Profiles: Marketing Werks
Marketing Werks doesn’t have a gearshift logo just for style.
This full-service “experiential” agency constantly shifts focus from one mobile marketing campaign to the next. The names and places change, but the quality remains constant.
The 15-year-old shop has always been in the entertainment field, so to speak, originally providing advertising, p.r., and promotions for national touring shows such as the Harlem Globetrotters and Ice Capades. From there it gradually began servicing brands but “made a conscious decision to change focus” in the early 1990s, says managing partner Scott Moller. “We realized that brands really wanted to get involved with consumers.”
Thus, Marketing Werks was in perfect position to ride the event wave of the past two years. Net revenues more than doubled last year — and nearly tripled since 1999 — to $3.1 million. But that wouldn’t have happened had not their work pleased clients enough to keep using them — and to spread the word about them.
“We joined up with them because we were impressed with what they had done for other clients like Hershey,” says John Birmingham, director of advertising and brand management for Riverwoods, IL-based Discover Card.
Birmingham was even more dazzled when he saw the results of the shop’s first work, a Discover Card Tailgate tour of colleges that leveraged a tie-in with ESPN’s football programming. “They take ownership in the program without a lot of delegation to third parties,” Birmingham says. “They roll their sleeves up and get involved.”
“They are fantastic to work with,” adds Judy Hogarth, spokesperson for Hershey Foods Corp., Hershey, PA, which tapped the shop six years ago to launch the now famous Kissmobile tour. “They have taken our program to higher levels each year.”
For 2001, that included tacking on a third leg (and vehicle) to concentrate on Hispanic markets. All told, last year’s effort traveled more than 100,000 miles, distributed 12.5 million samples, and raised $4 million in monetary and in-kind donations for cause partner Children’s Miracle Network.
The Kissmobile success earned Marketing Werks an off-road assignment last spring from sister brand Jolly Rancher. The agency developed a retail promotion featuring contests in 1,800 stores that had consumers auditioning for a walk-on role in a Warner Bros. TV show.
Of course, these days all roads lead to — the road. A Jammin’ with Jolly Rancher Tour launched in April for a 45-market gig targeting 12-to-24-year-olds with a 53-foot stage, karaoke contests, and other musical entertainment. “Hershey has been quite conservative in the past, so this was a big step for them,” says Marketing Werks managing partner Julie Guida.
Any sound mobile campaign starts with insight into the target demographic. “First and foremost, we identify what the objectives are, then delve into research on our audience,” Moller says. “We find out what their traits are, what their interests are, and what we can do to strike a chord with them.”
“I gave them an aggressive target number [of impressions] to hit and they exceeded it,” says Vince Rubino, marketing program manager for Lego Systems, Enfield, CT. “[But] they don’t go anywhere to chase a number. They truly reach the targeted consumer in an interactive way.”
Marketing Werks helped Lego launch a new Bionicle toy line last summer with a campaign that hit eight- to-12-year-old boys at skate parks and other areas of play. The shop recruited employees of Vermont snowboarding parks for the crews, and negotiated sponsorships with professional skateboarders to give the brand a legitimate reason for being there. It was one of Lego’s most successful U.S. product launches ever.
Sounds like somebody was in overdrive.
