• by Karl Greenberg , June 5, 2009

This is not a marketing story about a well-known consumer brand, but it is a story you may want to follow. As all marketers know, just about every ad agency has a Web site that is remarkably inventive, with a flashy (in both senses of the word) splash page, and a very cool navigation protocol defined by a cute, funny, iconoclastic, rebellious, or avant-garde theme.

>p> One independent agency, Charlotte, N.C.-based Boone Oakley, however, has eschewed a traditional Web site entirely by putting its entire presence on YouTube. The agency, whose clients include MTV2 and CarMax, has a URL, www.booneoakley.com, that leads to a YouTube video. The animated video short is interactive and an acerbic commentary about ad agencies and holding companies in general, featuring a hapless marketing director named Billy.

Voiceover says: "One day Billy's boss put him in charge of finding a new ad agency." So he goes to New York, "where he thinks they all are." And discovers that "each agency says it's different, though they're all owned by the same four companies. So Billy picks one and the agency creates the work."

The visual for the fictive New York agency, "BBDDDHO," is crude drawings of the drug-addled creative staff, who create a beer for Billy that fails. "So Billy got fired; so Billy didn't have a job. So Billy's wife had him killed." Billy dies. Then there is a description of Boone Oakley, "which is not in New York, and isn't just named for the initials of all its partners," says the voiceover. David Oakley, Boone Oakley's co-creative director, states: "We needed a new way to tell our story, and today the best forum for a story is YouTube, where we can use narration and really crappy animation."

He says content is also extensible, since it can be on any site -- even mobile -- that supports YouTube videos. "I think people have used annotations in YouTube, but I'm pretty sure we are the only ad agency that has put its entire site on YouTube. We literally don't have a second site," he says.

"Our interactive department saw we need something functional and really need a place that lets people see the work. When they came up with the idea we said: 'Are you out of your mind?' Until they explained it. What it allows us to do is show work as we had never been able to before." And, he says, this approach has brought them more visits; 100,000 views since it launched this month.

"We have had people calling about the site. It's a big hit in the ad tech world and seems to be starting to make its way over to marketing directors."

The site also makes fun of ad agency Web sites that put the "agency vision" on an altar. "The agency vision thing in so many Web sites is such bullshit. We have never taken ourselves that seriously, so we like to poke fun at ourselves, and people find that refreshing; we have gotten some comments that it's an 'anti-website.'"