R/West’s ad campaign garners national acclaim and international syndication

Two of L.A.’s finest chimpanzee actors are helping Portland advertising agency R/West and one of its clients get a little global recognition.

Bella and Jonah portray a “Trunk Monkey” in five television advertisements that have generated an almost cult-like following. The result is syndication of the ads throughout the country and in Australia and New Zealand.

In addition to running as paid commercials, the ads have played for entertainment value on European television, as part of training by several police departments and other organizations in the United States.

“It’s an insane story — people really are obsessed with it,” said Sean Blixseth, president of R/West. The 7-year-old agency created the ads for Sandy-based Suburban Auto Group.

“Suburban knew they couldn’t win the media battle with dollars. They’re not even in the top 10 in terms of money spent on advertising by car dealers in the Portland area,” Blixseth said. “But we knew if we came up with something that blew people’s minds, it could be huge.”

Told to “go out on the edge,” Blixseth and his team brainstormed to come up with ideas that led to the concept of building an identity for Suburban.

R/West, with 26 employees, is known for its work with Burgerville, Integra Telecom and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The agency recorded $4.1 million in revenue in 2003, according to The Business Journal 2004 Book of Lists.

The agency has worked with Vancouver, Wash.-based Burgerville for years. Recent work with the burger purveyor includes launching a campaign on the company’s switch to Oregon Country Beef — which is raised by independent ranchers who raise beef naturally without hormones.

But the Trunk Monkey campaign has garnered the most attention.

In the first four Trunk Money ads, Jonah hangs out in a spacious trunk of a new vehicle until the driver needs assistance. In one, Jonah catches a would-be car thief and dumps him off a bridge.

At the end of the spots, Suburban’s logo appears.

In the most recent ad broadcast, Bella took over the role. She plays a pediatrician who pops out of the trunk when it becomes apparent that a woman riding in the back seat is going to deliver her baby en route. The ad ends with proud parents standing on the side of the road behind a proud Bella, who’s holding the swaddled infant.

In a different version of the ad, Bella runs off with the newborn.

Two yet-to-be-produced spots call for a “wingman” and a salesman Trunk Monkey.

The first ad aired in Portland during the 2003 Super Bowl, a spot that cost around $3,000.

“We definitely were the most talked about ad that night,” said Nancy Jaksich, who co-owns Suburban with her husband.

“We got a lot of calls. People were asking things like, ‘I just bought one of your cars, you didn’t tell me the Trunk Monkey was an option,'” Jaksich said.

“Then we started getting calls from Great Britain and Australia. It just went crazy,” she said.

One day following the airing of the first ad, the company’s Web site shut down. More than 250,000 attempts to download the ad overloaded the site.

Jaksich said she started hearing from dealers in Ohio and Pennsylvania and elsewhere around the country who had customers in their showrooms talking about the Trunk Monkey.

“That’s when we realized we were probably going to be able to syndicate it,” she said.

Suburban responded by trade-marking “Trunk Monkey” and licensing the concept. R/West works to tailor the ads to auto dealers in other markets.

The result is revenue that helps offset Suburban’s production costs, a steady trickle of work for local production houses, and a higher profile for R/West.

“It gives us global exposure to some extent but definitely a national profile. To date, we’ve really been seen as a regional creative shop,” Blixseth said.

The process has expanded Suburban’s horizons as well.

The auto dealer recently started merchandising Trunk Monkey products — T-shirts, bumper stickers and action dolls — from a shop at one of its showrooms and online.

Source: Portland Business Journal
Byline: Shelly Strom

Lost: Diamond tennis bracelet, probably at Costco.

This local classified ad is a perfect illustration of the crossover consumer we have become, comfortable in so many different areas that marketers find it increasingly challenging to use segmentation effectively.

Add this crossover factor to the new demographics and targeting gets tougher still. A recent article in Financial Times, Samuel Huntington’s “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” notes that our demographics are changing, and drastically at that: “The single most immediate and most serious challenge to America’s traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared with black and white American natives.”

It’s a time of massive consumer transformation, one we seem to resist acknowledging. Instead of just trying to update an old customer acquisition approach, we would be smarter if we rethought how we go about gathering customers in general.

Yep, pull marketing is back. When the Internet started making waves, marketers claimed that all customers would be pulled into sales over the Internet and that pushing via mailings was dead. An overstatement, yes. But, as it turns out, not far from the truth.

We are over mailing lists, our creative is as distinctive as the hundreds of six-toed cat “clones” in Key West, FL, and we’re all starting to sell the same stuff. Not to mention that message bombardment has forced consumers to learn the art of tuning out all marketing.

Effective pull marketing requires that you know what your customers want before they know they want it.

Here are a few key areas where pull shines.

Web Sites

Larry Dotson reports on Top7 Business.com that the main reason people don’t visit a Web site is that it doesn’t offer free original content. Catalogers tend to be horrid at content.

Rather, consider the British publication More, which allowed visitors to download an instant boyfriend for two weeks with the relationship unfolding every day. The copy: “It’s great – a boyfriend and a screen saver in one! Who says men aren’t useful? But beware, a lot can happen in two weeks. Men are an unpredictable breed.”

Another Web-site draw: films. Budweiser runs ads to invite filmmakers to create films for its site. Having recently gone to an independent film festival and listened to filmmakers talk, I learned that “hiring” someone to create an original film is not expensive. Most produced their films with their own money; the highest budget (for a subsidized school project) was $30,000. Create a theme that makes sense for your company’s image, start a contest using your Web site or catalog and watch the movies roll in.

Viral Marketing

Remember “I told two friends, they told two friends…”? That’s what viral marketing is all about.

Best current example: the Suburban Auto Group and its hilarious Trunk Monkey commercials. Though no longer running, the ads have such a cult-like following they have spawned an entire site and are being forwarded like crazy. Viral marketing caused this tiny auto dealership in Sandy, OR to become one of the most talked-about companies on the Web. Visit Suburbanautogroup.com to find out why.

Tie-ins

Tie-ins offer another reason for consumers to choose you. Industrial supplies cataloger New Pig ties in with Victory Junction Gang, a nonprofit that’s building a camp touted as “a magical place where special kids can just be kids.” As the camp was founded by the Petty car racing family, and New Pig has a habit of giving away NASCAR racing glasses, the pairing seems natural.

Endorsements

There are three basic kinds of endorsements: customer, authority and celebrity. They all work. And you never can have enough of them, especially from customers.

For a celebrity endorser, look for a careful match, one who has long-standing credibility and enhances your brand overall. My agency hired “Wonder Woman” Lynda Carter as the spokeswomen for Lens Express, believing her great big eyes were the key. Combined with the slogan “Would I trust these baby blues to just anyone?” the endorsement overcame concerns about ordering contact lenses by mail.

Public Relations

Historian and author Daniel J. Boorstin said, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire PR officers.” It’s very simple. PR works.

David Hochberg, vice president of public affairs for Direct Holdings Worldwide, the parent company of Lillian Vernon, Rue de France and Time Life’s direct marketing division, says: “A third-party endorsement by the media always adds credibility to your brand. Most consumers view the media as an objective source of information and most Americans get their news and information from the media. A proactive public relations campaign can add considerable pull to your marketing efforts.”

So make sure your PR presence is easy to spot on your Web site.

Humor in Advertising

Delta Apparel, a B-to-B marketer of knitwear products, used the theme “Unusually Heavy T-shirts” for a campaign in a business publication. One ad showed a kid leaving deep indentations in a sidewalk as he ran along.

Another featured a swing hanging very low due the heft of its Delta-clad passenger. Both made it clear that Delta T-shirts were anything but lightweight. The results: a 24% jump in sales, 49% more new customers and T-shirt sales that grew 158%.

Super Bowl commercials have long been considered the place to look for the best in advertising. So how important is humor? Of ESPN’s top 10 ads from this year’s game, eight used humor.

Bottom line? Keep an open mind. And consider anything that will get customers to come to you rather than you having to chase them.

KATIE MULDOON is president of DM/catalog consulting firm Muldoon & Baer Inc., Tequesta, FL.

COPYRIGHT 2004 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

Source: Direct
Byline: KATIE MULDOON