• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, July 27, 2009

How often do you check your work voicemails and find the recording to be a radio ad? Better still, how often are your voicemails agency pitches in the form of mock radio ads? Not often, I'm guessing.

Unless you're a CMO or marketing director.

Hammerhead Advertising in Hoboken, N.J. came up with an interesting way to reach a specific audience on a national level at a low cost.

The agency calls CMOs and marketing directors in the middle of the night, ensuring that no one answers and voicemails can be recorded.

Here's hoping no one has their work phone number automatically forwarded to their cell phone, because I can foresee something unexpected happening.

The bits are disguised as conversations in progress, giving the listener the feeling that "oh, this is wrong, but I'll keep listening."

One spot has Hammerhead's Mark Rowe attempting to reach a marketing vice president. The male receptionist believes the name is familiar and proceeds to ask Rowe if he sells chocolate because the receptionist bought candy from someone the day before and crapped his pants. Rowe eventually leaves his name and number for a call back, but not before the receptionist mocks him. Listen to the ad here.

In another ad, heard here, a woman attempts to set her daughter up with Rowe. A security guard manning the phones asks Rowe for photo identification in the final pitch, heard here.

The agency name and phone number is repeated throughout the ads, which cost $8,000 to produce.

Hammerhead has sent 1000 messages to date, with an 89% delivery rate that includes live answers (oh dear), machine pick-ups and no answers. After sending the first two ads, Hammerhead had a response rate of 3%.

The voicemails are sent on Tuesdays and Thursdays to escape summer hours.

Not surprisingly, people either love or hate these pitches. "I would never, ever, use an agency that leaves spam phone messages on my machine," began one recipient. "Did you come from under a rock, perhaps? Remove my phone number from your spam list and don't call me again."

John Perls, partner and creative director at Hammerhead, said the agency sent the spots to Circle Line Cruises and wound up getting a call from the company's security force. Someone thought the agency was trying to break into the Statue of Liberty.

There were even positive results.

"Your VM was fabulous! We forwarded it on to a number of folks here... We'd love to talk with you about PSAs. We'd love to see a presentation," read an email sent to the agency.

The initiative may not be well-received by everyone, but the agency feels the campaign was right for them. "We think now's the time to be efficient and inventive. So we thought this could be the perfect tool for right now," concluded Perls.