Location: Cambridge, Mass.
URL: www.agencypja.com
Key executive: Mike O'Toole, president
Employees: 54
2010 revenue: $11.3 million
2010 b2b revenue: $10.2 million
Key clients: Brother International, EMC Corp., Infor, Novell, Tyco Electronics
Major 2010 campaigns: EMC, “Next Starts Now,” print, online; Globoforce, “Recognition Right,” print, online, direct mail
Comments: Added new clients including Brother International, Pitney Bowes and Tyco Electronics; increased media revenue 13%; added Curata content tool as a service offering; derived 90% of total revenue from b2b
PJA Advertising+Marketing, Cambridge, Mass., wrapped 2010 up on a winning streak, adding Brother International Corp., Pitney Bowes and Tyco Electronics to its client roster and developing innovative campaigns for clients including EMC, Globoforce and Novell.
While estimated b2b revenue dipped slightly to $10.2 million in 2010, PJA saw its media revenue jump 13% to almost $2 million. B2b makes up 90% of its total revenue.
Social media is key to the agency's digital strategy, and is increasingly integrated into its campaigns rather than as one-off projects, said PJA partner and President Mike O'Toole, who is also host of PJA's weekly Internet radio show: “This Week in Social Media.”
O'Toole said the agency learned from the show to create a radio program for its client Novell called “Cloud Chasers.” The weekly program features a guest from Novell and a third-party expert discussing the hurdles and rewards of cloud computing.
At every deciding moment online “there's a human being who reacts to communications rationally and emotionally, and they want to be entertained and surprised,” O'Toole said.
no stranger to developing entertaining content. Last year, it won 13 awards at the BMA New York ACE Awards, including Best in Show for its “Hash It Out” social media campaign for Novell.
More recently, it promoted Novell's new Vibe workforce collaboration software with an integrated campaign. The humorous campaign dramatizes what can go wrong when collaboration among employees breaks down. The effort included online videos, Flash banners and a social Dream Team application.
“The goal is to market an application that feels like it's very social,” O'Toole said, “and fun enough to share.”
For client Globoforce, PJA devised a campaign that asks human resource executives, “How strategic is your recognition solution?”
PJA mined LinkedIn to gather information about real employees' experiences with rewards and recognition programs, which PJA depicted in humorous online spots.
It added a direct mail component, creating faux Fast Company cover wraps with personalized photos or illustrations of about 40 high-level HR executives. Globoforce set up sales meetings with every executive who received a direct mail piece, O'Toole said.
Diversifying its offerings, PJA also launched Curata, a b2b tool that enables its clients to easily curate and amass relevant Web content for its customers.
It's all about appealing to the customer, O'Toole said, and “packaging content in the way they'd like to see it in the age of Facebook and Twitter.”
—Patricia Riedman
