• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, October 30, 2016

In the pantheon of agency self-promotion, we've seen it all from Toronto-based john st. brilliantly mocking, well, basically everything about the agency business to one MRY copywriter who limited his eating to only things he found around the office to Leo Burnett's early social media experimentation with David on Demand.

In July, Portland-based creative agency Roundhouse joined the club with a promotion which had copywriter Lee Kimball living in the Oregon wilderness for five days in July with access to only the products made by the agency's clients. Now, the agency is out with a 16-minute video documenting Kimball's adventures.

The promotion, entitled Living off the Brands, served up a bit of a challenge to Kimball as the agency does not have a single client that actually makes any sort of food product, apart from a chocolate brand and Red Bull.

The brands Kimball was able to access included Adidas, Faust, Finex, LA Galaxy, Leatherman, Leupold Optics, Microsoft, Reebok, Redington, Red Bull, Roundhouse, Rio, Treehouse Chocolates, Wider Brothers
Brewing, Yeti.

So at least Kimball had beer and a cooler. But Kimball was able to fish with Redington products, cook with Finex products, stay warm with Adidas wear and walk around with Reeboks. And, yes, he did survive.

If you didn't catch Kimball's adventures back in July, you can watch the documentary here. Of course, since the documentary isn't filmed selfie-style, Kimball clearly was not alone on this adventure (or the re-creation of it) but, whatever, this is agency self-promotion so who really cares?

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