Did you know that Philadelphia was our hometown? Probably not. We never get the chance to mention it as we were unaware of anything poppin’ out of the city of Brotherly Love. Finally, we get to give a big shout out to cheesesteaks, big bottom girls and West Philly en mass by way of ad agency, Stick and Move.
Stick and Move is made up of two guys (Steve O’Connell and Jared Scott) who previously worked at Crispin + Porter. As far as we can tell, this is not a spin-off that is actually funded by Crispin. S+M (we can be so juvenile, sorry) is one of a number of small agencies who executes work for big brands, but signs those pesky non-disclosure agreements, so no one ever hears about it. Sigh. The trouble with being small…
However, we got wind of a strange occurrence for any ad agency – big or small – and decided to investigate. Stick and Move (we’re over the S+M joke, promise) was charged with creating a 20-page brochure of common option strategies for their client, an online trading firm called TradeKing. We had to look them up. Turns out the company was recently rated the top discount broker by SmartMoney Magazine. Who knew? Anyway, TradeKing wanted this pamphlet to be sent to valued traders, and as an acquisition piece for prospective clients. Now, the book is being published by a major publishing house, Wiley. How much you want to bet Stick and Move got no part of that deal?
How it went from brochure to book is due to the Philadelphia based shop’s IDEO like tendencies. They did some research and found out that increasing client knowledge could increase profit by educating what are considered casual traders (more knowledge = more confidence = more money spent). So, Stick produced a 100+ page book called The Options Playbook.
And here’s where the advertising agency gets screwed as usual. Business Week gave it a bunch of praise, as did USA Today, but… Stick and Move will get no credit. The client felt that it was better to have their names as the author of the book. Imagine that. And because there was no agreement in place from the get go, and so and so on, Stick is left out in the cold for what is undeniably superior work.
Life lesson: IP people and pay for performance schemes. It’s the only sensible future.
In the mean time, we’ll say Stick and Move is one to watch.