• Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, August 1, 2007 10:15 AM

In an unusual attempt to get the attention of furniture maker La-Z-Boy, executives at ad agency RPA bought one of the company's chairs, put it on a Webcam, and said they would not leave it empty until they got a meeting. They spent all of Super Bowl weekend reclining until the company agreed to talk and ended up winning the $35-million account.

Such stunts are increasing becoming business as usual as the bar [for pitches] just continually gets higher," says David Smith, creative director at Santa Monica-based RPA.

If pitches are getting more creative, they are also getting more expensive, notes Deutsch LA President Mike Sheldon. It is now common to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get noticed by a potential client. And in a field crowded with new media and agency upstarts, even big shops are seeking accounts they would not have bothered with before -- and spending a lot to win them.

Read the whole story at Los Angeles Times »