Arc Worldwide Showcases Marketing Innovation at the Promotion Marketing Association's 2006 Reggie Awards and Conference

Arc Worldwide and clients United Airlines, Cadillac, Centers for Disease Control and Hewitt Associates demonstrated marketing creativity, measurable results and innovation at this year's Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) conference and Reggie Awards. Arc took home four awards, more than any other agency.

The Reggie Awards recognize outstanding promotional marketing campaigns in the United States in 14 categories. Now in their 26th year, the Reggie Awards are the elite standard of recognition for promotional marketing professionals.

Arc's United team took home a Gold in the Local, Regional or Target Market Promotion category by creating a fully integrated campaign promoting Ted's new service at Chicago's Midway International Airport.

Arc and Ted, United's low-fare airline, captured the hearts of Chicago baseball fans in June 2005 with the Crosstown Classic, celebrating a feat that other airlines can't match -- the ability to offer travelers service from both the North side (O'Hare) and the South side (Midway). Arc worked with United to arrange a 20-mile historic flight from O'Hare to Midway, flying 50 lucky baseball fans, four baseball legends and a host of media crews to the showdown between the Chicago Cubs, loved by northsiders, and the Chicago White Sox, pride of the South side. The campaign generated a 125 percent increase in print and broadcast reach over the previous month and increased brand awareness by more than 3 percent.

"At Arc, we always focus on delivering the right message at the right time to the right consumer, using whatever communications channels are appropriate to make that connection," said Martin Wodarz, Arc's creative director on the Ted account. "We thank our United partners for being such strategic thinkers and allowing us to get our big campaignable idea in front of Chicago travelers."

Cadillac likewise wanted to celebrate its feat of three vehicles that go from 0 mph to 60 mph in less than five seconds, and asked Arc and Leo Burnett to capitalize on the engineering accomplishment. For their efforts, the two Publicis agencies won a Gold in the New Media Promotion category and Bronze in the National Consumer Promotion category.

The focal point of the "Cadillac Under 5" campaign was the first 12-day, five-second film contest that leveraged Cadillac's partnership with the movie, "Be Cool," directed by F. Gary Gray and starring John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Cedric the Entertainer. Consumers visiting the Cadillac Under 5 website in January 2005 heard from Travolta, aka Chili Palmer, who promoted the contest, and entered their movies for a chance to win a Cadillac. The six-week campaign also included the industry's first five-second TV ads that broke on Super Bowl Sunday; expandable banner ads featuring the five-second clips; outdoor placements on billboards; and promotional outreach at the Sundance Film Festival, film schools and other outlets.

It's not easy to win a Reggie two years in a row, but Frankel, an Arc Worldwide company did just that for its work with the CDC to combat youth obesity. The team in 2005 continued its innovative work with the VERB Crossover, designed to inspire tweens to get -- and stay -- physically active. More than 6,700 schools received a complete VERB Crossover program kit, enabling kids to cross basketball with a wide range of other sports and activities. VERB Crossover generated 4.4 million hours of incremental physical activity -- 120 percent over goal.

"Words can hardly express how proud I am of our creative and account teams," said William Rosen, chief creative officer of Arc Worldwide. "Our success at the Reggie awards has shown once again that Arc delivers integrated campaigns across multiple channels that engage consumers of all ages and move our clients' businesses forward."

PMA Conference 2006: Activating Innovation

Andres Tapia, chief diversity officer at Hewitt Associates, a provider of human resources outsourcing and consulting services, sat on a panel about the global imperative for business diversity as part of the PMA's two-day conference prior to awards night. He also discussed the company's 2006 diversity recruiting campaign, which Arc conceptualized and executed. "With the talent war that's heating up, diversity is a workplace and a marketplace issue," Tapia said. "Companies need to expand their pool of candidates to fulfill their talent needs, and they also need diversity of thought and experience to reach a more ethnically diverse customer base." Tapia recognized Arc's role in Hewitt's success, noting that traffic to the diversity section of www.hewitt.com increased 15 percent as a result of the recruiting campaign.

Matt MacQueen, Arc's experience planning director, led the "high-impact expert roundtable" on podcasting at the PMA conference, explaining how marketers can use the new channel to provide meaningful content to their most valuable consumers. "Our on-demand culture, spawned by new ways to easily syndicate content, is changing how and where marketers reach their valuable customers," said MacQueen. "While mass advertising won't go away, marketers can't just push it anymore with the same success. Consumers are in control -- now it's about finding smarter ways to engage them with branded, relevant content. Progressive marketers need to work in emerging channels where the people are. Today, one of those dynamic new channels is the video podcast."