Agency.com
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Agency.com is a New York City based advertising, web development, and interactive marketing agency, formed in 1995. Their clients have included British Airways, Deutsche Bank, Nike, Sprint, Texaco, BT, eBay, HP, Maidenform, Ask.com, Del Monte, IKEA and T-Mobile.
They have over 500 employees in nine global offices (New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Dublin, London, Brussels, Milan and Amsterdam).
Agency.com became a wholly owned subsidiary of Omnicom Group, Inc. in 2003. Agency.com is a member of the TBWA\Worldwide Group of Companies.
[edit] Viral Marketing
A 2006 ad campaign by Agency.com involved an experimental "viral" pitch video for the Subway (restaurant) account uploaded onto YouTube.com. The purpose of the pitch video upload appears to have been an attempt to show Subway Agency.com's online innovation by including a "viral" component in the pitch by documenting the pitch process itself and uploading it for all the world to see, discuss, and pass around. The term, "When we roll, we roll big" was used by an Agency.com employee in the video.
Judged by comments posted on http://www.werollbig.com/ and industry blogs like AdRants, AdWeek Magazine's AdFreak, Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion, Leo Burnett's Fruits of Imagination, and Iain Tait's Crackunit.com many industry responses to Agency.com's tactic has been negative or sarcastic. While the video came under fire, the tactic was also praised by many in the industry including Leo Burnett Toronto, Marketing Power and Logic + Emotion.
Overall, the debate stirred up heated conversation in the blogosphere and press, discussing everything from the quality of the video to the definition of "viral marketing."