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"It all starts with empathy."
Perhaps that's not how you'd expect the heads of Organic to describe their initial approach to new campaigns, but that's exactly where things begin at the 14-year-old digital marketing agency, says Chad Stoller, the company's executive director of emerging platforms.
And the folks at Organic just might know what they're talking about, having worked with clients from iVillage to Warner Bros. International to Barnes & Noble to Nike to Sony to Sprint.
The idea with empathy, Stoller says, is to better understand customer behavior in order to produce campaigns that actually bring results. This process takes its fullest shape during the company's quarterly employee events, dubbed "Camp Organic." At the Las Vegas trips -- estimated by Forrester to cost Organic well into the six figures to pull off -- employees from Organic's San Francisco, New York, Detroit and Toronto offices band together to investigate consumer behavior on the ground or, in this case, on The Strip. As the groups prepare mock-campaigns, they meet real potential customers and try to glean not just demographic data, but also behavioral data.
"What we like to do is to figure out how new technologies change peoples' lives," Stoller says. He adds that the best way to use technology in interactive campaigns is to do so judiciously and only when it fills a customer's specific, identifiable need.
Ten years after Organic's inception, the company was acquired by Omnicom Group, which forbids its companies from releasing revenue and employee data. But some estimates place Organic's earnings in the $70 million range.
The company has also raked in more than a few awards. Highlights from 2007 include seven awards from the Web Marketing Association (from Outstanding Website: Jeep Patriot Factor and Warner Bros. International 300 the Movie to Best Bank Website: Bank of America No Fee Mortgage Plus), one OMMA Award (Best Rich Media Campaign: Warner Bros. International Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) and several others.