• by Jim Meskauskas , May 24, 2002

This scrappy standalone stayed nimble and responsive, and morphed when necessary in a tough environment. Mass Transit Interactive is proof-positive that small, scrappy, independent, and interactive-only shops still can play an important role in planning and buying online media. They also prove that you don’t have to be big to have big clients. Founded in August of 1998, Mass Transit Interactive opened their doors with Doubleday Book Club. Cofounder Jason Heller placed their first-ever banner. Some of their current clients are major, internationally recognized brands, among them Seagram’s (in partnership with ID Society, a creative shop in NYC), Fuji Films (in partnership with SharpePartners), The Plaza Hotel (with DiMassimo Brand Advertising), Rewards For Justice Fund, and Priceline.com, where they are coagency of record with e.magination.

Being small means being nimble and responsive. It also means being flexible, creative, and ready to morph when it is necessary.

“Our point of distinction is being able to not just do media buying and planning, but developing CRM strategies, ROI, and associative advertising as well. We can assess everything from both the front end and the back end,” says Jason Burnham, President and cofounder of Mass Transit. “Doing more than just planning and placing media, but other things like evaluating lifetime value of customers or determining efficiency of getting and managing those customers is important. Technology is, also. We constantly beta test new technologies that can help our clients, which most agencies in the market do not yet have access to.”

Something else that sets Mass Transit Interactive apart is the way that they partner with other agencies. About 50 percent of their client base comes from partnerships with other agencies that might not have their depth of knowledge or access to resources in the interactive advertising realm. That doesn’t mean they are lurking at the windows of these other agencies, standing outside and looking in. “We consider ourselves an ‘in-source’ vendor partner, not an out-source,” is how Burnham describes their relationships with partner agencies. “We work internally with our partner agencies and act as a full-service solution.”

How does a small agency survive in an environment plagued with economic downturn and riddled with consolidation? “We’ve done a very good job organizing ourselves in such a way that allows us to scale up or down very quickly,” says Burnham. “It’s really a question whose answer is survival of the fittest.”