AGENCY OF THE YEAR
SOUTHEAST
GOLD
Planit
Boutique finance shop found success,
unlikely partners by diversifying offerings
■ BY ALEXANDRA BRUELL
abruell@adage.com
PLANIT MAY FLAUNT the typical
boutique-agency décor—bright
orange logo, beer and energy-drink
cooler in the lobby—but the
Baltimore-based firm’s growth is
anything but ordinary.
In the last year or so, the 17-year-
old shop has increased head count
25% to 40 employees, and it expects
to grow its 2010 revenue of $5.6
million to $7.1 million in 2011.
Much of its recent success, as
evidenced in hefty projects for
brands such as Marriott and Fila, is
born from a shift to become more
results-oriented and diversify its
capabilities and portfolio.
Creative Director Trevor Villet
explained that 10 years ago, the firm
was rooted in financial services, but
it recently found strength in becom-
THE WORK:
Fila website (top) and UnderAmour
ing less niche and more ripe for local
and national business across indus-
tries. The turning point? A wakeup
call in 2008 when the economy
went south, the bottom dropped
out, clients stopped spending and
the firm felt the blow from what it
described as a slow reaction.
StruckAxiom
What happens when you mix a design firm
with a digital-production house? Progress
SOUTHWEST
GOLD
■ BY MAUREEN MORRISON
mcmorrison@adage.com
NOT ALL AGENCY mergers work
well. But the 2009 coupling of
Struck and Axiom came together
seamlessly.
Struck, which started out in 2003
primarily in production, eventually
moved more into digital production.
Struck later would frequently
become a strategic partner with
other agencies, not necessarily as
just a digital production house.
Axiom, founded in 1995, on its own
focused on design, mostly for
Hollywood projects.
When StruckAxiom formed,
among its pillars was solidarity. “It’s
sort of communistic, but it’s about
how we’re working together to
move the agency forward,” said
CEO Dan Conner.
DOESTHISLOOKLIKE ANAGENCYTOYOU? Deeplocal CEO Nathan Martin.
NORTHEAST
GOLD
Deeplocal
Team of engineers and artists wants to prove
that‘technology is not the stopping point’
■ BY ALEXANDRA BRUELL
abruell@adage.com
PUT A FORMER punk singer, an
artist of deviant projects and a hacker seasoned in reverse engineering
in a room in Pittsburgh and what
do you get? A weird little agency,
albeit one that ran away with the
Small Agency Award for the
Northeast region.
With a head count of 10,
Deeplocal invents and engineers
new products on its own, while also
performing paid service work for
advertising clients.
The firm expects to more than
double last year’s revenue to over $2
million in 2011 and plans to expand
its offerings on the West Coast. But
the growth is not coming from
social-media-hungry clients tapping
its capability in that space; it’s coming from projects that tie technology to the real, physical world.
“We don’t want to become an
ad agency,” said CEONathan
Martin. “That’s not our goal. But
we’re starting to work with more
and more brands directly. We’ve
been trying to prove that technol-
ogy is not the stopping point.”
As a result, the firm recently
brought on an account person from
Lowe who is the closest thing to a
typical agency executive. But that
hire is balanced out by another addi-
tion—a guy who owns a skateboard
company and stays as far as possible
from the internet, said Mr. Martin.
The range of recent hires reflects
the range of the firm’s projects:
from developing and selling software programs to developing for
Toyota a Prius Bike helmet with
mind-powered gear-shifting.
For Toyota, agency of record
Saatchi & Saatchi brought on
THE WORK:
Toyota Prius “Hybrid Roller Coaster”
Deeplocal to create a prototype for
the Prius “Ideas for Good” push.
The thinking was that Deeplocal
would create the first idea, and that
would generate buzz, submissions
and votes for similar projects in the
next phase of the campaign. That
first prototype was a disaster-relief
tent that used the Prius’ Solar
Powered Ventilation System to
power the tent. The second was a
roller-coaster track and car.
“With a lot of small agencies,
you get one thing or another—
great creativity or great program
management—but with Deeplocal
you get the whole package,” said
Bob Zeinstra, national manager of
product marketing, Toyota Motor
Sales.
The firm has worked on various
other projects for mainstream
brands. For Gap, it built a system to
track a reindeer during the holiday
season, with sales and discounts tied
to the animal’s movement. It also
worked with Nike on its 2010
World Cup “Write the Headline”
effort, which projected game headlines in different languages onto
urban buildings.
The challenge now for Deeplocal
is how to absorb its growth and
bring in consistent brand work
without losing its cool factor. In
other words, can an anti-agency
model play in an agency world?
