Yes, you do know this agency.
This is the agency that sent Lucky Strike crews into busy metro areas to give free cups of coffee to the unloved huddles of smokers outside office buildings. This is the agency that brought Court TV reps outfitted in robes, powdered wigs, and gavels to key markets to herald a sweeps and drive viewership. And this is the agency that hyped USA Network’s Chippendales Murder by deploying groups of half-naked beefcake specimens to perform street-corner stripteases in four cities.
Creative? Totally. Gutsy? Undoubtedly. And effective? Clients unanimously vote yes.
Marketers say the results New York City-based Big Fat, Inc. (No. 100) produces are as impressive as their creative concepts, praise that best explains why this nascent grassroots specialist has both brands and other agencies knocking on its door.
Chief executive Jonathan Ressler only opened the shop two years ago, but revenues went through the roof last year, jumping to $4.2 million from $300,000 in 1999. The shop has 90 full-time employees, all focused on linking brands with the most sought-after demographic group: 18- to 34-year-olds. “They are conceptually fantastic,” says Darrell Johnson, marketing manager with Pepsi-Cola Co.’s FruitWorks. “They understand the target, and how we need to talk to them.”
Big Fat has quickly built a loyal following of clients including Evian, Nestlé, Nintendo, Pepsi, and Kool that are tapping into what Ressler calls “real-life product placement. We infuse brands into the target’s life in a natural way, without disrupting their normal behavior,” he says. “We make the brand an ingredient in a person’s lifestyle recipe.”
“They are conceptually fantastic. They understand the target, and how we need to talk to them.”
— Darrell Johnson, FruitWorks
Ressler is one of those proverbial students of behavior. He whetted his appetite for marketing while owning and operating night clubs, and first satiated his branding desires through stints at promo shops B-12 and TLP before obtaining seed money from TLP parent Omnicom to launch Big Fat. (He bought the shop last summer.)
Clients often get an education when they bring the Fat crew (don’t expect suits) in for pitches: These folks treat under-the-radar marketing as a science, a proven way to subtly initiate relationships with targets and build enough brand credibility to make them receptive to marketing pitches. The shop provides national reach through staffers who keep their fingers on the pulses of 80 markets (and can help develop programs as well as execute them). “As marketers, you can’t choose the target. The target has to choose you,” says Ressler. “We find a way to put a brand in front of the target in a way that will make them choose.”
In 2000, Big Fat went to Spring Break with FruitWorks, commissioning a “Free Ride” bus that cruised busy strips, picking up and dropping off party-minded college kids at clubs and hotels. (Why? Most Spring Breakers are too young to rent cars, so even the sober ones appreciate a lift.) This year’s follow-up played on the popularity of reality shows by setting up “confession tents” for revelers. The best unburdenings aired on hotel television channels.
Nintendo of America gave Big Fat a mobile assignment for one of its videogames in 2000, and was pleased enough with the results to give the shop a piece of its $75 million rollout blitz for the Game Boy Advance hand-held player. This summer, Big Fat staffers hit 12 markets wearing jumpsuits with Advances tethered to them (for demos). Mobile vehicles will set up homebases in high-traffic locales while Fat staffers cruise in branded dune buggies to expand the impression radius. “This agency is full of highly creative, fun people,” says Nintendo consumer promotion manager Jennifer Tweed. “They impressed us with both their skills and their sense of style.”
This fall, Big Fat will take Nestlé to colleges, letting co-eds sign up for daily Nescafe wake-up calls; sampling crews will show up at the dorm room 15 minutes after the call with hot java. “Guerrilla marketing is about being unexpected, but relevant. We include a lot of elements of surprise, delight, and discovery,” says chief strategy officer John Palumbo. “If you use a connected approach, you connect the brand.”
Not surprisingly (considering Ressler’s background), Big Fat also lists nightlife marketing among its specialties. The shop maintains communications with thousands of bartenders nationally via bigfatbartendar.com, an online portal housing games, information, and a loyalty program. A new on-premise satellite network called Nightlife TV gives brands better access to targeted venues. Big Fat also executes undercover work, sending affiliates into retail stores, bars, or nightclubs to surreptitiously talk up a product in a strategy Palumbo calls “roach bait” (infect one target and have him spread the virus among his tribe).
“Clients don’t have to spend a lot of money to do the right thing,” says Ressler. “They need an agency that has the right people in the right places, at the right times, doing the right things. That’s what it’s all about.”
You won’t forget this agency now, will you?
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