Denver Agency Spotlight: KarshHagan

By / October 27, 2009 /

Agency:
Karsh\Hagan, Denver

Year Founded:
1977

Physical Location:
2399 Blake Street, Suite 160, Denver

Online Location:
karsh.com

Agency Philosophy:
In no particular order, have fun, make money, and do great work. We define “doing great work” as creating and executing ideas that help our clients build their businesses.

Client List:
• Visit Denver
• American Crew
• Abba
• MOP
• Roux
• Pinnacle Bank
• TD AMERITRADE Institutional
• Regis University
• Sprint Press
• Western Union
We also have a few other clients who we work with on a project basis.

Personnel Count:
About 30. There are always a few contractors, freelancers or interns running around, too.

Best Recent Work:
Brasstacks Integrated Work – Our campaign for the Kappa Alpha Order spanned digital, print, guerrilla and mobile tactics. It helped thousands of college freshmen enjoy their first year of college without losing their moral center. And it helped reinvent Greek life for modern times. The microsite is at brasstacks101.com.

American Crew Book – The American Crew brand is built on bridging the gap between professional stylists and men through style, innovation, photography, education and brand utility. Karsh\Hagan contributes to every part of this process. The book “Where There’s Man There’s Crew” is one concrete example.

Sprint Press Integrated Work – To advertise Sprint Press’s dedication to the environment, we enlisted paper sculptor Jeff Nishinaka, collaborated with him to create limited edition artwork, and then used YouTube, direct mail and a microsite to spread the word.

Best Achievement in the Last Year:
Successfully negotiating two sea changes. The first was our separation from Omnicom and the old management team. The second was integrating design and digital into our brand advertising process. Either one would have been tricky enough. The fact that we did both of them in one year, during a recession, while simultaneously creating some of the best work we’ve ever done… Let’s just say we even surprised ourselves.

3 Things The World Doesn’t Know About Karsh\Hagan That It Should:
1. Our billings this year are more than half nontraditional tactics. For three decades, Karsh\Hagan was famous for TV and print. Times have changed…
2. …but we still do a lot of film. The things we’ve won awards for the past couple of years have been nontraditional, but producing video content for broadcast and web is still one of our competitive strengths.
3. We keep the organization flat and nimble. Senior teams collaborate on projects directly with our clients without a bunch of layers.