• by Staff Writers , September 1, 2006

How do you wrangle the attention of some of the busiest people on the planet? Be helpful, funny, and bold.

Bradley and Montgomery

Chase Commercial Banking

Scott Montgomery and Mark Bradley, Executive Creative Directors; Ben Carlson, Chief Media Planner; Jen Handley, Media Buyer; Craig Moore, Art Director; Carrie Voorhis and Brian Harris, Copywriters

Chase commercial banking offers lending, risk management, and other services to more than 25,000 commercial customers. This business audience travels a lot, frequently with laptops and cell phones that often need a quick recharge in the airport. Bradley and Montgomery seized upon electrical outlets, which travelers search for zealously, as a way to get across the message that Chase enables businesses.

The agency placed eye-catching two- and three-foot-tall blue-and-white markers over each of the more than 90 power outlets in the Indianapolis International Airport. More than 8 million travelers passed through the airport during the media run. At a cost of $65,000, this worked out to less than a penny per exposure (less than the cost of one airport diorama).

The unusual placement also generated an estimated $1 million worth of coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and advertising trade publications.

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Cossette Media

BuildDirect

Cossette Media: Josh Tebbutt, Group Director, Planning; Ali Williams, Media Buyer

Blitz Direct, Data and Promotion: Rob Davidson, Managing Director; Garnet McElree, Creative Director

BuildDirect, a new entrant to the wood flooring market, needed an efficient way to excite distributors about its no-frills online sales model. The market had been wary of the idea.

Cossette Media targeted flooring distributors with an impossible-to-miss campaign in three key trade publications. The agency convinced the magazines to deliver the ads only to distributors  which constitute just 10 percent of their total circulation.

Cossette designed a belly band with product samples and attached it in a way that led readers to open directly to a 10-page insert about the company. Within days of publication, the largest distributor in the category called, bypassing the traditional six-month sales cycle.

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Slack Barshinger

GlobalComm

Chad Wiebesick, Media Manager; Bill Hebel, SVP, Media Director

GlobalComm had a $15,000 budget to promote its new B2B telecom trade show, and it didn't want to rely on banners alone. Slack Barshinger created a proprietary placement on Light Reading, the leading B2B Web site for the industry. The agency placed a "sign" for the event in the hands of the site's popular animated mascot, Larry the Monkey, featured prominently on Light Reading's home page. A click on the sign brought visitors to GlobalComm's site. To make it all happen, Slack Barshinger exchanged 200,000 general run-of-site impressions for 800,000 highly visible Larry impressions.

The campaign generated more than 1.2 million impressions and 30 percent more clicks than banners would have alone. The campaign leveraged the affinity that site visitors have for Larry and gave GlobalComm a halo of credibility.

Based on this success, Light Reading now sells mascot sponsorships to other B2B advertisers.

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