr. Hunk,” and comedian Margaret Cho (I’m the One That I Want) as “Condie Ling” in three episodes.

The show also features Kirsten Kellogg as the owner of a sex-toy shop, Dana Bernstein as her butch construction-worker partner, Alan Cumming as a older, HIV+ character, and Wilson Cruz as the gay couple’s houseboy.

The show’s episodes tackle material like sperm donation, gay family cruises, and relationship issues.

Q Allan Brocka writes and produces the series, which is based on short films of the same title that Brocka created in 1999.

The 120-minute DVD retails for $19.99.

Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.

Posted on Edge Boston

Videos for Brighter Days!

By Virginia Heffernan

The efforts by ad agencies to whip up online-video trends are almost heartbreakingly dumb. But it’s wrong to weep for all of them. At Screens, we’re liking this cornball thing called EmotiClips a lot right now.

An Indianapolis-based firm called Bradley & Montgomery has found a way to promote the DVD of Season 2 of “The Hills” with sweet, sendable video clips from the season. You can use these things as “pick-me-up e-cards,” the firm says in its news release, so girls can “connect with one another and brighten their day through animation and sound.”

Cute!

Tacky?

I don’t know!

I know I sometimes need my days brightened.

Take a look. Want to tell your friend her boyfriend’s no good? Send her this!

In the so-called feminization of the Internet, these things are pretty pony candy that could certainly saturate the MySpace of any fun-loving, early-adapting tween.

I can hardly choose just one. They’re like snatches of video poetry. You used to have to trace wisdom this good (from Jim Morrison, say) in psychedelic writing on your notebook; now you can embed it in iPhone messages.

Anyway, here are some sweet samples.

Don’t Be the Girl Who Didn’t Go To Paris
Sorry for the Assault
He’s Tainted

(One note for the guys: what’s arguably the show’s most revelatory clip — the one that shows junior-league jerks exactly how to push girls around — doesn’t seem to make the lineup of girl-power clips. Maybe because it’s from the current season. But come on! We need an EmotiClip of Spencer saying, “They’re not decisions; they’re surprises.”)

Posted on The New York Times

MTV Combats ‘Sucky’ Relationships

By Kamau High

NEW YORK What’s the best way to tell someone that they’re dating a “sucky” person?

If things go independent Bradley & Montgomery’s way, high-school girls will be doing it with short clips from season two of MTV’s serial reality drama, The Hills. The snippets show series characters Lauren, Heidi and others saying just that sort of thing. The shorts, which promote the show’s release on DVD, were uploaded to YouTube last Friday.

In “Sucky Person,” Lauren and Heidi have a heated conversation about someone named Spencer, who appears to have done something not so nice. As Lauren becomes more agitated, she says, “He’s a sucky person” over and over. The words “You need to know” appear at the top of the clip, followed by “He’s a sucky person” on the bottom.

“We tried to figure out what the target audience, women ages 12-24, liked about it. They traded characters, quotes and scenes and talked in that language,” said Ben Carlson, chief strategy officer at Bradley in Indianapolis. “It’s the same way their older sister would have used Sex and the City and their dad would have used Caddyshack.”

The Hills spun off from Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, and follows Lauren Conrad and her friends as they try to make it in the world. It is one of MTV’s highest rated shows and has spawned The Hills After-Show on MTV.com and The Virtual Hills, a Second Life-styled interactive experience.

To find the right clips, the agency reviews the show for high-drama moments that could encapsulate a sentiment. In addition to telling someone her partner is “sucky,” the 12 clips illustrate topics such as “I don’t have time for your drama, I’m busy busy” and “Breaking up is hard, but you’re still the star of the show.”

“We had a litmus test for picking scenes to use: Is there a sentiment that can be delivered from one person to another, and is it an iconic moment from the show,” said Carlson.

Bradley & Montgomery even came up with a name for the video greetings, “EmotiClips.”

By tapping into fans’ favorite memories of the show, the hope is the clips will be passed around and be able to stand on their own as greeting cards that just happen to be selling something. “If you receive this from a show, its social currency. It reminds you that you loved it and it reminds you that it’s available on DVD. If you get it and you’ve never seen the show, you want to know what the hell am I being shown,” said Carlson.

Posted on Ad Week

The Hills Helps You Communicate

By Noelle Hancock

We’ve always opined that there isn’t anything worth saying that the cast of The Hills can’t say for us. Thanks to MTV, we finally have the means to make that dream a reality.

In honor of the DVD release of The Hills season two, the network has created short video “EmotiClips” of the show’s cast talking about relatable situations. Now you can tell friends or loved ones how you feel about them via the infamous words of Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt.

Posted in US Magazine

BaM Takes Creative Media Awards’ Best In Show

IN A REAL SHOCKER, A tiny business-to-business media campaign by Bradley and Montgomery took Best in Show Wednesday night during MEDIA magazine’s 2006 Creative Media Awards in New York. The $65,000 campaign for client Chase Commercial Banking, used eye-catching, three-foot tall, blue-and-white marketers to transform electric power outlets in the Indianapolis International Airport into advertising for Chase’s brand. The campaign effectively targeted Chase’s audience of business decision-makers, creating awareness for electricity-hungry, laptop-toting business travelers. The Bradley and Montgomery effort also won the CMA for the business-to-business category.

The awards show also shocked attendees for another reason: It failed to award a winner in the email category. While the judges deemed the three finalists in that category to have produced finalist-quality campaigns, none were judged exemplary enough to qualify as a CMA winner.

Winners in the other CMA categories included:

Consumer Magazines
Starcom USA

Playtex

Newspapers
MindShare
Radikal Newspaper

Online Media: Branding
AOL
Unilever/Dove

Online Media: Search
RPA
Honda/Element

Outdoor or Place-Based Media
The Richards Group
Greyhound Lines

Radio
OMD

COTY/Shania by Stetson

Television
RPA
Honda/Fit

Interactive/Enhanced TV
OMD
GE

Multicultural Media
Zoom Media & Marketing and Mediacom
GlaxoSmithKline/ Nicorette

New/Emerging/Experimental Media
OMD
Visa

Branded Content/Product Placement

McKinney & Silver
Oasys Mobile

Research/Consumer Insights
Maxus
Church & Dwight/Trojan

Media Plan
The Richards Group

Fruit of the Loom

Communications Channel Plan
TM Advertising
Nationwide

Creative
MediaVest
Procter & Gamble/Febreze

Posted in Media Daily News

Can Your Banner Ad Do This?

From: Issue 107 | Page 51
By Jennifer Pollock

Online advertising is growing 30% a year—but there’s more innovative stuff happening in the physical world, where the message isn’t confined by the dimensions of a browser screen.

In the ongoing struggle with message clutter, ads that are creative, strange, and often three-dimensional can be the most effective. The future of advertising, says Charlie Jones, chief marketing officer of RedPeg, an Alexandria, Viginia-based agency, will be about creating unexpected connections to memorable, real-world experiences in ways that bring brands to life.

So how about electrical outlets in airport terminals? Bradley and Montgomery’s new campaign for Chase Commercial Banking slaps ads just above 90 outlets around Indianapolis International Airport. Plug in your laptop, see the ad.

Or take your typical urinal. (Please.) Clients such as Viacom’s Country Music Television and Molson beer are spreading the word via the Wizmark, which fits inside a urinal and delivers sound and images when it senses a new, uh, customer. “We feel we have the most captive audience,” says Richard Deutsch, director of Healthquest Technologies Inc., Wizmark’s proud parent.

And the next time you step out of your car, you may find your parking space talking to you. Parking Stripe Advertising has placed vinyl-strip ads in lots on behalf of Ford Motor Co., Qwest, and others—with recorded-pitch versions coming soon. Some 80% of consumers say they remember the messages. Try that with a banner ad.

Posted on Fast Company

Yahoo!’s big brain display launches new Answers site

YAHOO! LAST MONTH UNVEILED what it called “the world’s biggest brain,” a two-story, purple, brain-shaped terrarium complete with firing synapses and lobes atop the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. The brain unveiling was the official kick-off of Yahoo!’s “Ask the Planet 2006” campaign to promote Yahoo! Answers, the search engine’s social search Web site that was launched in December. The site lets users pose a question and potentially millions of Web users can take a shot at answering. The Times Square brain was up for three days and housed 22 “brainiacs,” users of Yahoo! Answers who were chosen through an online submission process, to answer random questions from the general public, using their own knowledge and Yahoo! Answers. An online component of the “Ask the Planet” campaign runs through July 10, in which celebrities post a “question of the day” and users can respond. Former Vice President Al Gore and U2’s Bono were among the notables whose questions have been featured. Users with the best answers to celebrity questions will be entered into a sweepstakes to win prizes including a Toyota Prius, free gasoline for a year and a trip for two. While OgilvyOne, the direct marketing agency, handled the advertising elements of the promotion, which included print ads in USA Today and radio spots, Yahoo’s Buzz Marketing team handled the Times Square event.—Carol Krol

THE BOOZE WAS FLOWING and the business cards were flying last month at the first New York mixer thrown by paidcontent.org. In a relatively short period, paidcontent.org, the brainchild of publisher and editor Rafat Ali, has emerged as a must-read among digital media cognoscenti. Within three hours of announcing the New York mixer, the Web site had received more than 500 RSVPs. So it was packed to the gills at the W Hotel in Manhattan, as media bankers kibitzed, software vendors debated the latest trends in new media and everyone seemed to be looking for some sort of deal. The main event: a Q&A with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, who shared some insight about the Times’ digital strategy. Ali questioned Sulzberger about TimesSelect, which was launched last September and features bloglike stories written by the newspaper’s various columnists. Sulzberger stressed that media companies should not underestimate blogs. “For a long time the Times was viewed as antithetical to blogs … but in truth what we have found is that blogging is an increasingly important way to engage our audience-and that’s our job.” Sulzberger said TimesSelect represents $6 million in subscription revenue, with 500,000 registered users. He noted that 98% of the Times’ daily content is available at no charge online. However, he suggested that the Times is considering premium fees for the online version of the Boston Globe , which is owned by the New York Times Co.—Matthew Schwartz

CHASE COMMERCIAL BANK created a buzz at the Indianapolis International Airport prior to the 2006 Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix race, which was held in Indianapolis on July 2. With thousands of fans descending on the airport for the race, Chase Commercial Bank positioned “drivers” in the baggage claim area, holding up signs with messages aimed at business execs, such as, “Mr. ‘I’m ready to expand my business beyond the U.S.’: Your bank is here” and “Mr. ‘I need local expertise in dozens of local markets’: Your bank is here.” The “drivers” passed out collateral material to those who expressed an interest in Chase Commercial Bank. The buzz campaign was created by Bradley and Montgomery, Indianapolis.

Posted on B to B online

There’s no escaping today’s ad-meisters

By Jeff Gammage

Take a seat at the Montgomery Mall food court, and you immediately find yourself staring at an ad. Not on the table, but in it.

“I’m sitting here eating lunch,” college student Bill Deger of Perkasie said between slugs of a soda. “And right below me is an ad for a debit card.”

Inserting a poster-size, plastic-encased pitch into a table top is just one new way in which advertisers are trying to seize your attention - and a sly one, because 35 percent of shoppers visit a mall’s food court, sitting an average of 25 minutes.

No medium snags everyone anymore. Today’s fragmented market is pushing ads not just onto the computer atop your desk, the cell phone in your bag, and the BlackBerry on your belt, but into all sorts of unexpected spaces and places not traditionally seen as venues:

Aboard school buses. On fruit. In novels, sometimes integrated into the plot. On walls above urinals, on stadium turnstiles, on supermarket floors, and along the narrow tops of basketball backboards, best seen in overhead shots during TV replays.

“Brands are looking to surround the consumer and surprise the consumer,” said Dilys Tosteson Garcia, chief executive officer of La Agencia de Orci & Asociados, a Los Angeles ad agency.

So if you feel as if you can’t walk out your front door without being pitched, spun or sold, you’re not paranoid. They really are after you. American businesses expect to spend a record sum on advertising this year: $150.3 billion. That’s twice the gross domestic product of Peru.

Clear Channel Radio is contemplating the idea of “blinks” - ads of precisely one second, just long enough for a sound or snippet of a jingle, according to Advertising Age. In April, USA Network experimented with one-minute commercial breaks in the hope that TV viewers would find a frenzied dash to the kitchen not worth the effort.

Ads now arrive not just in the mail but on it. In May, the Postal Service approved a trial program allowing businesses to design custom postage. Hewlett-Packard, the first to sign up, is placing images of its logo, its founders, and the garage where the company started in the spot where a stamp would go.

Companies such as Burger King pay to place their insignias in the virtual cityscapes and sports stadiums of video games. Even gas stations have become marketing platforms, ads for Gatorade stamped on nozzles and pitches for nail salons hung from hoses. In some cities, commercials are delivered to motorists on TV monitors at the pumps.

“Empty space is seen as the enemy,” said Robert Smith of Robert Smith & Associates, an Illinois public relations firm. “Heck, in the future, toilet paper will be free because it will have ads all over it.”

Actually, firms already print ads on bathroom tissue, risking that consumers might find the gimmick a bit, well, cheeky.

“It’s pervasive - and my suspicion is a lot of it is tuned out,” said Charles Brown, chairman of the sociology and anthropology department at Albright College in Reading. “Human beings tend to be very selective in terms of the information they consume.”

People unconsciously learn to ignore some advertising, he said. Consider how computer-users automatically delete pop-up ads. Or the way TV watchers leave the room during commercials.

“It’s such a barrage of ads that my mind mostly tunes it out,” said Jeffrey Chou, an Abington schoolteacher. “Unless it appears in an odd place.”

Which helps to explain why advertisers covet new venues.

The traditional media market hasn’t splintered - it’s been atomized. Rudolph Magnani of Magnani Continuum Marketing in Chicago says companies face a threefold challenge: to maintain a presence in old-guard media such as newspapers and TV; to reach niche markets through new vehicles such as cell phones, MP3 players and iPods; and to overcome technology such as TiVo and video-on-demand that lets viewers avoid commercials.

“You know what I’ve noticed that I hate?” said Conshohocken writer Susan Magee. “You can zap the commercial, and now the advertisers are doing more product placements.”

The other night, she watched The Closer, sponsored by Audi. During the police drama, the detectives paused to admire a particular car - an Audi, naturally.

Product-placement has been around forever. It’s no accident that Pepsi cans sit on the American Idol judges’ dais. But now products are digitally inserted into scenes after shooting ends.

“The average consumer is bombarded with well over 1,000 advertising messages per day,” said Don Zihlman, president of DRZ Marketing & Design, a Maine ad agency. “Businesses are desperate to stand out.”

One New York firm got the idea to place pitches where people plug in: electrical outlets. Bradley & Montgomery Advertising put Chase bank ads on 60 outlets at Indianapolis International Airport. The sell: “We empower businesses, right down to their batteries.”

The concept started as a joke, when partner Scott Montgomery and his coworkers couldn’t find a working airport outlet. Then they thought: when folks stop to recharge their cell phones and computers, why not remind them of opportunities offered by Chase?

Ads are everywhere, said Peter Shankman, CEO of New York’s Geek Factory public-relations firm, because marketers are desperate. “The advertiser is really getting TiVoed out,” he said.

Executives lament “clutter,” the blur created by thousands of messages simultaneously competing for attention, and ponder how to break through. Some obsess over finding that place where no ad has gone before.

“It’s all fear,” said Bryan Greenberg, associate professor of marketing at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County.

Does the saturation work?

Phyllis Nellis, a free-lance copy writer in Media, said she tends to ignore most advertising, but if she notices a particularly ingenious pitch she’ll take a moment to savor it.

“I admire the craft,” she said. “Will it convince me to buy? Not necessarily.”

Posted on The Philadelphia Inquirer

Merger puts compatibility to tough test

Umpqua’s purchase of Western Sierra reflects the consolidation trend in American banking

By Jon Ortiz

…Remaking Western Sierra into Umpqua is a monumental task. For starters, Umpqua ordered 97,500 business cards for the 325 employees making the move from Western Sierra, said regional manager Kellie England, who handles the bank’s business from Lincoln to Ukiah.

It also converted 27 ATMs to its network and issued approximately 19,000 new debit, ATM and credit cards to former Western Sierra customers.

About half of the 31 acquired branches will be painted to match Umpqua’s ivory-and-teal corporate colors. All should have new exterior signs by the end of this month.

The company’s biggest effort, however, has been a push to reach employees. Weeks before the merger, Umpqua started training Western Sierra employees on how to address customers (by name, if possible), how to answer the phone (“Thank you for calling the world’s greatest bank”), plus details about Umpqua’s history and its expectations.

“It’s critical to get all of that on the table,” said Scott Montgomery, whose New York ad agency has worked on rebranding campaigns for major banks. “That way, people can either embrace the new culture, or they can find something else to do.”

To drive the point home, Umpqua executives have crisscrossed Northern California to meet with groups of employees, key customers and investors…

Posted on The Sacramento Bee