john st.

To bring awareness to the agency itself, John St. created a mock case study called “Pink Ponies” that demonstrated its integrated marketing prowess in making “Chelsea Bodano’s eighth birthday party a success in an already crowded birthday market.”

Success would be measured by how many people would view the video, who those people would be, and to what degree it would generate press, awards and ultimately awareness among prospective clients.

The video was first used in an industry award show (strategy’s 2010 Agency of the Year). The next day, it was sent out to a list of marketing and advertising blogs, sites and online magazines.

The satire on a traditional agency case study (overtly earnest and formulaic), showed the development of the big idea (Chelsea liked the colour pink, and ponies), through execution and, of course, ROI.

Five days after “Pink Ponies” was posted on YouTube, it had generated over 100,000 hits and has since been watched almost 300,000 times.

It was featured in Contagious magazine and was sent out with the Cannes 2011 Festival call for entries as a cheeky what-not-to-do warning to agencies.

The agency received congratulatory emails from the director of global strategy at Coca-Cola in Atlanta, a Diageo strategic director in London and the CEO of Time Warner in New York – all of whom wanted to use the video in presentations.

“Pink Ponies” won a Bronze Lion as well as a Gold Pencil at the 2011 One Show, and two months later, John St. met with Diageo and was awarded two projects.

All in all, not bad PR from one little girl’s eighth birthday party.