Richard Uzzi seems to be succeeding in advertising even though he has technically left the business.
Uzzi, a former vice president and managing director on Saatchi & Saatchi's MGM/United Artists account, left the agency when it lost the business about two years ago. He started his own mobile marketing company shortly thereafter.
Mobile Marketing Research, which Uzzi calls the "only outdoor medium delivering sight, sound and motion" to New York City, is made up of one Rover truck (shown here) that travels the streets of the Big Apple blasting ads from two side-mounted stereo monitors and making select stops in crowded areas. Uzzi estimates that MMR reaches more than 20,000 people a day. The truck is equipped to broadcast TV commercials, theatre trailers and music videos and to handle promotional work. A minimum three minutes of airtime per hour will cost about $8,000 a month--which Uzzi figures is a downright pedestrian way to build awareness.
"We're a cruise missile as opposed to an atom bomb," he said.
Uzzi plans to expand to cities such as Boston and San Francisco. --Cristina Merrill