Frequently Asked Questions 

What's with the name "Artillery?"

Advertising does for sales what artillery does for infantry.

The goal of a military campaign is to capture and hold ground held by the enemy; the goal of a company is to gain market share held by a competitor--a two-pronged coordinated attack is critical to success. In a military campaign, the artillery is launched first; it paves the way for infantry. A successful artillery deployment facilitates the job of infantry, to gain ground and hold it.
Given the choice, no general would ever send his infantry into battle without excellent artillery support and no CEO should send a sales force into the market without brilliant and effective marketing support.

Marketing and sales must be strategically integrated to achieve corporate goals. Marketing prepares the way for sales by softening up the customers in advance, preparing their minds to purchase before the sales person enters the room. Marketing helps a company gain valuable customer mind share, preparing the way for a motivated sales team to gain and hold new market share.

Clients that benefit most from what Artillery offers tend to have some common characteristics.

• They have already been working with an agency or outside supplier of similar professional services and understand the value of such a relationship. 
• They are in a competitive marketing situation and are often outspent by a larger competitor, which forces them to be smart about their marketing or face dire consequences.  
• They have an established marketing communications budget.

Artillery offers all of the services of the traditional advertising agency, but has a much greater depth and breadth of marketing firepower. Artillery has a very deep bench of marketing professionals from every marketing communications discipline. Whether it's research, creative, PR, interactive, media buying or direct marketing, every one has a successful career of their own in their field. Artillery represents a "dream team" of pros who enjoy working together and who insist on doing great work.

There are also some other major differences:

At Artillery, senior marketing people actually do the work. There's no "B-Team" here. No juniors billing top rates. No amateurs and no place for incompetents to hide. So clients benefit from the proven experience of professionals gained over many years in the marketing wars.

Artillery delivers exceptional value. Clients should pay for smart work, not fancy lobbies and assistants to bring double latte chocolate cappuccinos. Artillery has lined up the best professionals in every marketing discipline and made them sub-contractors. They form the talent pool from which we pick the client's marketing team. When they're not working for the client, the client's not paying for them. 
Continuity.

Clients get to see the same people over and over again. They even get to know them. They're the same senior people who made the pitch, who do the work, who meet with clients, and provide the marketing firepower that helps clients achieve victory.

Does Artillery cost less than a traditional agency?

Not always. We offer exceptional value because you get the full attention of seasoned professionals and you only pay for what you use. But if you're looking for the very lowest prices, we probably won't have them.

How Do You Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Creative Work?

We believe that the best way to assess the effectiveness of our creative work is to create a research-tracking program that is directly tied to the specific goals of the campaign. That is, if the goal is to create awareness, we track changes in awareness. If the goal is to change minds, we track changes in attitudes and perceptions. If the goal is to sell widgets, we count widgets sold.

Why was Artillery started?

In a 1998 survey by the American Association of Advertising Agencies to learn more about how advertisers select agencies, the dominant traits sought by advertisers in their agencies were: 1) strategic thinking, 2) creative ability, and 3) professionalism.

Artillery was designed with these very expectations in mind. We bring solid strategic marketing insights and experience, a track record of highly successful, breakthrough creative, and an arsenal of marketing talent that can be tapped for any marketing challenge or opportunity. Artillery represents the new paradigm of advertising agency.

The traditional agency model doesn't work for the agency (they spend most of their time feeding the monster they've created and good marketing is coincidental) or the client (they spend too much of their money paying for expensive monster chow). Clients are leaving agencies. Agencies are going broke. Everybody loses.

The Artillery model is a "win-win" scenario. Clients get exceptional marketing work and value. The marketing professionals get paid to create and produce exceptional work and value. Everybody wins.