Brooklyn’s high-tech Dum­bo dis­trict has a new adver­tis­ing agency in the form of ‘The BAM Con­nec­tion’, which launched on June 30^th.

BAM Con­nec­tion, not BAM

Busi­ness devel­op­ment man­agers famil­iar with Brook­lyn could be for­giv­en for feel­ing a lit­tle baf­fled about why a new ad agency should name itself for the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music (which also uses the three-let­ter acronym “BAM”). But they’d be bark­ing up the wrong tree.

The agency’s name is actu­al­ly derived from the sur­names its two co-founders, Rob Baioc­co and Mau­reen Mal­dari, both for­mer exec­u­tives with Grey World­wide. As Baioc­co puts it:

“That’s just how you name an ad agency. Peo­ple in our indus­try know us as Baioc­co and Mal­dari. We’re proud of our rep­u­ta­tion — we just know the names are long.”

Ms. Mal­dari con­firmed that, while both she and Mr. Baioc­co like the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Music, they have no ties to it and didn’t dis­cuss the poten­tial for get­ting lost in Google search results (and, if our busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er is skep­ti­cal, just try this: Google “The Bam Con­nec­tion” and you’re brought right to the agency’s listings).

Although new­ly opened, the agency has already acquired an impres­sive client ros­ter fea­tur­ing names like Wran­gler West­ern Jeans, Ter­la­to Wines and The Amer­i­can heart Association/American Stroke Association.

Cre­ativ­i­ty through sim­plic­i­ty 

The agency’s mis­sion state­ment is “the tena­cious pur­suit of cre­ativ­i­ty through sim­plic­i­ty.” OK, so every­one with media jobs in Adland will want to unpack that. Here’s how Baioc­co explains it:

“The world of mar­ket­ing is way over­com­pli­cat­ed. And all that com­plex­i­ty sucks the life out of ideas, gets in the way of speed, and stran­gles cre­ativ­i­ty. Sim­plic­i­ty lib­er­ates cre­ativ­i­ty. And from there, the ideas just explode outward.”

Mal­dari added, “When you’ve lived, and fought that com­plex­i­ty every day, you know how to elim­i­nate it. And I’ve got­ta believe clients will rejoice because they must be exhaust­ed by it.”

Essen­tial­ly, this boils down to an approach Baioc­co and Mal­dari describe as “The One Shot Answer”, a brief, com­pelling phrase that real­ly “nails” the brand’s mean­ing, direct­ing and con­nect­ing all its com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the process.

And the start­up brings not sim­ply ideals, but bat­tle-hard­ened exper­tise: Baioc­co and Mal­dari spent years at Grey suc­cess­ful­ly dri­ving bil­lions of dol­lars in val­ue for inter­na­tion­al brands like Aquafresh, Botox, Cap­tain Mor­gan and Pringles. They know what they’re doing.