SMALLAGENCY AWARDS
AGENCY OF THE YEAR
76-150 EMPLOYEES
GOLD
David
& Goliath
With gutsy spots for Kia, Universal Studios and Carl’s Jr. under
its belt, risk-taking shop warns it’s ‘just getting started’
THE TEAM: (From l.) David Measer, Beth
Bradmon, David Angelo, Colin Jeffery,
Claudia Caplan, Brian Dunbar.
■ BY RICH THOMASELLI
adageeditor@adage.com
DAVID ANGELO IS a huge sports fan,
which pretty much explains the
metaphors he uses when talking about
building the right team and creating
chemistry in his El Segundo, Calif.-based ad agency, David & Goliath.
“I always use sports analogies,” said
the founder/chief creative officer of the
146-person agency. “One of the things I
notice about sports is: No one is an
island. Take baseball. You need nine
players that are all sort of gelling
together and contributing to the greater
whole. ... When you have the right play-
ers on the bus and the right timing and
the right situation, that’s when you
have something truly amazing.”
David & Goliath did phenomenal
work in the last year for clients such as
Kia Motors, Universal Studios
Hollywood, Monte Carlo Resort and
Casino in Las Vegas, Hardees and Carl’s
Jr., among others.
Its most recognizable work may
have been the Super Bowl spots it did
for Kia, but its most visible work was for
Universal Studios. Literally. After a fire
burned down the original King Kong
attraction at Universal Studios
Hollywood, the market and agency
were faced with relaunching the attraction amid a still-struggling economy
and a local California populace that’s
pretty much seen it all.
So while the theme park’s engineers
created a bigger-than-life King Kong
attraction, David & Goliath created a
bigger-than-life guerrilla marketing
campaign. It fashioned giant King Kong
footprints 2-feet deep on the beach at
Santa Monica, Calif., all leading toward
the ocean and an overturned vehicle
spewing smoke. Other similar wrecked
vehicles were found all over the greater
L.A. area, and the giant footprints were
even found at Dodger Stadium.
THE WORK:
Kia’ “One Epic
Ride,” Miss
Turkey for
Hardee’s, the
Carl’s Jr Robot,
and King Kong
Intensity
SILVER
Group
Small firm turns out prime large-agency work for
some of the marketing world’s biggest fish
■ BY JACK NEFF jneff@adage.com
IN 27 YEARS, Sterling Rice Group
claims to never have had a down year.
That’s a streak of revenue increases that
spans three recessions, a whole bunch of
disruptive business models ranging
from the emergence of cable TV to the
internet, the rise of the global holding
company and at least two generations of
hand-wringing about the future of ad-agency models.
President Buddy Ketchner, who’s
been at the Boulder, Colo., agency for
25 of those years, ascribes the death-defying feat to many things, not the
least that SRG is diversified into creative agency work, strategic consulting,
new-product consulting, design and
digital work.
But SRG is also plenty proud of its
creative work, said Executive Creative
Director Steve Witt, including a recent
TV campaign for El Monterey that
resulted in a double-digit sales increase.
SILVER
Eleven
Lauded for raising a‘higher bar,’shop’s connection
with its impassioned clients sets them apart
■ BY EDMUND LEE elee@adage.com
“THE AGENCY actually started with 11
employees,” Courtney Buechert,
agency president, explained of the San
Francisco-based firm, Eleven, founded
in 1999. (The shop now employs 120
people.)
Yes, but isn’t there also that movie—
“Yes, there is also that movie, that
line from ‘Spinal Tap,’” he affirmed,
“That’s part of the name too. . . . There
was a sense that here, everything goes
to one degree more, everyone goes one
more.”
Eleven was started by three creative
executives, Rob Price, Michael Borosky
and Paul Curtin, all from different dis-
ciplines—digital, design and advertis-
ing—with the idea that integrating
those elements into one company
would set them apart.
“The clients we do the best with
and enjoy the most are ones that either
had an iconic founder or a focused and
determined sense of what they do for
the world,” he explained.
He ticked off some examples:
Virgin America, Apple, Peet’s Coffee,
companies with determined founders,
but also ones that elicit passionate
response from its customers.
“As an agency you will get phone
calls and email from customers if they
don’t like what you’re doing,” he said,
“and it creates a real challenge. You
have to be right for the customer, and
you have to be right for the client.”
One of Eleven’s biggest and most
important clients, Apple remains very
tight-lipped and forbids the agency from
discussing its specific work. But you can
imagine what it is, Mr. Buechert said.
Virgin America, a more visible
client, worked with Eleven on its recent
“Breath of Fresh Airline” campaign,
which Mr. Buechert considers “our
best work yet, capturing the spirit of
the airline and how different they are
from others.”
The agency is looking to grow over
the next year, increasing its employee
count another 10% before the year is
out.
