Alto stands tall with unique storytelling for brands

Alto might be considered the anti-agency. It has only 14 full-time staffers and operates on a “Hollywood production” model, custom-building teams for individual projects, resulting in lush cinematic campaigns for clients such as Google and Montefiore Einstein Medical Center. And while many agencies are calling people back into offices, Alto was founded on remote work. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here “During the pandemic, the best people picked a lifestyle,” said Hannes Ciatti, founder and chief creative officer. “They want to be wherever they are.” On this day, Ciatti was speaking from Italy, while Managing Partner Ed Rogers joined the video call from Canada and Tara Fray, partner and head of strategy, bounced along a bumpy Icelandic road in a Tesla. (She was not driving.) “We believe people do their best work when they’re living their best lives, and that’s really dependent on where you are and where you’re comfortable,” said Fray. “It’s a big virtuous circle.” No moonwalking Alto, founded in 2019, has developed a reputation for its creative prowess and intimate way of working. It projected that 2024 revenue would rise nearly 12% to $38.9 million. “One of our core propositions to potential clients is there is no bait-and-switch. What you see is what you get,” said Rogers. “We’ve all been part of that scenario in which you get wheeled into a room and then you shake the hand [of the client], you get the business and then slowly moonwalk out.” Fray gestured to Ciatti. “He is in the editing room looking at every pixel.” See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here This all-in approach is evident in Alto’s campaigns for one of its signature clients, Montefiore Einstein Medical Center. Last year it created two standout efforts for the hospital; one put the spotlight on children with rare diseases, creating a “Goonies”-style adventure film (below) in which they save the holidays. The other, highlighting its Advanced Lung Transplant Program, puts a twist on testimonials (as seen below) with actor Paul Giamatti telling the story of a patient, Paul Rivera, who received a life-saving organ. Director and producer Alexander Payne “was actually helping us to write in Paul Giamatti’s voice,” said Ciatti, recalling that Payne said, “You could give Paul Giamatti a menu to read and it would sound like Shakespeare.” The campaign notched 10.5 million views on YouTube and achieved an 800% higher click-through rate than industry benchmarks, the agency wrote in its entry. But most importantly, Alto said “the phones were ringing off the hook” with donors during its run. This Nike-style branding also makes Montefiore distinctive among health care systems that tend to focus on products and services more than patients. “We’ve always found different ways to tell a story,” said Loreen Babcock, senior VP-chief marketing officer at Montefiore. “Like Nike, which is not about the shoe, but the athlete, we really are about the story first and our format second. I love when people say to me, ‘Even before I knew I saw Montefiore Einstein at the end of the commercial, I knew it was Montefiore Einstein.‘” Finding innovative ways to tell these stories is an Alto hallmark. To illustrate the speed at which Expensify helps people do their expenses, the shop cut a landmark deal with producer Jerry Bruckheimer to integrate its client into his upcoming film “F1.” The brand became the official sponsor of a fictional Formula One racing team featured in what’s anticipated to be a summer blockbuster. In doing so, it secured perhaps the ultimate media placement: its logo front and center on the uniform worn on Brad Pitt’s chest. “There was a really thorough, rigorous and wide canvassing that we did to figure out the biggest and best opportunity for Expensify and in a very unconventional creative agency way,” said Rogers. “I think it is going to be one of the greatest product placements of all time.” The strategy has so far delivered $9 million in media value, according to the agency—and the movie won’t hit theaters until June. Out from the shadows Similar out-of-the-box thinking was employed for MetaQuest, for which Alto solved the problem of how to use flat screens to promote a VR game, Batman: Arkham Shadow. “We actually couldn’t show Batman, because in the game you actually are Batman, and we needed to find a way to bring him in,” said Ciatti. “Because this game is the first VR game where you have reactionary shadows—they actually react to you walking around—we used this canvas of shadows and painted the story of Batman.” “Every challenge is so different,” said Ciatti. “We love playing in different tones. We love playing in different media. We can do comedic, we can do heartfelt, we can do activations, we can do digital AI tools.” Comedy—tinged with pathos—plays heavily into Alto’s campaign for Tile by Life360. The spot portrays a child so traumatized by his parents arguing over his lost coat that he refuses to shed his highlighter-yellow puffer jacket through life’s milestones—school plays, the loss of his virginity, his marriage and the birth of his child. The payoff: By using Tile you can “Family-proof your family.” Rogers said the spot is one of the few that the agency ever produced as a :60 that has a 100% view rate. “That never happens, but it’s engaging enough that people want to watch it,” he said. It’s no surprise that Alto has clients such as Tile on its roster, given that it has a knack for humanizing technology. The clearest example might be Google Workspace, for which it was tasked with helping small businesses visualize how AI could change their lives in five years. As Alto’s entry put it: “In a world buzzing with fears about AI taking jobs, we flipped the script to show how AI allows us to focus on the parts of our jobs we love—the reasons people start businesses in the first place.” It’s a philosophy that extends to Alto itself. “One big milestone for us was to get on the A-List, and we’ve achieved that,” said Ciatti. “But having fun is the most important part. That’s what we want to maintain—having fun and doing something we love doing.” ~ ~ ~CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story referenced a drone delivery event for the Batman:Arkham Shadow video game, which was planned but “paused” according to Alto. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here

Alto stands tall with unique storytelling for brands

Featured Stories