Q&A with Mammoth Founders Robert Nuell & Maria Quinn: "You Won't be Working on an Ad Campaign for Diapers or Dog Food."

Robert Nuell and Maria Quinn are co-founders of Mammoth, an advertising agency that creates integrated marketing campaigns for cable networks, film studios and publishing houses. Nuell and Quinn met at Miramax Films in the late 90's and in 2005, they decided to go into business together. Mammoth has worked on projects ranging from Lifetime's "Project Runway" to the Quentin Tarantino film "Inglourious Basterds" (2009). The original team of two now employs between 23 and 24 people in a beautiful loft in DUMBO. We asked them how they got started, what it's like to work for them, and how their campaign for the upcoming HarperCollins YA novel, I Am Number 4 is going to blow our minds. Why did you decide to go into business together? MQ: It's kind of funny because I always knew I wanted to start a company, but I never thought I would do it with a partner. Robert and I had two very different disciplines: I come from a print background and Robert has a [tech] background, so it sort of made sense for both of us to come together and build a bigger beast. After the jump, Nuell and Quinn continue with building a startup, working with entertainment clients, their game-y campaign for HarperCollins and the future of marketing books. How did you get your funding? MQ: Robert had an office space, which was fantastic - he brought a lot of the equipment. I brought a good portion of the cash. All of that together was a good foundation for the first year. We were really lucky in that we had a few companies who were truly loyal to us already and were very excited about working with us. It wasn't like we were jumping into this with a blindfold. RN: We had active jobs before we were officially incorporated. [With a handful of clients including Miramax and IFC Films] we were able to generate enough revenue to basically pay for the office, start to hire and deal with the infrastructure. It took a good six months to stabilize before we started to add maybe one or two people and it was a lot of work, with Maria and me running everything. MQ: Running the company is still that way. We are definitely two people who are not afraid to get in the trenches. That's actually one of the things we look for [in our employees], are people who are not afraid to get their hands dirty, because I think no matter what your position is in the company, you should be able to, if you really need to, get down in the trenches. Zero ego is very appealing. What other kinds of skills should your employees have? MQ: They should be prepared to work at least 15 hours per day - I'm kidding. We have different levels of employees. We have a lot entry-level employees, but we also have a lot of mid-level employees and a handful of very senior level employees. I think [having] a certain amount of experience and having cut their teeth in entertainment somewhere is sometimes very appealing because the clients we tend to work with have "interesting" personalities where they expect it now, if not yesterday. It's a very specific client that we work with. They also have to be good within the realm of their expertise. We have the Web media, the print media, PR and social media. They are definitely separate groups, but we are integrated in some ways. We will go back and forth to go brainstorm at times. RN: We really look for employees who can communicate. MQ: The ability to communicate is key, whether they are communicating within the group or whether they are communicating in the outside world with clients. RN: People who are creative: they might be doing marketing strategy, but they need to be creative, too. The more creative, the better. People who are really into visuals. MQ: People who want to learn and grow. Especially with people who are in the mid-level range, we do want to hang on to them for a very long time, if not forever. There are some people here who have been with us from the beginning who are just fantastic. Right now Mammoth is working on an interactive site for HarperCollins to promote the young adult novel, I Am Number 4, by Pittacus Lore (the pen name of James Frey and Jobie Hughes). The book, which is the first in a series of six books about alien teens with supernatural powers, will also be turned into a film produced by Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg for DreamWorks Studios. What's your strategy for promoting the book? RN: We're trying to create a hybrid environment where we're promoting the book and introducing the characters, and then part of it is trying to get you to interact with the content and through that interaction, basically make it viral so your friends will see it, but to do it in a way that you don't have to do too much work. So that is, in a nutshell, what the site is. [The activities are connected through Facebook and users can score points for playing.] There's also a video application where you can insert yourself into a video. You basically upload a photo of yourself and we stitch it into a video. You become the prime suspect, which is what the book is about. We're also working on The Magnificent 12, which is a children's book for 8-to-12-year-olds. It's sort of similar [to I Am Number 4] - it's kind of an adventure series. We're actually building a different site for that, which is also going to be interactive. It's not community-based, because 8-to-12-year-olds aren't on Facebook - if they are, they're not supposed to be. We're basically trying to engage kids through games, activities and challenges. Kids can create avatars of themselves, kind of like the Madmen application, but more elaborate. You can use the avatar to score points and enter challenges. I'd say publishing in general seems to be embracing the internet platform [as a marketing tool]. MQ: I think there's a lot more longevity when it comes to publishing [books], and this is something [publishing companies] are starting to realize. But with film, your film is only going to be in the theaters for "x" amount of time - it's really quick - and you've got to hit your target market instantly. There has to be a different model when it comes to publishing. We're still figuring out what that is. RN: There's more longevity, I guess, but it is geared toward the in-store date. The goal is to get it on the best-seller list, or [to be] number one. That's still the same. The books are in stores for much longer - there's a much longer shelf life. MQ: I think we're going to see a lot of changes with all the e-readers that are coming out, too, the iPad, etc. Do you use e-readers yourselves? MQ: We are in the process of figuring out where we are going to be in three months. We're working on it, but I literally will still hold a newspaper every morning. I'm extremely old-school like that. RN: I read everything online. I'm about to get an iPad, but I read The New York Times on my iPhone. I don't even read the newspaper anymore. MQ: For me, maybe because I'm a print person, it comes down to what the actual tangible is. It hasn't lost its luster for me. I'm probably in the minority, though. What are your plans for the future? MQ: You're asking the question at a funny time in the economy. We've just come out of a year that nobody who's alive right now, for the most part, has really ever experienced. I think that we made it through phenomenally. I'd like to see slow, measured growth again. RN: We really want to try integrated marketing solutions, multi-platform, so that when we get a campaign, we can brand it [across those platforms]. MQ: That's ideal. One thing that we really don't specialize in is on-air. That doesn't mean that we'll never do that, but for right now, we're really [specializing in] online, print and PR for entertainment clients. We might segue into lifestyle at a certain point. That's the natural trajectory that companies like ours take. RN: I would say, definitely adding to the client mix. MQ: That doesn't mean we'll abandon our current entertainment clients. If anything, we'll find ways to create partnerships between our new clients and our entertainment clients. Have you done that before? MQ: In a limited way. Again, we're very much entrenched in entertainment. At the same time, it's very exciting. That's one thing I'd say to prospective employees: you won't be working on an ad campaign for diapers or dog food. You're going to be working on a campaign for a movie or a TV show that you actually probably really want to see.

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Q&A with Mammoth Founders Robert Nuell & Maria Quinn: "You Won't be Working on an Ad Campaign for Diapers or Dog Food."

Devon Glenn

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Devon Glenn