• by March 10, 2006

In a juxtaposition of old and new symbolizing the changes taking place in today's fragmented media marketplace, one of the oldest brands in American magazine publishing has asked a cutting-edge ad shop to help redefine its brand. Time Inc.'s Fortune, founded in 1930 and a stalwart in the house that Luce built, has hired the New York office of StrawberryFrog as a consultant for what a magazine spokeswoman characterized as "a special project."

"We hired StrawberryFrog on a consulting basis for a limited research project to help us with brand positioning," the spokeswoman, Carrie Welch, said. "They're not our agency of record. They're a consultant." The magazine currently does not have an agency of record, although Mullen, a Wenham, Mass.-based agency, filled that role several years ago.

Welch declined to elaborate on the specifics of the project because she said they were still being finalized. However, she said the assignment emanated from the magazine's brand development group.

StrawberryFrog co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Scott Goodson described the assignment as "strategic work" designed to develop a clear point of view for the magazine. "Fortune is a leading voce in the business world and we're working to develop a single, long-term brand platform for them," he said.

The move reflects a trend among many traditional marketers seeking to reconnect their brands with younger, media-savvy consumers bombarded with commercial messages in an increasingly fragmented media environment. As a result, companies are turning to unconventional agencies like StrawberryFrog and a handful of like-minded shops to develop new marketing plans incorporating media strategies that go beyond traditional television and print campaigns.

The list includes small, creatively driven agencies with odd names like Mother, Taxi, Anomaly, Toy, and Amalgamated. All are known for utilizing multimedia platforms and making the most of emerging media opportunities at the expense of more traditional marketing methods, and all of them are stealing business away from the biggest agencies in the business.

StrawberryFrog has been a painful thorn in the buttoned-down side of traditional Madison Avenue shops since it opened for business almost two years ago. Its home base is in Amsterdam, and when it arrived in Manhattan its executives made a point of letting everyone know they wanted to shake things up.

In fact, in an almost fawning profile in a prestigious American business magazine late last year, Goodson was quoted as saying: "We came to blow the cobwebs and the dust out of the attic of the advertising industry." The magazine? Fortune, December 12, 2005.

They seem to have succeeded. In the short time since the agency opened its offices on Madison Avenue--the irony of the agency location is not lost on its competitors--StrawberryFrog has managed to attract more than $100 million in billings from a long list of national marketers including Old Navy, Heineken, Asics, Ikea, Credit Suisse, Xerox, and TBS, among others.

StrawberryFrog's Goodson cited his agency's blue-chip client list as evidence that it wasn't unusual for a shop with the avant-garde reputation of StrawberryFrog to work on a branding assignment for a traditional, conservative client.

"We're in a different world today," Goodson said. "It's not as much about the medium as it is about smart thinking. The partnership between us and Fortune is based on smart, innovative thinking. Also, we've always been very broad-based in terms of the kinds of clients we've worked for. We've done terrific work for a lot of brands that are leaders in their categories."