Austin Business Journal Profile
Friday, May 6th, 2011Breaking Cancer
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
We slugged it out with cancer this year – personally and professionally.
As many readers of this blog know cancer took the Butler Bros dad this year. The end of a three year fight.
The Half Full Triathlon was a big success in its first year and has the team at the Ulman Cancer Fund thinking  bigger about the impact they can have in young adult cancer world and beyond.
We fought alongside LIVESTRONG this year as well. From participating in LIVESTRONG Challenge events as fundraisers to designing brand presos and consulting on strategic partner alignment. The highlight though was developing the BREAK CANCER campaign. One awareness raising campaign uniting the 170 member orgs of the Young Adult Alliance via world records with a cancer theme. Partnering with URDB we created a web platform that runs on user generated content and social network sharing. We are very pleased with the launch and look forward to driving it hard in 2011 beginning with a big splash during March at a certain interactive conference. We invite you to set your own BREAK CANCER record with your family during the holidays.
You can learn more about the BREAK CANCER campaign by taking a free online subscription to the LIVESTRONG Quarterly.
Roly Rolon, Mitchum’s Hardest Working.
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010Having trouble viewing this film? Please allow it to upload completely before playing.
You may remember seeing the Mitchum commercials imploring users to generate content. I will paraphrase: “Hark, doth ye knoweth the hardest working person in these United States?! Well then ye shall maketh us a film of 120 seconds and thou should upload it for the greedy eyes of our Hollywood jury. Ye shall pimp our deodorant with your authenticness for the chance to win 100K stone and have a fim made about ye hard working ways by the Maysles.” And so the “Mitchum hardest working ______ in America” campaign began.
Marty said, Roly could win this Mitchum thing. I said, we could run a little social campaign too. Let’s fire up the production machine. So we did. Made an entry film for Roly with the assistance of omni-production man Travis Wurges. Next thing you know Roly is in the top ten. We sized up the finalists. Three people caught our eyes as the real contenders: a preacher who ran a camp for at risk youth, a self financed first responder to natural disasters, and a river cleaner named Chad Pregracke who had Mike Rowe behind him. The Chad + Mike thing reeked of presdestiny but we were game anyway.
Roly needed a cause to compete with these guys. We spoke to him about giving 15K in winnings to LIVESTRONG. He agreed. So did Travis. We made another film to drive the promotion of this intent to give. We went crazy in social media, building a Roly fan base. We built the voteroly.com brand on Facebook andTwitter. With help from Eric Webber we got quite a bit of earned media along the way; Nik Ciccone on My Fox Austin, Jim Swift on KXAN Austin, Bettie Cross on KEYE.
He may not have won, but Roly Rolon still works hard. If you need any of the services described in his film give us a call and we’ll connect you with him. As for Mitchum, all the hard workers seemed to have worked just as hard for them. Biggest insight gained – love thy crowd. Mitchun showed little or NO love to the users that generated their content, the crowd they sourced to care, and that was an easy failure to avoid.
See the extra film we made for Roly after the jump. (more…)
Bogusky B-Cycle’s to B-Bros.
Monday, February 23rd, 2009Alex Bogusky is an ad man of some renown. That’s all well and good if you’ve got a product to sell. But he’s up to something more than interrupting and selling gypsy wares. He’s also interrupting and attempting to shift a behavior that has an enormously negative impact on the planet – driving. He isn’t doing it with a Truth style campaign though. He, along with Humana and Trek bicycles, are doing it with B-Cycle. It’s an uber dialed bike sharing plan. He is coming to Austin on 13 March to share the vision with SXSW interactive conference attendees.
We are gathering a group of Austinites that can help him see this vision to fruition. As a bike friendly office with two full time bike commuters rolling in and out each day we’d love to see it go. If you want Austin on the B-Cycle map get off your Facebook and get over here. If you have any great ideas for how to drive grassroots awareness of this mission drop us a comment, tweet it, or just launch it into the universe in your own special way.
Brother from another mother perhaps.
Monday, November 24th, 2008
Alex Bogusky was not paid to wear our tee in his profile as one of the 30 most influential people in media, advertising and marketing found in the 30th anniversary special edition of Adweek.
2008 – Best of Austin Award – Most Eco-Friendly IRA
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
The Bros Know Brand Films
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
And the Statesman gets some knowledge dropped.
If you’re following Adam on Twitter, you already know: Adam and Marty were in the paper this week. In a recent article that sought to examine the concept of the “brand film,” a tool the fellas have been polishing and honing and perfecting this year (by using the highest quality cameras, directors, and editors we can get our hands on … and even clever little cameos of those who work here). Thus, the duo was deemed the agency folks to talk to, regarding these short documentary-style videos companies can use to help tell the truth about their brands.
Check out that model pose they both mastered for this article. AB said, right before the photographer snapped it, she asked for a more serious look than the side-splitting smiles they had been giving during the shoot. The brothers asked, “Would you like for us to look into the future?”
I think the stare speaks for itself.
