For five years, D.J. Edgerton was content to let other marketing agencies take the credit for work produced by his digital shop Zemoga.
When the credits began rolling at the Connecticut Ad Club annual awards, it was Zemoga that was the star of the show ”“ and Edgerton intends to keep the company in the limelight going forward.
Zemoga, a New York City-based ad agency with a Wilton office, won best of show at the Connecticut Ad Club awards for a “viral” video campaign that amusingly depicts a world in which individuals are confined to the linguistic rules of Twitter ”“ limiting sentences to 140 characters while keeping up with “trending” topics. The punch line has office workers repeatedly concluding their allotted 140-character limit with a lewd or suggestive word, only to continue the thought with a new “tweet” to form an otherwise innocuous word from the preceding, objectionable syllables.
Dan Licht was creative director of the production, with Gino Tormac the copywriter and producer.
“This was one of those things you see, and you think to yourself, ”˜Why didn”™t I do that?”™” the judges wrote in their review of Zemoga”™s campaign. “Then you immediately send the link out to everyone you know, hoping to at least get the credit of introducing it to everyone first.”
Edgerton, a Wiltonite who was executive producer of the video, is now setting about introducing the world to Zemoga after the video rocketed to the top of You Tube searches for four days, winning the agency a large dose of mostly free publicity.
As thanks to the judges, Edgerton arranged for them to receive giant speech “bubbles” they could hold over their heads. Separately, Zemoga received a “gold” award for its “rock the cheez” integrated media campaign for Wise Foods and its “Cheez Doodles” brand.
“You really can”™t set out to do a viral video,” Edgerton said. “The whole thing cost us $6,000. We couldn”™t believe it ”“ it wasn”™t for an ad client, it was just a goof.”
The most-viewed video of all time on YouTube remains “The Evolution of Dance” by comedian and motivational speaker Jud Laipply, which has been seen more than 150 million times. The video features Laipply on stage dancing to varied tune snippets by various acts, ranging from ACDC to the Brady Bunch.
In interviews, Laipply has said he never anticipated the video”™s appeal, having performed the act for a few years before deciding to create a video and post it on YouTube ”“ and even then not expecting anything until emails started pouring in.
For the most part, Zemoga”™s success has been the result of foresight rather than happenstance. After launching a blog titled “Pixels and Pills,” the company saw a corresponding increase in its work on behalf of health care and pharmaceutical companies.
Zemoga co-founder Alejandro Gomez is now moving his family from Bogota, Colombia, to San Francisco, where the company hopes to better support existing customers as well as win new business from high-tech companies and others there.
If the company”™s Connecticut Ad Club award represents a rated-R spoof, it has plenty of mainstream work in its client portfolio ”“ including rated-G website and game design to support the Kids Choice Awards sponsored by Nickelodeon.
“I am really fortunate in that what I do for a living is fun,” Edgerton said. “I wake up in the morning, and think up better ways for people to leverage technology ”¦ or laugh.”
