Atmosphere BBDO, the digital agency network of BBDO North America, was founded in 1997 and is a full service digital marketing company that has done work for AOL, GE, Fed Ex, Snickers, Target and the NFL. iSPOT is interested to learn how a digital arm of a major agency works with the offline agency to do its work, so we spoke with Atmosphere creative director Cabot Norton, who actually has an offline background. Norton speaks about the creative strategy of the digital agency with a few comments about the broadband video work he’s involved with.
iSPOT: Which projects do you work on with BBDO?
Norton: I work on Fed Ex, and almost every project we do on Fed Ex we do hand in hand with BBDO. We’re briefed at the same time and we share ideas before client meetings. I’ve also done work with Lays. Those are the two main ones.
iSPOT: How do you develop creative executions for online work with offline creative that might have already been done?
Norton: It really depends. The model we’re moving to is we do work that isn’t based on any work that’s done offline, but it’s based on the same strategy and insight. That to me is the best example of how integration can work. For Fed Ex we’ll get briefed and there might be an insight about small business needs and we can create banner advertising that speaks to small business needs and is reflective of office humor which is the thing for BBDO’s TV campaign, but it isn’t necessarily a direct pull from their TV. The goal is to do more of that and less to take their idea and just change it for online.
iSPOT: When you do online creative, how closely does that fit with the offline theme, so the client is happy. Does your creativity have to jibe with the offline?
Norton: There are always elements we want to carry over, like the typography, the use of logos and the taglines. The elements aren’t necessarily executional. The clients I work with are getting more and more familiar with online work and recognizing it’s distinct so it’s rare that they expect to see an image from a TV spot in a banner ad. Clients are more sophisticated now, although clearly they want to see the same type, logo treatments and use of taglines.
iSPOT: How much online video advertising do you do?
Norton: We’re not doing a lot of video advertising, although we recently did some that’s a good example of integration with offline. They shot a TV commercial featuring Denny Hamlin for the Fed Ex Nascar racing sponsorship last spring and we went to shoot it. We had a b crew there, set up a green screen and shot our own footage and created online video advertising for it. It wasn’t a TV commercial online, we did our own work. We did a few different videos. One featured a character in a TV spot who reads letters to Denny, which reflects the TV campaign. Then we had him in a banner ad telling people they could write a question to him. We did another one where we created a video of Denny throwing his arms up joyously and if you clicked on an accelerator in the banner, he would become more and more animated. We did all of these in video.
iSPOT: How come you haven’t done more video?
Norton: I don’t know, it’s a difficult media buy. We’re still conditioned to working in Flash, we have more control over it, it’s the default way to work. I’d love to do more video and I think we’re going to see more but I don’t want to just take TV commercials and put them online. When we create in Flash, we have a little more control over what we’re creating.
iSPOT: Are limited client budgets a reason you don’t do more video?
Norton: Yes, it’s difficult for us to budget for a video shoot. When I’ve done it in the past, we piggy backed with the BBDO shoot so we leveraged those assets. A lot of times it’s difficult to get clients to do a photo shoot, let alone a video shoot, but expectations of the level of online creative is changing and clients will be wiling to pay for it.
iSPOT: As a CD, do you work with clients on what direction their campaigns will take?
Norton: It’s often based on the media buy. One of the things I’ve been struggling with since I’ve been in the online world is the media. What we execute is so tied to the media buys, is it going to be video, is it going to be Flash, is it going to be 30k or 100k, can you interact or not interact? There’s all these variables for a media buy that I’m not used to coming from a traditional background.
iSPOT: Are you doing anything with mobile yet?Norton: Yes, we recently hired David Bear as director of mobile marketing. He’s doing it on a project-by-project basis with applications for different clients. We go into every pitch meeting with mobile ideas, trying to get clients comfortable with the third screen.
iSPOT: Have you done any mobile video yet?
Norton: I can see it, but we haven’t been involved with mobile video yet. It’s inevitable that we’ll be doing it soon because we want to stay ahead of the curve and I’d like to take advantage of it now, not later.
iSPOT: What are the new campaigns you’re working on?
Norton: We’re doing new Fed Ex work for 2008, offline and online, a full strategically integrated campaign. We’re also working on webisodes for another client, a marriage of video and animation. It’s a really exciting project. I haven’t done webisodes before, so that’s another reason it’s exciting. I feel everything I work on online, it’s the first time I’ve done it. It’s great for me to be introduced to new technology and different ways to tell a story.
