Oddcast specializes in creating offbeat interactive promotions that are as innovative as they are quirky.
Two years ago, it created a Monk-e-mail for CareerBuilder, which permitted users to create their own animated monkeys with messages and pass them on to friends. More than 130 million messages later, the Monk-e-mails are still swinging to PCs and Macs and back again.
The agency recently won a Webby Award for another CareerBuilder e-mail device, Age-o-Matic, which enables users to produce aged projections of their faces and send messages with them.
Oddcast has also executed interactive promotional plays for Tide, 7-Up, Cheerios, Irish Spring and Sprint.
Youth-focused brands and entertainment brands are in the forefront for those advertisers looking for click-throughs for their promotional plugs. “What we’re seeing is that advertisers and brands are looking less for the traditional online banner ad and display ads,” Oddcast president and CEO Adi Sideman says. “We’re very fortunate that we’re in the right space at the right time.”
The agency is also inventive, recently releasing its own proprietary 3D VideoStar software that empowers a user to upload photos to star in their own videos. Its initial application will be for a “Bridezilla” promotion that WEtv recently launched.
Sideman says there’s a lot of cachet in that kind of interaction. “A user who receives a message-generated ad from a friend is probably more valuable than something on a Web site. Because it came from a friend, there is that recognition and coolness, not to mention that it lasts six to eight minutes longer than a glance on a display ad. It really takes it to the next level.”
TOP EXECUTIVES: Adi Sideman, president/CEO; Gil Sideman, chief technology officer; Dan Wald, executive vice president; Gally Perry, vice president, financial and legal affairs
2007 U.S. NET REVENUE: $7.1 million (estimated)
KEY CLIENTS: Ford, ABC News, Build-A-Bear, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios — Orlando, CareerBuilder.com, CBS, Nestle Purina, Sprint, 7-Up
HEADQUARTERS: New York
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