Every year on June 1st Promo Magazine unveils its PROMO 100 annual list of the top promotional agencies in the U.S. I usually write a post about the PROMO 100 Agency of the Year shortly after the list comes out. Well this year I'm a little late, but it's still worth writing about.
The 2009 top spot went to Catapult Action-Biased Marketing which is headed up by COO Paul Kramer, a well-known name in the promotional agency circle. They reported $28.5 million in 2008 U.S. net revenue, a 69% increase over 2006. The growth came from mostly three areas: a new interactive discipline, geographic expansion and additional work for existing clients.
Catapult Interactive debuted in January 2007 as a way to round out the agency’s services and has proven to be a “great engine” for organic growth, stated Bill Hewson, president, Interactive. As a result the agency expanded its work for its clients, including Pedigree, Intel and Subway. Subway is a longtime client who the agency first developed a relationship with about six years ago, working on merchandising at its restaurants. That work has expanded to national programs, including Subway Scrabble, a popular instant-win game promotion that incorporates hundreds of millions of game pieces on Subway cups and sub wraps. Each year, the agency has worked on improving response by incorporating new best practices. Listed here are their Eights Ways to Improve the ROI of Online Games of Chance. The game is scheduled to start up again in August.
Earlier this year Catapult was also awarded the Best in Show in the 2009 Promo Interactive Marketing Awards for its Pedigree Million Dog Mosaic campaign. The campaign generated funding for a new Pedigree foundation dedicated to helping dogs find good homes. I can remember seeing those ads and wanting to go out immediately and adopt those dogs! Catapult created a promotional website which received about 1 million page views and where people uploaded 55,000 photos of their dogs. These photos were then woven into a mosaic image of a cute puppy. Each time a new photo was uploaded, Pedigree donated $1 to the foundation.
Catapult was also a finalist in four categories in the 2008 Pro Awards for its Pedigree Dog Adoption campaign: Best Multi-Discipline Campaign, Best Cause-Based Promotion, Best Campaign Targeting a Micro Audience, and Best Creative.
Another long time client is Australian Wine brands Rosemount Estate and Lindemans which has since grown to include additional brands such as Beringer, Meridian, Bohemian Highway and Little Penguin. Catapult struck a deal for the Rosemount brand with Gordon Ramsay, the star of the Fox Network reality cooking show Hell’s Kitchen. Later this month when the show premieres on July 21 the Rosemount brand will be integrated into it with retail promotions around the placement. “When you have a relationship with a company and an understanding about how they work and what their objectives are, you can add value to other parts of their business or brands,” said Matthe Jonas, their client and President of West.
One of Catapult’s core strengths has been shopper marketing. “In today’s marketplace you need to have programs that are as appealing to the shopper as they are to the retailer,” Kramer says. “We influence what people actually do, not what they say they will do.”
Congratulations to the team at Catapult. We'll be keeping an eye of what other exciting integrated promotional marketing programs they launch in the upcoming year.
NOTE: Catapult announced today, July 7th, that Paul Kramer has been named CEO. Kramer has worked as the agency’s COO since its founding in 2005. “Paul has been integral to our success since joining D.L. Ryan Companies as a managing director in 1990,” said David Ryan, founder and CEO of D.L. Ryan Cos. “His career has been marked by an unwavering ability to create effective and memorable sales and marketing programs for world-class marketers across a broad range of industries.” Congratulations to Paul.
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