Droga5 did it last year. Now The Martin Agency is opening in London.
Droga5 opened last year after it had created the essential anticipation by moving its launch date by several months.
Its first piece of work created the essential buzz with its next gen creative thinking – the ad for Beat by Dre headphones, was an interactive music video, featuring Rudimental (whose song, Powerless, had won best single at the Brit Awards). Viewers could isolate different parts of the track by clicking on the appropriate parts of the screen, to recreate the feel of a mixing desk. Droga5’s Nik Studzinski and Thiago de Moraes created the ad. Fred & Nick directed it. Pulse Films produced it. Wilderness handled the interactive aspects.
The Martin Agency made itself famous last year when its interactive multimedia documentary, Clouds of Cuba, for John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, showed up in nearly every awards finalist list and picked up an Emmy. Users could rewrite history.
The agency added to its creative cred this year with its left-of-centre thinking in the For Your Consideration campaign for Mad Men for the Emmys, in which the show’s main characters are used to promote fictional products in aptly 60s style ads- by highlighting alluring features they, in fact, share with the products.
The Martin Agency began in Richmond, Virginia in 1965. That agency is 450 people strong. The New York office began during an acquisition by Scali, McCabe & Sloves Advertising in 1986, and has 25 people. It is now an Interpublic Group agency.
The Martin Agency London will open with ManpowerGroup and Education First as clients. The Martin Agency’s top accounts include Geico, Walmart, Mondelez, Discover and Kraft. The agency also was part of a team of Interpublic agencies, led by McCann Erickson, that pitched and won Microsoft’s global creative business in April.
During the launch phase London will be headed by Ian Davidson, the agency’s existing managing director, and Brian Williams, a creative director from the Richmond office.
