Building on the agency’s streak of 25% percent growth over the past two years, Allen & Gerritsen (a&g) announced today five new wins in the first quarter of 2010. New clients include Dun & Bradstreet, Health Dialog, WBUR, Digital Globe and Hal Luftig, Inc, a major Broadway production company.

The roster additions will contribute to the mix of BtoB and CtoB clients at the agency, which prides itself on creating seamless brand experiences for customers.

“We believe in disruptive ideas that put clients ahead of change,” said Andrew Graff, CEO of Allen & Gerritsen. “Our new wins have been a great start to the year for Allen & Gerritsen.”

A&G’s work for these new clients will encompass a broad range of services, including brand and creative development, media planning and buying, CRM and audience intelligence, as well as emerging technology exploration.

About Allen & Gerritsen: Always focused on what’s next, Allen & Gerritsen (a&g) strategically combines technology, creativity, media and analytics to develop digital, experiential and traditional branding experiences. Ranked by Advertising Age as one of the Top 50 Independent advertising agencies in the US, a&g creates conversations and builds connections that contribute to the bottom line. Their roster of global, consumer and BtoB clients includes The Boston Celtics, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Bonefish Grill, Hannaford Supermarkets, MFS Investment Management, Ninety Nine Restaurants, WBUR, Partnership for a Drug Free America, Toy State, Waters Corporation and Zildjian.

Allen & Gerritsen (a&g) CEO Andrew Graff announced today that Catherine Kolodij has been named Senior Vice President of Strategy at the agency. This move, combined with shifts in a&g’s organizational structure is part of Graff’s strategy to accelerate growth for the agency, which has experienced double-digit percentage growth over the past three years. The agency recently landed five new business wins in the first quarter of 2010.

“Since joining a&g, Catherine has shaped our thinking as an agency, for our clients and for each other,” said Andrew Graff, CEO at Allen & Gerritsen. “Her vision for the seamless combined disciplines of online, offline and personal contact has expanded our relationship with clients and attracted new business.”

In her new role, Kolodij will oversee Audience Intelligence (where she served as VP, intelligence director), Connections Planning/Media and Contributions/Analytics. Strategy will work in tandem with newly restructured practice areas at the agency including Creative Ideas, Relationship Management and Delivery Management.

“At Allen & Gerritsen, Strategy identifies the starting point for disruptive ideas that extend across paid, owned and earned media,” said Kolodij. “Working in close partnership with creative and marketing, the Strategy group looks forward to enabling creative thinking that pushes the status quo, continues to significantly impact our clients’ businesses, and fuels a&g’s growth.”

Prior to joining a&g, Kolodij was responsible for consumer insight and brand positioning at Hill Holliday as VP, Strategy for the Liberty Mutual, Procter & Gamble, Rockport and Cognos accounts.

Last month, a&g announced a major boost to its creative power, with the hire of Creative Director Eivind Ueland, a copywriter who has created campaigns for such high profile clients as Anheuser-Busch, Dunkin Donuts, Novartis, John Hancock, CVS/pharmacy and Tyco.

About Allen & Gerritsen

Always focused on what’s next, Allen & Gerritsen (a&g) strategically combines technology, creativity, media and analytics to develop digital, experiential and traditional branding experiences. Ranked by Advertising Age as one of the Top 50 Independent advertising agencies in the US, a&g creates conversations and builds connections that contribute to the bottom line. Their roster of global, consumer and BtoB clients includes The Boston Celtics, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Bonefish Grill, Hannaford Supermarkets, MFS Investment Management, Ninety Nine Restaurants, WBUR, Partnership for a Drug Free America, Toy State, Waters Corporation and Zildjian.

In the past two months, three of Allen & Gerritsen’s clients have been recognized by both the Internet Advertising Competition and New England Society for Healthcare Communications with awards reflecting design and/or executional excellence.

These clients have included:

Toy State Road Rippers and CAT Brands Launch First Digital Campaign, Best Toy & Hobby Online campaign



The Boston Celtics: Reclaiming the Championship in 2009-2010, Best Sports Online campaign



New England Baptist Hospital: Becoming an Online Resource & Community, Best Website Design



The agency was also recognized for the work it did for the 2009 MITX Awards ceremony video.

Telling An Agency Story Through the Little Big Planet Platform, Best Advertising Online Video



All and all, we have been up to some pretty excellent work with more to come!

Catherine Sheehan dives into American’s savings fatigue post-economic collapse and examines the national relationship with “need vs. want” purchasing.

Excerpt from MediaPost:

Last month, consumer spending rose for the fifth month in a row, a small but significant boost of 0.3% over January 2010 spending levels.

Have we finally come out on the other side of the lingering recession?

Possibly, but increased consumer spending may not be as good a sign as rising Dow Jones numbers would lead us to believe.

Although consumers are more willing to open their wallets, it’s not because their bank accounts are growing. Americans’ incomes didn’t budge last month, and our savings took a hit. We saved 0.3% less of our disposable income than we did in January of this year, registering the lowest American savings rate since October 2008.

Couple that with a 10% unemployment rate that isn’t going down any time soon, and it becomes clear that Americans didn’t permanently change behavior as a result of the downturn. Are we slipping back into the irresponsible habits that got us into this mess in the first place?

Read the full article here.

Last week, I was at the Microsoft NERD (New England Research and Development) center listening to Dennis Crowley explain foursquare’s vision for location based social networking. For the uninitiated, foursquare uses the GPS on your smartphone to allow you to “check in” to locations and leave tips for your friends while competing for digital rewards such as badges or titles such as “Mayor”. Dennis, foursquare’s co-founder and CEO, is an impressive guy, and despite all the recent hype foursquare is an impressive network. It’s growing at a faster rate than Twitter did in its first year, expecting to be able to announce one million users in the next few weeks.

To use Dennis’s phrase, foursquare has “broken out of the tech nerd ghetto”, and is now just as likely to be mentioned by the New York Times as TechCrunch. By partnering with brands such BravoTV, Pepsi and SPIN, foursquare (and its main competitor, Gowalla) is on the cusp of becoming a serious contender for inclusion in any social media plan.

After Dennis’ presentation I stopped by one of our client’s restaurants. Checking in on foursquare I looked up the Mayor. Out of curiosity I checked out several dozen other locations of the same client’s stores. Not surprisingly, several dozen Mayors were in place. Now, needless to say, there’s a lot you can learn from your Mayors. By definition, they are fans and usually advocates. Many will tell you what they think about your location. You can see which of your competitors they visited, and how often. You can see where else they have the title of Mayor. You can even see what their friends look like. If this isn’t enough context Facebook and Twitter links provide even more insight. Need to build a persona of your social advocates? Once foursquare scales this will be a great resource!

Geo-tagging is more prevalent than you think. It’s time to meet your Mayors.

Watertown, MA (April 12, 2010)— Allen & Gerritsen (a&g) personifies those food cravings that seem to hang around all day and need to be satisfied in a new marketing campaign for the Ninety Nine Restaurants. In this case, a fisherman standing in the kitchen represents one man’s craving for panko crusted haddock, while a cowboy conjures up a wish for fire grilled sirloin. These characters personify some of the new menu items: 9 “Crave-Worthy Classics” items debuting at the Ninety Nine Restaurants and star in the marketing campaign, which launches today.

“The campaign stands out in its category, showing guests in a fun way that we serve bold creative dishes that are real size entrees for just 9.99,” said Brad Schiff, Vice President, Marketing at the Ninety Nine Restaurants.

From the menu’s new look to the website redesign, new radio spots, and a return to TV, Allen & Gerritsen set out to shift consumers’ idea of what the Ninety Nine Restaurants stands for and remind guests why they liked the food and the experience in the first place. TV spots will air during popular shows such as American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, regional news and sports broadcasts and on cable networks such as TLC, Comedy Central, ESPN and TBS.

Promotions such as a sweepstakes to win a trip to see the finale of Dancing with the Stars in Los Angeles will amplify the brand experience. The Ninety Nine will also bring back its popular Red Sox promotion “Kids Eat Free” the day after the Red Sox win (along with the purchase of an adult entrée).

Social media efforts such as Facebook and mobile applications will earn more exposure to the brand utilizing the crave-worthy theme.

“Every aspect of our campaign is a touchpoint to the beginning of a journey to experience the Ninety Nine Restaurants, the redesigned menu is just as important as the social media or TV,” said Catherine Kolodij, Senior Vice President, Strategy. “We bring paid, owned and earned media together to earn buzz and sell more crave-worthy meals.”

About Allen & Gerritsen

Always focused on what’s next, Allen & Gerritsen (a&g) strategically combines technology, creativity, media and analytics to develop digital, experiential and traditional branding experiences. Ranked by Advertising Age as one of the Top 50 Independent advertising agencies in the US, a&g creates conversations and builds connections that contribute to the bottom line. Their roster of global, consumer and BtoB clients includes The Boston Celtics, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Bonefish Grill, Hannaford Supermarkets, MFS Investment Management, Ninety Nine Restaurants, WBUR, Partnership for a Drug Free America, Toy State, Waters Corporation and Zildjian.

About the Ninety Nine Restaurants
With more than 20 million guests served each year, the Ninety Nine is a friendly, comfortable place to gather and enjoy great American food and drink at a terrific price. Known for their signature hand-breaded Boneless Buffalo Wings, smothered with the Ninety Nine’s own special sauce, and Broiled Sirloin Tips in a special marinade, the Ninety Nine menu has something for everyone and offers a wide selection of appetizers, entrees, delicious desserts and signature cocktails.

Owned by O’Charley’s Inc., the Ninety Nine Restaurants is New England’s first locally-based casual restaurant chain, established in 1952 at 99 State Street in Boston. Headquartered in Woburn, Mass., Ninety Nine Restaurant currently operates 116 restaurants and employs over 7,000 team members. For more information, please visit www.99restaurants.com.

Let me ask you some simple questions about your current marketing efforts:

1. Have you talked to your target audience recently about what’s on their minds?

2. Are your Facebook fans more valuable customers than those on your email list? How much more?

3. You probably have a customer segmentation model but do you have a segmentation model for your social media community? Do you engage each of those segments differently?

4. Have you revised your 2010 marketing plan based on customer feedback since the plan went live?

5. If you answered yes to the previous question, did those revisions result in the re-allocation of dollars to channels with a higher ROI?

For consumers this economic “wonderland” has resulted in some significant shifts in our buyer behavior. Unfortunately the marketplace’s reaction to many of us waiting out the economic storm is to “manage to profitability”. I’ve learned that managing to profitability is code for, “stop talking to the customer and start cutting back on the offerings that drew them to you in the first place.”

Times like these call for a certain amount of retrenchment and introspection from businesses, but it’s also the time to steal share from short-sighted competitors who are cutting back on the services and offerings that matter most to customers. And it’s the perfect time to increase your dialog with consumers to better understand how their needs and behaviors are changing and evolving so that you might evolve (not amplify) your communications.

One of the first things you’ll notice about Allen & Gerritsen’s consumer to business (C2B) practice is that the consumer comes first – a simple idea that many marketers lose sight of - particularly when economic storm clouds begin to form. This approach gains even more relevancy when you consider that today’s consumer has been the driving force behind a communications revolution like none other.. This revolution has in turn driven a revolutionary shift in how Allen & Gerritsen engages with our clients’ customers through paid (advertising exposure that you pay for like TV, print, digital display), earned (media exposure that you don’t control though you certainly can influence like social media, public relations, etc) and owned media channels (web TV, custom publishing, blog networks, etc.). It’s no longer about pushing communications out to an audience as a monolog. It’s about dialog. Today’s consumer makes the rules and controls the conversation. They are now at the front of the communications channel. In this environment only businesses who put the “C” in front of the “B” will thrive.

Many of you (maybe even most of you) have done a decent job of recognizing this shift and have moved to put the tools in place to participate in these consumer led conversations. But what have you learned about your customers through these channels and how have you acted on those learnings (see questions at the beginning of this blog)? Our approach is based on a near “obsession” with the consumer mindset and the resultant behaviors. It promotes conversation and as often as possible empowers the consumer to lead those conversations. After all, there’s no call to action more powerful than one offered by peer, a trusted category expert or a friend. No this isn’t a blog asking you to spend more money in advertising, this is a blog that’s asking you to think differently.

Andrew Graff unboxes his iPad.