Untraditional Media Vehicles—become Traditional

Source : New York Magazine (JULY 2007)

Is there a threat to the traditional agency model, with a stable of "creatives" trained to provide print, radio, television ads to a passive audience?
If you're a big marketer, why would you hire an enormous staff at great expense when you could have somebody like those guys who made the funny JibJab video about Kerry and Bush, the one that everyone saw and loved, for relative pennies?

Here's a story of a really effective, very untraditional campaign by Amalgamated and Deep Focus, another small agency, on their highest-profile campaign to date for Court TV's Parco, PI.

It started last summer with a billboard on Houston Street, one that read in block letters:

Hi Steven,
Do I have your attention now?
I know all about her, you dirty, sneaky, immoral, unfaithful, poorly-endowed slimeball.
Every thing's caught on tape.

Your (soon-to-be-ex) Wife, Emily.

P.S. : I paid for this billboard from OUR joint bank account.

Many New Yorkers and whoever else cared to check soon stumbled on a blog by "That Girl Emily," which gathered a million hits in a few days. At Deep Focus, a copywriter spent weeks playing Emily, logging entries and answering emails. She crafted a love story that started months before the billboard went up and ended with "14 Days of Wrath", an elaborately staged retribution that included a BMW spray-painted "I Hope It Was Worth It" getting towed around New York City, and an actress tossing Steven's belongings out of an SUV near Bryant Park. The events were filmed and slipped into YouTube and posted under titles like "Angry Wife Rampage!" That one gathered 284,275 views.

Source : New York Magazine (JULY 2007)