Keen busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers search­ing for inno­v­a­tive ways of boost­ing their agency’s for­tunes might con­sid­er emu­lat­ing Col­lec­tive, a New York dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ser­vices com­pa­ny which has just launched a brand­ing cam­paign to pro­mote itself.

The cam­paign uses the same tech­niques nor­mal­ly reserved for clients, and is aimed at media-pur­chas­ing firms and ad agency exec­u­tives (busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers, that means you) as well as CMOs from For­tune 100 companies.

Why not blow your own trum­pet if it’s good? 

Col­lec­tive, which was co-found­ed in 2005 by erst­while Medi­a­Mind exec­u­tive Joe Appren­di, not only iden­ti­fies mar­kets for its clients, it selects the most suit­able media for them, too. Its name stems from its abil­i­ty to pro­vide coor­di­nat­ed media buys across a raft of dif­fer­ent devices, from desk­top screens to TVs, and from tablets to smart­phones. As far as plac­ing dig­i­tal ads goes, it can also cre­ate them and it works with Amer­i­can Express, KFC and Chase along with media-pur­chas­ing out­fits like Pub­li­cis Groupe’s Zen­ti­hOp­ti­me­dia Omni­com Group’s OMD.

As any busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er will agree, when you have a trum­pet as impres­sive as this, why not blow it your­self? And that’s what Collective’s new cam­paign, enti­tled “Life is but a screen”, is doing, show­cas­ing its capac­i­ties with a dash of adver­tis­ing verve.

Mul­ti­ple defin­ing points

The idea for the cam­paign crys­tal­ized when Col­lec­tive con­duct­ed research in March into what Neilsen data revealed about adver­tis­ing reach and fre­quen­cy. The con­clu­sion? Oppor­tu­ni­ties for both are no longer gov­erned by TV time frames like prime time, but are instead dis­trib­uted over mul­ti­ple devices where they’re defined by con­sumer pref­er­ences and device usage.

Collective’s CMO, Ed Dan­dridge, said that today adver­tis­ers need to be aware that they can reach poten­tial cus­tomers with mobile devices dur­ing rush hour when mobile usage peaks, but would be bet­ter switch­ing to desk­top screens between late morn­ing and ear­ly after­noon, when online video-view­ing peaks. The evening com­mute sees mobile usage peak­ing again, while con­sumers tend to switch to TVs and tablets between 8 and 11pm when social media usage peaks.

Mr. Appren­di said:

“The clear shift in con­sumer media behav­ior to mul­ti­screen is a sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ty for brand mar­keters. Our cam­paign high­lights pre­cise­ly why con­sumers now expect mar­keters to deliv­er the right ad to them in the right for­mat, on the right device at the right moment.”