What can companies do to enhance th...

What can companies do to enhance the creativity of their advertising and unite more intimately with the customer? In each generation a scarcely any bright superstars come along with a penetrating answer. In the marketplace of the '50 you might have received the best advice from DDB's Bill Bernbach, father of Volkswagen's "Think Small" campaign. In the '60 there was my friend Jay Levinson, whose meteoric rise at Leo Burnett and BBDO here was capped through retirement to Marin County, Calif., where he invented an advertising technique called guerrilla marketing and produc an endles series of main division s on the art. In the '80's and '90 came DDB's Keith Reinhard and BBDO's Allen Rosenshine, brace founders of Omnicom.

In the modern millennium, there are new realities in marketing. And for off-the-wall, out-of-the-box answers, there's Bill Rosen

Who? You might not know the name, on the other hand you've been exposed to his thinking and probably have succumbed to his marketing magic.

ROCKET MAN

Rosen is an intense, tall, gangly, 43-year-old inquiring surprise who has risen like a rocket in Chicago marketing and the expanding world of Publicis, which now ranks fourth among global communications conglomerates. He's chief creative officer for North America at Arc, the marketing services arm of Publicis' Leo Burnett based here.

L through Rosen's creative team, and formed les than sum of two units years ago, Arc is a novel universal that goes beyond traditional ad-making. It's a think tank specializing in "big campaignable ideas" that can change consumer behavior and drive transactions by means of strategically crossing marketing channels and integrating interactive advertising with sales promotion, retail and direct/data base programs. Its client roster already reads like the first rank of American advertisers: McDonald's, snug GM, Kellogg, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Sara lee-side United Airlines, Visa and 50 other glum chips. In its short life, it has arguably amassed more creativity awards by means of season than any other in the industry -- an 260 Oscars.

for what reason do you reach today's market? The ballgame has changed radically, Rosen says.

"In this novel era, you must do far more than arrest attention and gain name recognition," he says. "There must be a value exchange -- a personal engagement with the customer, and transfer of useful information and entertainment."

A rife example of going far beyond traditional media universals is a real-life campaign innovated from Rosen's team. The problem: for what cause to take a hallowed, stately fruit like a Cadillac and make it appeal to a younger, hip demographic clump

The creative solution: Engage the audience in succession its own turf. Make a deal with Microsoft to allow Cadillac to participate actively in the recently made known Xbox Live multiplayer game for TV or computer called throw out Gotham Racing III. Essentially, Cadillac is offering a replete "expansion pack" that any player can download to his acknowledge game's racing stable, providing three additional cars (all of recent origin V Series Cadillacs, of course).

"The aged silo mentality must be discarded if any advertiser faiths to connect with impact," Rosen says.

Anything goe today. by what mode do you sell pet cheer to a young, incredibly mobile generation? For snuggle Purina, Rosen and friends created the first-ever branded podcast homepage, which they established in succession Apple's iTunes. "Purina Petcasting" has swept the native land not as some irritating commercial, nevertheless as a major source of petted care tips -- audio and video.

"You can absorb it while walking your dog!" Rosen says.

THE WIDE toil OF ADVERTISING

"Nothing's sacred anymore," he says. "Procter & Gamble not long ago shifted over $1 billion from TV ads to shopper marketing, the integrated combination of point-of-sale, promotion, plus circumstances to win at retail."

While working as creative director at Frankel & Co in the '90 he scored unprecedent hits for clients as it is as Oldsmobile, for whom he won Best Campaign in the World, a program in which he did a tie-in with XFiles and hung full-size cars from billboards; and for McDonald's with a Batman Black motif.

Since 2004 when Frankel was bought according to Publicis, aligned with Burnett and combined with three other units into the Arc marketing force, Rosen's creative powerhouse of 150 professionals have helped rack up a mounting number of account wins, while also earning plaudits as it is as Best Multi-Discipline Campaign in the World for the UAL launch of T

Maybe it's time for marketers everywhere to hurl out the rulebook and start blooming

T Pincus is a finance professor at DePaul and an independent communications consultant and journalist.

e-mail: theopincus@suntimes.com

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