Melville's EGC drives campaign out of the box
Ernie Canadeo, founder and chief executive of Melville-based EGC, and senior partner Nicole Larrauri stand in front of an “out of the box” ad they created for Competition Auto Group. (Dec. 21, 2011) Credit: Heather Walsh
The staff at Ernie Canadeo's Melville-based advertising shop, EGC Group, got handed an assignment to come up with an ad for Competition Automotive Group, which has six showrooms on Long Island. The EGC staff thought about all the plain-vanilla car ads out there and decided to try something different.
They scanned thousands of feet of film on YouTube and found what they were looking for: a movie of a senior citizen dancing on a football field and another of a cat lashing out with a paw at an alligator coming out of a swamp. What's that got to do with cars?
Competition (get it?) never gets old, which is what the senior represents, and competition is bold, thus the cat attacking the alligator, said Nicole Larrauri, a managing partner at EGC, Long Island's largest ad agency.
"We scoured the Internet for videos that really represented competition," said Larrauri. "There's no other car dealer using that tactic."
Nancy Buzzetta, an owner of the nearly 50-year-old Competition, said the company had in the past done more traditional advertising. "We said, 'There's this car at that price and this plan for you,' " Buzzetta said. "But everyone makes the same claim to fame, and margins are so slim and pricing is so close." Competition, she said, wanted something "out of the box."
Canadeo said the ads have begun airing, mostly on major cable networks' sports programs and will continue through the next year.
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