Marketing Vets Launch New-Fangled Brand Development Agency.

Indianapolis, IN: The promise of “more” and decades of integrated marketing experience as well as a host of brand development and search marketing successes mark the launch of Brandwidth, a new fuller-service brand development agency located in the 465 North commerce corridor.

An evolution of the Hayes Group, one of Indy’s largest brand development and search engine marketing firms, Brandwidth is best defined by what it isn’t.

“We’re not a web agency that does ads too,” says agency principal and web marketing director Adam Hayes. “And we’re not an ad agency or PR firm that does websites too. We’re more of both.”

Partnering with 30-year ad agency creative veteran George Evans, Hayes launched Brandwidth in January with eight employees and a client roster that includes Evansville-based Vectren Source, Indianapolis-based Kayak Pools as well as Pure Air Systems, Recreation Unlimited, DMD Pharmaceuticals and new clients Good’s Candy, My Health Care Manager, Majestic Plaza Properties, Carmel Surgical Specialists and Tampa-based Transitions Optical, Inc., a division of PPG Industries.

The enterprising pair saw a decided niche for their brand-response and development strategies and technologies in the Indianapolis market; a logical blend of traditional integrated strategies and “new-fangled” web-centric technologies that allow Brandwidth to measure and track in real-time the performance of their marketing, advertising and web strategies. According to Forrester Research, 79% of advertising clients would not recommend their current agency to others. The prevailing reason: an inability to measure the effectiveness and the ROI of the work they are getting.

“We’re working hard to change that,” says Evans. “Or at the very least to be one of the 21% of agencies out there with whom a client partner can be satisfied.

Adds Hayes: “Now more than ever, clients can quantify the impact of their marketing communications strategies. And qualify their agency relationships.”

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Brandwidth offers integrated marketing capabilities, brand development, as well as new-media technologies and the know-how needed to convert a client’s brand message to substantive – and measurable – business gains. And growth. Brandwidth’s first web-marketing project for client Recreation Unlimited saw holiday sales for the company’s Goalrilla basketball goals go from 10 in a one-month holiday period in 2005 to more than 10 per day in the 2006 holiday season. And those kinds of results have not been atypical with Recreation Unlimited currently enjoying a doubling of last year’s sales efforts. As SugarCRM and Click Tracks development partners, Brandwidth is developing custom campaign management and tracking solutions that allow the agency to “put its money where its mouth is,” for it’s clients. “And that’s really what “more” is all about,” concludes Evans.

Brandwidth builds its brand development solutions around web-centric strategies that, by their very nature, are easier to measure and track. That’s the primary reason web-based strategies are expected to surpass traditional TV and radio ad strategies by 2010, if not sooner, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. As it stands now, search marketing is the single fastest-growing medium in the industry. Given all of this, Evans and Hayes feel they are on to something.

From web development and design to email marketing to the “heavy lifting” of search optimization, as well as traditional advertising and marketing strategies tied to web-driven brand development, Brandwidth is managing to maneuver nimbly around “the oil tanker” of an industry that Hayes and Evans feel is mired in an outdated and ineffective, inefficient business model. What’s more, they do everything in house – from strategic development to concept to design to programming to SEO and performance analytics – unlike many firms that actually outsource the bulk of their web marketing and development work, which can mean scheduling delays as well as substantial agency markups.

“Clients expect results and they expect a value for their investment,” says Hayes. “ And we provide both to them in a way that we feel is truly unique.”

For more information, contact Adam Hayes or George Evans at 317-238-3044 or visit www.morebrandwidth.com. Brad Riley, owner of Recreation Unlimited, can be reached for comment at 317-773-3545.