This Friday, The Ad Club and PayPal’s Start Tank are pairing up for the Brand-a-thon: a one-of-a-kind event designed to give local startups the opportunity to win branding and advertising advice, completely gratuit.
Serendipitously, the idea for the Brand-a-thon sprung from a BostInno article announcing PayPal’s latest class of companies in late February.
Ad Club president Kathy Kiely reached out to Start Tank founder and PayPal Media Network COO David Chang in March to see if he was interested in connecting the new batch of startups to Boston agencies for a “killer ‘Branded in Boston’ creative challenge.”
It didn’t take Chang and Start Tank manager Karen Landry long to decide that they were on board.
“It’s a world early-stage startups don’t live in,” Chang said of the advertising industry.
Fledgling startups, no matter the scale, have next to nil budget for marketing efforts, nevermind material from a top-tier agency. Chang recalled that, even when working at TripAdvisor, the team couldn’t afford to hire an agency for many years.
“When you’re early-stage, you have no access to professional ad talent,” shared Chang.
… Except when you’re lucky enough to be one of the 16 companies from PayPal’s three classes – or the single Harvard undergrad team – participating in the Brand-a-thon.
For the Ad Club’s part, Kiely and her crew rounded up eight agencies – Isobar, Forge Worldwide, Amp, Nail, allen + gerritsen, Conover Tuttle Pace, Hill Holliday and MMB – for a total of nine teams of admen and women.
Here’s how the Brand-a-thon will go down: Each startup will have three minutes to pitch their value to the crowd. In live auction style similar to that of singing reality show The Voice, the ad teams will bid on the presenting startups, ultimately taking one early-stage company under their wings.
The ad teams will then have a 72-hour window to create a piece of creative – be it a new logo, commercial, campaign or brand overhaul – customized to their clients.
In addition to the pro-bono good vibes, there are winnings on the line. On Thursday, June 26, the nine teams will pitch their Start Tank company and corresponding creative to a panel of executive judges, which include Prat Vema, VP of ecommerce of Staples; Woody Benson, partner of Prism Venture Works; John Coombe, VP of corporate communications at Liberty Mutual Insurance; John Della Volpe, CEO and founder of SocialSphere; Steve Fuller, CMO of LL Bean; Diane Hessan, Chairman of Communispace; David Krauter, general manager of Smarter Travel; John Stephans, president of IdeaPaint; and Sarah Welch, CMO of Gazelle.
While all startups will be winners, the agency team that steals first place will take home $2,500, courtesy of Santander Bank.
For many of the participating admen and women, it will be their first time taking part in the hackathon-style sprint event and working with young companies with flexible, if not nebulous, brands. Likewise, this might be the first time founding teams have had to hand off their business idea and brand to be molded by those outside the company.
But both sides are confident that the Brand-a-thon will be a thrilling, challenging event, mutually benefitting and building the innovation and advertising communities in Boston.
“It was so clear what we both brought to the table,” shared Chang of working with the Ad Club. “We’re both so different, but because of that we picked up where the other left off.”
Learn more about the 17 startups trying to score a free branding this weekend in the following slides.
