The agency site reborn as YouTube channel

It was inevitable. BooneOakley, an independent shop in Charlotte, N.C., has scrapped its Web site in favor of a YouTube channel. Visitors to BooneOakley.com are redirected to YouTube, where they are greeted by a three-minute clip showing the story of "Billy," a marketing director who hired an agency owned by a holding company, got fired and then got killed by his pissed-off wife. The site has links to work and partner bios, and it uses the YouTube ability to embed links inside videos. It's an interesting approach to build a Web presence directly on a platform rather than a stand-alone destination, but you have to wonder about choosing only video as a way for BooneOakley to tell its story. The news section, for instance, is a video clip about the Obamas using the agency's initials in naming their dog. And while YouTube's "hotspotting" is a clever way to move around to different videos, the navigation is far from straightforward. I kept having to click back to the Billy intro video to get to other parts of the site.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Published on June 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (22)
Filed under Agency web sites, BooneOakley, Morrissey

Another reason you're not in The One Show

Now that it's done selling the naming rights to its in-house basketball court (I think Stephen Colbert won), BooneOakley turns its attention to building attendance for The One Show Festival in New York. To reach shops that might skip the event, three high-concept, print-heavy and very in-jokey ads (see them here, here and here) posit the existence of a secret society called the Ones that determines the work accepted into the show. Copy at one point notes that names like Goodby, Silverstein, Graf and Hegarty appear "year after year after year," while references to Minneapolis adman Bob Barrie in One Show annuals are so hard to find, "a NASA supercomputer burst into flames" trying to calculate his appearances. It's fairly amusing. More amusing was the infamous "leaked" One Club memo that, by some estimates, shows that the group takes in something like $800 billion in annual entry fees. They also charge $700 for an all-access festival pass. At those prices, the Ones won't do it—it's more about the Benjamins, and even larger denominations.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on April 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under Award shows, BooneOakley, One Show

Naming rights to agency stadium up for bid

With apparently way too much time on its hands, Charlotte, N.C., ad agency BooneOakley is auctioning off the naming rights to its in-house basketball stadium. Wait, BooneOakley has an in-house basketball stadium? How can it afford that? Did the shop win the Microsoft account and not tell anyone? Given the mediocre quality of the company's new "Laptop Hunter" ads, I can't discount the possibility. Kidding, BooneOakley's creative ideas rock, I'm sure. Example: They sent this picture with Preparation H signage Photoshopped onto the scoreboard. Um, hilarious! (See a larger photo here.) Anyway, the "stadium" seats about 35, and according to press materials, "the one-year package includes the customary scoreboard and sideline signage, as well as roof signage, visible from outer space." This agency really needs a few more paying clients to keep these cutesy self-promos at bay. Maybe they should rent out the facility to the Hornets for practice space.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on March 31, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Filed under BooneOakley, Gianatasio, Naming rights, Self-promotion

Take a One Show Pencil out for a test drive

Oh, that cheeky BooneOakley. The agency's promotion for The One Show 2009 call for entries is designed to "encourage potential entrants to experience firsthand the unending bliss of owning a Gold Pencil (for one week)." Applicants who register at the soon-to-be-launched oneshowtestdrive.org will get to "test" Gold Pencils for a week. Also: "Pencil-testers will receive congratulatory phone calls from world renowned creative directors, designers, interactive directors and film directors including John Butler, Dave Lubars, Eric Silver, Court Crandall, Sally Hogshead, Ari Merkin, Joe Duffy, Bob Greenberg, Noam Murro, Kevin Roddy and Ty Montague." Perhaps a few of the testers will feel compelled to devise creative ways to tell those big-wigs where to stick their precious Pencils. You can't expect modesty and self-deprecation from the creative department. That's more of an account management sort of thing.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on November 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Filed under Award shows, BooneOakley, Gianatasio

Charlotte does 'a lot' in new tourism effort

So, "Charlotte's got a lot," huh? That's what BooneOakley asserts in a tourism campaign for a city I've now learned is in North Carolina. (Having never been farther south than Teaneck, N.J., I had to waste six seconds on Google Maps to find out for sure.) The visual wordplay in the ads is appealing, but the slogan seems best suited for a declaration scrawled on a public phone booth or men's-room wall. In our cellular age, do they still have phone booths anywhere? Or men's rooms, for that matter? I don't see either in the Charlotte ads, which cast the city as the Riviera of the New South, so I guess visitors will have to hit Raleigh or Durham to drop a dime or spend a penny. Which begs a question: Why so down on Raleigh, BooneOakley? It's a question that may need to be addressed the next time state ad contracts come up for review. UPDATE: Check out some of the city's earlier "Shhhhhharlotte" ads here.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Published on September 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Filed under BooneOakley, Gianatasio, Tourism