BKV Direct Advertising

Where It All Comes Together

As a direct response agency, we get it. The mission of every piece of creative — every spot, every ad, every package, every communication — is to produce sales.

Art for art's sake is important. Maybe even indispensable. But not when it comes to direct. Because at BKV, our art is tempered by science. By the tried-and-true, hard-and-fast, nuts-and-bolts principles of direct response that allow us to produce creative that works. Creative that stands out. Creative that gets measurable results.

At BKV, we're proud of the caliber of our creative. And why not? Our creative department holds a combined 189 years of experience in the industry, with a veritable Whitman's sampler of awards to attest to our successes across media like direct mail, TV, radio, print, interactive, and public relations. So, it's no surprise that we appreciate — and routinely produce — creative that's as beautiful as it is clever. But beautiful and clever are only part of the picture.

So, check out the links at right to see BKV creative in action — and find out how we can put our vision to work for you.

For services specific to nonprofit, please click here.

 

Consumer Creative SamplesBKV in the news

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    AT&T

    AT&T needed Direct Mail to increase call volume and sales through their call center channel. The Direct Mail packages had to entice prospects not only to switch from their current wireless provider, but also to call into the call center instead of activating their new wireless service through another sales channel. Also, AT&T needed the call volume to be steady throughout the month.

    Testing creative, format, postal strategies and list segmentation not only created steady call volume, but it also led to increased calls and increased new customer activations – all while maintaining a low cost per piece.


    AT&T Paid Search Landers
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    GIZMO by Black&Decker

    Objectives: First, drive retail sales and help build the Gizmo brand as a provider of fun, innovative household appliances. Second, offset a portion of the media costs through direct sales.  
     
    Strategy: We developed a series of unique animated spots featuring two of the four Gizmo products per spot.  The spots were developed in a module format to allow for simple, inexpensive revisions in coming years when Gizmo products would be cycled in and out of the product lineup.
     
    Landing page was updated to reflect the look and feel of the spot and to include all four products.
     
    The spots ran on national cable and local spot in a rotation to allow each product ample media weight to meet its specific sales goals.
     
    Results: Met or exceeded retail goals for all four products.  
    Offset a generous portion of the media costs through direct response sales.


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    Halo by Black&Decker

    Objectives: Introduce a new Black & Decker Household Appliance product – The Mosquito Halo.
    Explain how the Mosquito Halo is different from other mosquito-fighting products.
    Drive retail sales in specific markets.
    Keep creative costs as low as possible to save more of the budget for media.
     
    Strategy: We developed a :30 spot featuring an engaging animated mosquito who is frustrated because he can’t find anyone to bite.  The spot then explained how the Mosquito Halo had out-smarted the mosquito.
    We ran media in a specific markets which had the deepest retail distribution.
     
    Results: Strong sales in all retail markets, and one retailer ran out of product before the campaign ended!

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    Black & Decker

    Applica, Inc., a licensed manufacturer of Black and Decker small home appliances needed a new site that worked in tandem with a new site being built concurrently for the Black and Decker tools division.  The sites needed to work together from a branding perspective and had entirely different target audiences.  
     
    BKV developed the wireframes that ultimately both sites developed on.  We then worked with the tools division to ensure a cohesive customer experience for both product lines.  The tools division used black and orange branding and the appliances division used orange and blue. Both sites have clear linkages to each other for a seamless customer experience.

    Black and Decker
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    Equifax Radio Spot 'No More Dancing Bears'

    Equifax has been supported with multiple mediums to help drive subscription sales. But they have been overshadowed by their competitors in the mass marketing arena. To help combat this, Equifax tested into radio. The idea was not to view this medium as a "stand-alone" medium, but rather an additional touch point to a targeted audience to help lift sales in all other mediums. Creatively, Equifax was looking to leverage some of the gimmicky banner ads that the public can be inundated with online. The spot actually references these gimmicks and then turns the spot into a positive light. Equifax’s brand is one of trust, commitment and straightforwardness, so the spot needed to reflect the brand while still garnering the listener’s attention.

    Not only did Equifax see direct sales to come in through dedicated Web landers, but they also saw a lift in overall orders through their main site.

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    Clear2o

    Applica, Inc., was launching a new brand and new water filtration system.  Not only did they need a website to market the new product, but because it was an entirely new product they also needed all of the site content.  BKV designed, developed and provided 100% of the content on the site.
     
    Another challenge to BKV was to ensure that the creative for the site, clearly represented the product brand of clear water.  We had to "WOW" them.  We used a combination of customized photography and flash elements to connote clean, clear, healthy water.
     


    Clear2o
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    Equifax

    Equifax needed interactive that communicated the strength of the brand. The work also had to speak on a personal level about hard-to-hit concepts like ID theft and personal credit management. Empowering and comforting the viewer brought about response and led to subscriptions and sales of Equifax's suite of personal credit solutions.

    Campaigns ran in TV, direct mail, print, paid search media, email, and banner advertising. From these various media sources, we led prospective customers to landing pages that maximized conversion.

    AT&T Paid Search Landers
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    GMAC Insurance

    GMAC Insurance is one of the largest auto insurers in the nation. The auto insurance industry is a highly competitive environment, and competitors to GMAC Insurance have grown steadily over the last several years, all touting a savings/price message.

    GMAC Insurance has done very little brand advertising, so public awareness of GMAC as an Auto Insurance provider was very low. They needed a new way to generate a higher volume of leads to meet the company's acquisition growth objective. We produced a strong DRTV spot while also promoting the brand.

    The campaign included :60s and :120s and ran in selected markets across the country. We tested offers such as Two Free Movie Tickets for a quote request vs. Free Quote (without the movie ticket premium).

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    The Home Depot

    The Home Depot
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    Paces Trading Company

    Paces Trading Company
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    BB&T Spot

    Branch Banking & Trust (BB&T) has a brand identity that exudes honesty, integrity and community. They try to stand apart from the "big" banks by identifying themselves as a neighborhood bank, with "friendly and personal service." In order to still compete, they rolled out with a free checking product of their own. And because this is a very cluttered space (all banks now offer "free checking"), they needed the right marketing vehicle to help champion their message. The answer: radio — a mass marketing medium that helps to deliver ad impressions at efficient rates. Creatively, though, they still needed to communicate a sense of credibility and trustworthiness — their brand essence.

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    Rent Clicks

    This spot was part of an integrated campaign which included pizza boxes, print ads, bus wraps, radio and posters.

    The intent of the piece was to drive traffic to rentclicks.com and generate leads, to raise awareness among B2B and B2C audiences, and to increase sales for B2B.

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    EcoSmart - "Kidspeak"

    EcoSMART was selected to participate in a retail test in Wal-Mart stores throughout several markets.  The purpose of the radio spot was to build awareness of EcoSMART products and to drive traffic to Wal-Mart locations within the selected test markets and, ultimately, to generate retail sales. 

    The result was "Kidspeak." Spoken from a child's point of view, "Kidspeak" focuses on the reasons why EcoSMART is a safer choice than its competition – it's nontoxic, leaves no pesticide residue, and is safe to use around children and pets.


BKV in the newsBKV in the news

November 12th, 2008: BKV Launches Usability Tool for Optimizing Client Web Sites
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November 10th, 2008: BKV Earns PRISM Awards for PR Work
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November 5th, 2008: Weyforth-Haas Marketing Takes Sister Agency Name, Becomes BKV
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November 5th, 2008:BKV Supports Charity Event to Build School in India
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October 21st, 2008: BKV Wins FundRaising Success Gold Award for Fundraising Excellence
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Contact BKVContact BKV

BKV - Kansas City
10561 Barkley
Suite 200
Overland Park, KS 66212
P: 913.648.8333

New Business: Barb Murphy

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BKV - Atlanta
2964 Peachtree Road
Suite 700
Atlanta, GA 30305
P: 404.233.0332

New Business: Brent Kuhn

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