Short Profiles: The A Team
A Team ceo Andrew Cohen has heard the jokes before, and he’s ready for them.
“We all wear gold chains,” he offers, as soon as you mention Mr. T. “But when you need something, you don’t call The B Team, you call The A Team.”
The name actually is more a reference to Cohen’s first name than it is to the cult TV hit of the 1980s. But the comparison is fitting for a three-year-old shop that has made its mark with guerrilla marketing expertise.
The mantra is “big ideas for clients that don’t have large budgets,” says Cohen, who founded the New York City shop shortly after Diamond Promotion Group, where he was a principal, sold to Interpublic. Revenues have tripled since ‘99 to $2.2 million.
A Team’s 12 employees handle an eclectic array of accounts including Ford Motor Co., Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Weight Watchers, and Ricoh. Specialties are equally broad, ranging from events to direct marketing.
Highlights from 2001 included a celebrity charity event hosted for Ford’s Jaguar and a sweepstakes for Canadian Club giving the winner a poker game with exotic actress Tia Carrere in Las Vegas. For Banfi Vinters, the shop offered $1 million to the consumer who could pick out a $5.99 bottle of Walnut Crest wine from among 49 more-expensive competitors.
“We strive to come up with the essence of what the brand is,” Cohen says. “Identifying the product’s great taste will be the program — not kicking a field goal or hitting a hole-in-one.”
The shop recently opened its first branch office in Laguna Beach, CA, to service Ford. “It’s that kind of attention to detail and level of client service that makes me happy to be working with them,” says Scott McKee, event marketing manager for Aston Martin Jaguar Land Rover, Irvine, CA.
So go ahead. Make with the jokes.
