Despite the slowing economy, the agency grew its revenue 7% in 2008, with much of its growth coming from new accounts, including Brightcove, IPC Systems, Schoolwires, Standard & Poor's and Syniverse Technologies. It also added new work for existing clients BPA Worldwide, Citrix Online, McGraw-Hill and TransitCenter/TransitChek.

“We started off the year well and continued to build momentum as the year progressed,” said Tom Stein, president-CEO of Stein Rogan, who was inducted into the CEBA Hall of Fame last year. “Our pipeline was robust, and we were pitching and winning a lot of business. It all came to fruition in the second half of the year; we had a superior third quarter and nearly our best fourth quarter ever.”

Stein attributes the agency's success to its strong creative product, the development of contextually relevant marketing content and in-depth research that helps to identify and solve business problems for clients.

For Citrix Online, Stein Rogan created integrated campaigns for GoToMyPC, a remote access product, and GoToMeeting, an online meeting service. In a TV spot called “Squadron,” a flock of pigeons attempts to retrieve a PC left behind by a business executive on his way to an important presentation. The birds fly through a city, soaring over buildings and swooping through traffic in their attempts to rescue the PC, when the exec could have just used GoToMyPC.

In a campaign called “Do More. Travel Less,” businesspeople try to free themselves from the stress of traveling by burning a suitcase, taking a chainsaw to a briefcase and pushing a company car into a lake, when they could have used GoToMeeting. This campaign won two BMA Pro-Comm awards and two BMA New York ACE awards.

For Schoolwires, which provides online communications services to schools, Stein Rogan developed an integrated campaign called “Come Together Around Success.” The campaign included print advertising, Web site development, trade show support and collateral, and was launched at the National Education Computing Conference in San Antonio.

Stein Rogan used colorful shapes representing communities in a district moving around and coming together to create new forms—symbolizing the positive, transformative power of connecting communities. The campaign resulted in thousands of visitors to the Schoolwires booth at the trade show and increased brand awareness.

For IPC Systems, Stein Rogan developed an online campaign called “Trade Up. Trade On,” which featured online advertising, a microsite and adaptive newsletters, which learn from user behavior and serve personalized content based on user needs and interests.

“We are continuing to deliver contextually relevant content,” Stein said, pointing to a new content marketing practice called Kilter, which develops thought leadership and brand-building content such as live and virtual events, interactive newsletters, white papers, webinars and microsites.

“More and more of b-to-b marketing is around value exchange,” Stein said. “Our content around thought leadership and demand gen is becoming one of the strengths of the agency.” M