Triangle Business Journal

Richard Rogoski

Virtual Agency Assembles Powerhouse Teams

David Chapman is on the extreme edge of the anti-agency trend in advertising. As President of 919 Marketing, Chapman employs no full time copywriters or graphic designers. Instead, from his base of Holly Springs, Chapman brings often far-flung freelancers together on-line to create specialized teams that collaborate on ad campaigns.

"My entire creative team is truly Internet based," says Chapman. "There is very little face to face contact. I coordinate the project over the Internet, and we send files back and forth. Or we may set up a three way conference call with the client and the writer." The clients I work with are pretty Internet savvy," he adds.

Before he started his Creative Development Center, Chapman had worked for traditional brick and mortar firms. He spent nine years at Interpublic Group and was most recently senior vice president and director of client services at Durham based West&Vaughan Inc.

But in 1996 he decided to start his own business and build his own client base.

Fortunately for Chapman, he didn't have to wait long before a plum assignment came his way. "Right out of the box I got a $12 million account," says Chapman. The project he landed — developing a nationwide ad campaign for a phone card company — would have been a lot of work for any agency.

The success of that single endeavor proved to Chapman that he could assemble a team of creative freelancers who would be able to collaborate on multiple projects on the Internet and telephone conversations. "When I first started doing this, people looked at me like I had three eyes," says Chapman. "They'd say, this won't work." But it clearly does.

Today he uses between 40-50 people, including a team in Great Britain. Most of them still work for traditional agencies and, therefore, work for 919 Marketing on a part time basis, he explains.
When a job comes in, he'll put together a team based on the expertise of his freelancers. That way, you can customize the creative team with the client and their budget." He said. And if it's a client they have worked with before, odds are, the same team will be called.

That's not what happens in a traditional agency, Chapman says. "In an ad agency, the best people tend to be promoted further away from the actual work," he notes. "So you get a junior staff working on projects."

With clients like Duke University and Caterpillar Inc., Chapman admits that he's competing against other virtual agencies and "creative boutiques." But, depending on the client, his major competitors are still the traditional ad agencies, he says.

One of Chapman's clients, Caterpillar Inc. in Clayton also points to personal service as a major reason why they have retained Chapman.

"I get the attention from the top person all the time, and I work with the same person," said Sylvia Hasinger, a communications specialist at Caterpillar. "They have done a lot in helping us maintain consistency."

Hasinger said Caterpillar had used traditional ad agencies in the past, but found the service to be inconsistent and more expensive than 919 Marketing.