Atlantic sails along with the ‘countercurrent’

Atlantic started in 2021 with $5,000 in seed money from each of its two founders. It had no investors and no clients. Housed in an oil tanker moored in Red Hook, Brooklyn, its first ad was a legally required newspaper tombstone announcing the formation of the business. Today, the shop founded by a pair of creatives from Ogilvy Brazil and McCann and Grey, New York, employs 10 full-timers and boasts $2.9 million in revenue. Ad Age Small Agency Awards See all of the 2023 winners Click here To its credit is a campaign for Amazon Prime promoting the streaming service’s Thursday night NFL games with an elongated football reminiscent of its smile logo, as well as an interactive event during the NBA All-Star Weekend for Yahoo called “The First Bounce” that recreated courts where hoops superstars got their start. But perhaps its best-known achievement was an end run around the Super Bowl with a $19.95 commercial filmed on VHS and “running” in only one place: the last Blockbuster store, in Bend, Oregon. It featured a cockroach named Steve with the copy: “When the world ends, and the internet streams no more, we’ll still be here.” The push was featured on more than 100 TV outlets and reached an audience, according to Atlantic, nine times larger than the actual Super Bowl. In addition to the founders Marco Pupo and Co-Chief Creative Officer João Coutinho, Atlantic brought on Suzanne Barbosa as partner and managing director to drive “the countercurrent,” which the shop describes as “a vigilant exercise of looking at where everyone is going and then purposefully experimenting with what’s on the absolute opposite end of that.” And it’s also driving in a more literal way: At the recent Cannes Lions, Atlantic offered Uber-like rides from the airport, driven by its founders, to anyone who would listen to their pitch. Ad Age Small Agency Awards See all of the 2023 winners Click here

Atlantic sails along with the ‘countercurrent’

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