_Rockit Science Agency Wins National Advertising Competition

June 28, 2009

How to create a national-award-winning advertising agency:

Step One: Lose Your Job.

Rockit Science Agency president Brad BonGiovanni confronted his Houston-we-have-a-problem moment in 2001 during the last national recession. His employer, Kaminer & Welch of Jackson, Miss., lost a huge, national account with some major bottling companies. Shortly afterward, the company punched the eject button on BonGiovanni’s cubicle, and he found himself adrift in the employment universe.

BonGiovanni returned to Baton Rouge to talk things over with his father.

“He said, ‘You know, this could be a positive thing for you. This could open doors for you,’” BonGiovanni said. “At the time I was like, ‘There’s no way. I don’t have a job. This is the worst thing that ever happened.’”

But his father reminded him that BonGiovanni had always wanted to do his own thing. BonGiovanni already knew what it was like working for a large ad agency. He didn’t want to jump to another, where the pay was good but creative opportunities were limited. He figured he had nowhere to go but up.

He launched the company.

Step Two: Starve.

“My first year I did $12,000,” BonGiovanni said.

That worked out to around $30 a week more than unemployment benefits, but BonGiovanni didn’t care. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment that doubled as his office, and the office never closed. “Good thing I wasn’t married at the time because I was able to work all hours of the night and just get it done,” BonGiovanni said.

He joined the Baton Rouge chapter of the American Advertising Federation and introduced himself to other members. BonGiovanni told them he was new in town but experienced in advertising, and he was looking for freelance work.

There were five or six times during that first year that the business could have folded, BonGiovanni said, but he kept scrambling.

A year or so later, BonGiovanni finally felt confident enough to give his fledgling agency a name. He scribbled down a list of possibilities, and Rockit Science stuck. Today that piece of paper sits in a frame in BonGiovanni’s office.

“Part of the thought process was just to throw words on the paper. Even if they’re not words you’re thinking about using because sometimes the best ideas come from the worst ideas,” BonGiovanni said.

It took about a day, consulting friends and family, to come up with Rockit Science Design. The logo included a molecule rather than a rocket. The spelling of “Rockit” let people know that the firm was “just a little creative,” BonGiovanni said.

Fast forward seven years.

This year Rockit Science won a silver in the national American Advertising Federation’s Addy Awards, a competition that drew more than 60,000 entries. The agency was recognized for its 2008 LUBA Workers’ Comp interactive Web site. It portrays insurance agents as Prohibition-era FBI agents, or G-Men. Call it Retro Rockit Science. The LUBA agents, or L-Men, log on by filling in the blanks of a smudged memo pad that sits atop a Manila folder stamped “confidential.” Logging on launches a newsreel that opens with the LUBA logo, a cypress tree, as radio tower, broadcasting word that “A relentless manhunt is under way” for LUBA’s 10 Most Wanted, or top sales people. The sepia-toned newsreel features LUBA executives, sporting fedoras and Tommy guns, and driving a vintage car. The site also includes a “Go on the Lam” contest, a four-day vacation agents can win for writing $50,000 in premiums.

Rockit Science has tripled its revenue in less than two years, applying its boutique approach to larger clients, BonGiovanni said. Customers now include the United States Navy; Thor Solutions, a computer network security firm based in Washington, D.C.; and Red Tiger Security, multinational consultants that help protect critical infrastructure, such as power and water supplies.

Saviour L. Nwachukwu, professor of marketing and management at Southern University, said there are advantages to hiring a smaller ad agency.

The microcompanies’ strengths lie in information technology expertise, such as developing Web sites or engaging in e-mail and viral marketing campaigns, he said. Newer, and therefore smaller, companies are often better able to attract younger audiences; the newer agencies are more in tune with younger consumers.

Step 3: Get the word out…quietly

Before Rockit Science could bid for jobs from multi-nationals, the agency had to establish itself.

Fortunately, success, or at least industry acknowledgement, came fairly quickly.

In 2003, the agency racked up a gold from the National Association of Container Distributors for the packaging design on Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. The agency also took golds in the local American Advertising Federation Addy Awards for the Web site of Jive Train, a band, and a presentation for the New Orleans Hornets.

Partner and creative director Josh Dickerhoof joined the firm that year, after weeks of pestering BonGiovanni. Dickerhoof, at the time a freshly minted LSU graduate, didn’t even think of applying anywhere else. Eventually, he convinced BonGiovanni that Rockit Science needed a co-pilot.

A steady stream of advertising awards, local and regional, has followed in each year since. “For about seven years, it was all word of mouth and doing work for people and relationships,” BonGiovanni said. “This person knows somebody and showed my work or saw my work.”

Step 4: Know your client’s business

Rockit Science built its brand, and strong word of mouth, by emphasizing an in-depth approach.

“We dive into it. We look at everything,” Dickerhoof said.

Lots of times, a client comes in, says he wants a new logo, and asks what will it cost, Dickerhoof said. But before the agency can answer that question, dozens of others must be asked, including:

The client is asking for a logo, but is that what he or she actually needs? What is the client trying to achieve? What does the client want to do with the brand? Who is the client’s target audience? Who is the competition? How long does the client want the brand to last? What kind of features does the client want in the logo? Will it be one mark? Will it go on clothes? A building?

“We try to understand as much as possible about what you want to do before we even give you a quote or a proposal because it’s fully based off so many factors about giving you what’s correct for you,” Dickerhoof said.

BonGiovanni said those factors include talking to everyone at the company, from management to the sales team to the people who make the product.

Vice President of Marketing Brent A. Sims said the company’s philosophy means that the Rockit scientists wind up knowing a lot more about say, banking and insurance, than they would like. But the agency has also cemented long-term relationships with customers, he added.

Rockit Science has kept clients for six years, where a typical agency’s client relationships might last only two or three years, Sims said.

The in-depth approach also helps explain why last year Rockit Science ended up minority owners in one client’s business, Florida-based Molina Cigar Co.

“The guy had a business plan that was about 500 pages. He had the breakdown of cigars, down to the cent,” Sims said. “I was like, ‘It’s all here.’ He was really passionate about it. I just said, ’I think this is something we should do.’”

A few weeks before the product launch, the partners took owner Luis Molina to lunch, Sims said. At the time, the cigar company was looking for investors. The Rockit scientists told Molina he had found one, although Sims said the agency could not disclose the details of the investment.

Dickerhoof said the Rockit Science team was already heavily invested in the branding campaign for the new cigar, Devil’s Weed. The partners believed strongly in the product before Sims suggested investing money, he said.

Molina already had the name, drawn from Spanish inquisitors’ term for tobacco, but was wary of putting devil in his label, Dickerhoof said. The agency argued that the name wasn’t promoting the devil but the historical information, and market research showed the proposed brand sparked a strong reaction among consumers, drawing older and younger smokers in through the history of tobacco.

BonGiovanni said calling the new brand Molina’s Classic Cigar wouldn’t have lowered the product’s quality, just sales.

At the end of the day, the agency’s job is to increase the client’s revenue, he said.

Rockit Science threw up a Devil’s Weed blog and a Web site, and the brand took off, Dickerhoof said.

Step 5: Shake things up

Last year, Rockit Science reached a new stage in its journey in large part because BonGiovanni and Dickerhoof brought in Sims, the former Mall of Louisiana marketing director — see Step 1 — as a partner.

Sims helped Rockit Science formalize a lot of its processes and brought a new perspective to the company’s business outlook, BonGiovanni said.

“He looked at everything and said, ‘You can do this for anybody. Why aren’t you doing this for Pepsi? Nationwide?’” BonGiovanni said. “And we just kind of grew from there.”

Rockit Science maintained its personalized approach and wants to hang onto existing clients, but the agency has begun targeting bigger clients, Sims said. The strategy has helped Rockit Science triple its revenue during the last two years. Sims said Rockit Science may add two or three people in the next two or three years; the company now has six employees, including partners BonGiovanni, Dickerhoof and Sims, and two interns.

Rockit Science isn’t the kind of company that wants to grow into a $100 million company that loses contact with what its partners want to do, Sims said.

“It’s key for us to keep it…at this boutique size so we’re truly able to truly develop the right type of branding and creativity we need for our clients,” Sims said.

By Ted Griggs, Advocate business writer