The Advance Guard

Today, we’re pleased to announce a new beginning for The Advance Guard, as we officially join forces with one of the most exciting brand storytelling companies we know, Campfire.

When we launched The Advance Guard in 2007, we never had any grand plan to merge with - or be acquired by - another company. We often talked of how we would be happy working as a small partnership for the rest of our careers, provided we could continue to attract top tier clients and execute great projects for them. While so many companies seem to set out with a clearly defined “exit strategy”, we always believed the path to success lay in concentrating on how to stay IN business, simply by being the best.

But as we sat in a quiet little bistro in New York City earlier this Summer and the idea of an acquisition was first floated, it opened up so many possibilities we hadn’t considered. We’ve worked for Campfire on a variety of projects since our inception - indeed, our office is within the walls of their company. Together we’ve thrown block parties for Verizon FiOS, sent mysterious letters to taste-makers for True Blood and Terminator: Salvation, and helped online fans face their fears with the launch of F.E.A.R. 2 and Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. In many ways, we were already working as a well-honed team, one that truly seemed to understand new and innovative types of marketing, which we believe brands will increasingly need in today’s changing media landscape,

Together, we comprise a top notch team of creative, strategic and business savvy individuals, with strong backgrounds in entertainment, advertising and community building. We can offer a unique set of services to clients that takes us beyond just a social media agency. Together we can start to tell brand stories within communities, in ways that have never been done before.

While we have no doubt social media will continue to be a powerful tool for CRM and Customer service, our experience to date has shown us the huge potential for communities to embrace and absorb multi-channel marketing narratives. Partnering with the expert storytellers at Campfire seems like the natural next step to channel our expertise. It’s a really exciting decision for us, and we hope all our Friends and Fans will join us for what we expect will be a wild ride.

You can read the official press release below. A social media press release is also available.

CAMPFIRE ACQUIRES THE ADVANCE GUARD TO CREATE FULL SERVICE CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FIRM

Team of Experts Tackle Next Generation Media

August 24, 2009. New York. Campfire, the New York-based brand entertainment shop responsible for some of the industry’s more memorable campaigns for Sega, Levi’s, Audi, Pontiac, Verizon, HBO, and Discovery Channel, has acquired The Advance Guard, one of the first marketing consultancies to focus on the consumer conversation side of emerging technology and community platforms. The Advanced Guard co-founders Steve Coulson and C.C. Chapman will join Campfire’s executive team of partners, Steve Wax, Mike Monello, Gregg Hale, and Jeremiah Rosen, as Creative Directors. Financial terms of the acquisition are undisclosed. The Guard’s 2008 billings approximate $1 MM, while Campfire’s annual billings are estimated at $7 MM. The merging of the two companies will bring Campfire to a total staff of 25.

Since its own inception in 2007, The Advance Guard has collaborated with Campfire on several groundbreaking campaigns including HBO’s ‘True Blood’ viral controversy; Verizon FIOS’s original TV makeover series, ‘My Home 2.0’; Discovery’s ‘Shark Week’ adventure marketing; and Snapple’s latest digital ‘Real Facts’ initiative. Such successful collaborations led to Campfire’s decision to acquire the shop.

“This acquisition was a natural step forward in providing Campfire with access to The Advance Guard’s thinking from day one,” explains Steve Wax, Managing Partner. “We are delighted to have them in-house at Campfire.” Director of Accounts, Jeremiah Rosen, commented, “Steve and C.C. have proven themselves crucial to our ideation and execution process time and again. And we now have a new, accessible offering for our current and prospective clients.”

Coulson and Chapman founded The Advance Guard to fill a void in the realm of social media. Coulson comes from a rich alternative media background. As an agency director at both JWT and McCann Erickson, his portfolio included award winning brand work for the likes of DeBeers, Ford, Smirnoff, WSJ and Unilever. He is also known for creating the successful pop culture blog www.yesbutnobutyes.com, which to-date feeds a community of up to 1 MM readers per month.

Chapman, whose background is in social engagement, is revered as a pioneer of podcasting and new media. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe and appeared on CNN during Obama’s inauguration to comment on the CNN/Facebook integration effect. As the host of the famed weekly podcast, Managing the Gray, Chapman educates people on how to best leverage the social media landscape.

One of The Advance Guard’s earliest successes was a pioneering social media experiment for American Eagle Outfitters. This led to more breakthrough work for the likes of Coca-Cola, Warner Brothers, St Martin’s Press, and more.

“Steve Coulson and C.C. Chapman are the master navigators behind the social media scene who make transmedia storytelling possible,” remarks Mike Monello. “We think cross-platform, they execute cross-platform. We create addictive and entertaining content, and they disseminate it strategically based on research and analytics. It’s a perfect match that brings Campfire completely full circle and full service.”

Campfire opened its doors in 2006 and has helped the advertising industry achieve great strides in brand storytelling and entertainment marketing ever since. Monello and Hale, two of the shop’s founding partners, recently celebrated the 10 year anniversary of their 1999 classic cult creation, The Blair Witch Project, a pitch perfect study in the power of social media marketing.

“We’re eager to fully integrate our process into Campfire’s legendary narrative efforts in marketing,” says C.C. Chapman. “Bottom line, brands should be managing their own conversations – and the trend toward bringing on experts to help them do that will continue to grow. Both The Advance Guard and Campfire were built to assist brands in precisely this way, and we look forward to a successful and entertaining ride.”

For More Information Visit: www.campfirenyc.com and www.theadvancedguard.com

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With Press Inquiries Contact: Alyssa Siegel, alyssa@aj-media.com, 212.396.9179

When launching a new technology tool, using French Maids as your spokepersons may not seem the obvious choice. But as mDialog found out, in an increasing competitive landscape, getting noticed increasingly means taking an unconventional approach.

As a new startup in a growing field - mDialog’s problem was one faced by many new technology companies - how to convey a unique set of services to a target that is already inundated with messages and pitches.

mDialog offers much more than other competitive video hosting sites. With embedded surveys, private channels, opportunities for monetization, an integrated iPhone application and instant high resolution encoding for Apple TV and iPhone, mDialog has created a diverse toolbox specifically geared to new media content creators.

“mDialog had just returned from a successful Macworld Expo where our services and technology were very well received.” says mDialog President Greg Philpott. “But it was apparent that no one knew about us. In fact we had a lot of people asking ‘Why have I never heard of you folks before?’”

Faced with this challenge, The Advance Guard was selected to worked with the company and its partners to develop and implement an ongoing strategy to increase their profile, generate use of the service, and sign up new users.

The first challenge was to identify market segments that could benefit from mDialog’s unique offering, and among a sea of sticky notes and research, the brainstorm began. What resulted from the initial strategy phase was a program with multiple components, beginning with a push to introduce the mDialog brand to new media content creators who were already using online tools for video production. It was felt they could be told the mDialog story, quickly appreciate why it was different, and be used to evangelize that message.

The program began at the 2008 South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. This hot bed of influencers, filmmakers and musicians from every corner of the globe has become one of the must-attend events for online creators and video bloggers. The SXSW For Newbies Channel on mDialog was created, featuring The Advance Guard’s CC Chapman exploring the festival with online influencers such as Fast Company TV’s Managing Director Robert Scoble, wildly popular technology podcast hosts Cali Lewis and iJustine, and social media guru Chris Brogan.

Interviewing such high profile creators realized two goals - firstly it served as an introduction to the brand, giving each a personal demonstration of mDialog in action. Secondly, by offering online content to the followers of these creators, it increased the potential for the clips to spread virally across the Blogosphere.

After the success of this initial exposure, The Advance Guard planned a full program of attendance by representatives from mDialog at events targeting new media influencers. These growing gatherings were the perfect location to interact with mDialog’s target and sponsorships of both PodCamp Boston and PodCamp NY lead to exposure and new users of the service.

And to insure that all these people being introduced to the brand didn’t miss out on the growing list of improvements and new features, a custom newsletter was set up to be sent out monthly and keep the members up to date

With buzz growing around the brand, the next step was to was to expand the reach to other vertical markets. Key influencers and bloggers in politics, technology, pop culture and parenting were identified and targeted with a very unique outreach.

Engraved iPod Touches were loaded with the mDialog iPhone application, along with a personalized video message from President Greg Philpott, and sent out. This resulted in multiple blog posts, twitter mentions and even this extremely positive video post from technology guru and Gnomedex founder Chris Pirillo.

Which leads us to those French Maids, the stars of the wildly popular French Maid TV.

“Social media has changed the rules for advertising forever.” says Tim Street, creator and producer of the show. “Marketers and content creators need to understand the power of new social media tools and how they can take advantage of them by starting new conversations with their consumers before their competition starts conversing with them.”

Working with his team, a customized episode of the show was created, featuring mDialog technology, and viewed through the mDialog player.

The resulting episode received over half a million views alone, with double that across the French Maid channel, showcasing mDialog to a new mass audience, creating renewed buzz around the brand and delivering site visits, and - most importantly - a legion of new users to the service.

“The Advance Guard’s understanding of social marketing, and the enabling technologies that support the various social networks, are a key strength they brought to the table.” says Greg Philpott. “Today you need both, it is not enough to only understand social marketing, you need to be a practitioner too. And that is what The Advance Guard is.”

FURTHER READING

• Canadian Video Sharing Site Delivers Video Content to iPhone, Apple TV - Beet.TV
• mDialog: A Suite of Video Management Tools - Web Worker Daily
• mDialog goes hi-res, offers pay-per-download - Macworld

Pittsburgh is probably best known for The Steelers Primanti Brother’s sandwiches and Heinz Ketchup. What they are not known for is being a tour stop for most major musical acts.

American Eagle Outfitters (whose headquarters are located in Pittsburgh) set out to change that in the summer of 2008 with the creation of The New American Music Union, or NAMU.

A two-day summer music festival, with acts carefully selected by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and with a college band showcase on a second stage, the goal of the festival was to provide an unheard-of line up at a price that anyone - especially American Eagle’s younger target - could afford.

“Music is a defining influence in our customers’ lives. said Kathy Savitt, Chief Marketing Officer for American Eagle Outfitters. “We’re excited to offer AE them the opportunity to see today’s best musicians—both professionals and college acts—at a price that’s unheard of for a summer festival of this caliber.”

Realizing that, to be successful, they had to attract the attention of more then just local fans, American Eagle set out to build buzz around the festival nationally. Working with social media agency of record, The Advance Guard, a three-phased marketing and communications strategy was developed that began with casting a wide net of buzz generation, narrowing down to a secondary level of contact that included a ticket give away to key pop culture blogs, and finally organizing an innovative on-site program for local and national bloggers at the concert itself.

From the day of the initial press release, every major blog or podcast that focused on music, entertainment or pop culture was sent of the show with links to a specially-designed Social Media Press Release which provided easily-accessible facts links, graphics and quotes. This combined with traditional PR activities to create intense interest across the country.   ”It’s exciting for Pittsburgh,” says Melissa Franko, marketing director for WYEP-FM. “I think it’s going to bring some national recognition to the city.”

Meanwhile, The Advance Guard began to design the NAMU web site - a constantly evolving beach head for information surrounding the concert. Starting with the line-up announcements, ticket information and purchase links, it would evolve to include full bios and song samples for all the artists. Once the lights dimmed on the concert stage, exclusive performance videos from the show would be posted to the site.

With a line up that included The Raconteurs, Spoon, Gnarls Barkley, The Black Keys and Bob Dylan on the main stage and a second stage with fifteen of the top college acts vying for a major prize, it was an impressive and eclectic mix. Anthony Kiedis summed it up by saying, “My experience tells me that concerts can be life changing. That is how I approached putting this lineup together.”

Ticket sales began strong and - with the team creating listings on major music social networks such as Last.FM and integrating promotions into the AE Facebook Fan Page - it didn’t take long for concert to sell out completely, exceeding all expectations.

A block of tickets had been held in reserve specifically to offer to a select list of blogs and podcasts that had reacted positively to the initial outreach. . Knowing that each site editor knows their audience better then anyone, they were encouraged to run a contest that fit their style and their readers. Some asked Pittsburgh Trivia, while others decided to do a good old-fashion raffle to give them away. One wanted to hear the most desperate plea for tickets in order to determine a winner.

August 14th 2008. The parking lot two blocks from American Eagle’s headquarters had been transformed into a stage and, as the artists began to arrive for the show, so did the press and blogging communities. Publications including Paste Magazine and Blender Magazine were invited to attend, and - alongside the traditional press - local new media creators were given all-access passes.

In the photographer pit at the front of the stage, it was no surprise to see a blogger with an iPhone shooting beside a seasoned veteran from Getty Images. A Flickr Photo Pool under a Creative Commons LIcense was set up so that all the photos from the day could be shared by all, and it was a photograph from this pool - shot by The Advance Guard’s CC Chapman - that was used as a full-page ad in Rolling Stone congratulating the winning college band, The Black Fortys.

For all those in attendance - both audience and media - the concert was an amazing event. Paste Magazine wrote “The festival as a whole was a great success… Seeing these bands without even needing a video monitor was a nice change of pace. To have this (level of access) with the caliber of bands Kiedis and AE attracted is truly remarkable.”

To maintain the enthusiasm generated from the stages, exclusive video from the performances were quickly edited together and posted to the web within 48 hours of the last fan leaving the venue. Everyone who had covered the concert to date was contacted again with links to the videos. Fan sites of each band were also notified with links directly to their favorite artist’s videos.

Ultimately, Pittsburgh showed that it could be the host for a major music festival, made possible by the vision of American Eagle Outfitters. By transforming their local parking lot into a venue into the hottest concert venue with thousands of appreciative fans singing along, they brought a world-class music festival to Pittsburgh, and national and new media attention to the City of Bridges.

FURTHER READING

• The New American Music Union Festival Report - Blender
• New American Music Union Recap - Popwreck(oning)
• Highlights From The New American Music Union Festival - GeekStar.com
• Dylan, Gnarls Barkley and Other Rock SouthSide Works - Times Online