Getting clients noticed their forte

TOUGH AS NAILS: Founded in 1998, Nail has garnered accolades for its work with Mike & Ike, The Providence Journal and the Rhode Island Food Bank. Pictured above is Nail’s leadership team, which includes, from left: Creative Partner Alec Beckett, Managing Partner Jeremy Crisp and Creative Partner Brian Goss. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
TOUGH AS NAILS: Founded in 1998, Nail has garnered accolades for its work with Mike & Ike, The Providence Journal and the Rhode Island Food Bank. Pictured above is Nail’s leadership team, which includes, from left: Creative Partner Alec Beckett, Managing Partner Jeremy Crisp and Creative Partner Brian Goss. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

When work is this much fun, can it really be called work at all? The trio leading Nail, a Providence communications agency, have spent, collectively, the last 14 years making sure the laughs keep coming while the work keeps them busy.
“We’re very aligned in our goal and we do really enjoy what we do,” said Brian Gross, one of Nail’s creative partners and its original founder. “I talk to a lot of people who aren’t and are in our business and they’re just miserable and I can never understand that.”
Alec Beckett, the firm’s other creative partner, had an additional thought on what makes their partnership with Jeremy Crisp, managing partner, a winning existence.
“We don’t hate each other,” Beckett said, with a laugh.
Gross came up with the NAIL concept in the late 1990s after growing frustrated with the conventionality of traditional advertising.
He and Beckett had met while working at Grey Advertising in New York and Gross followed his friend to Boston for a company there that is no longer in business.
But Beckett took off for Los Angeles and Gross started looking for something for something new.
“Grey was where we learned what not to do in advertising,” Gross’ aid. “I felt there was a dearth of agencies in New England and I wanted to do some [more] creative work without moving – work that was unconventional and interesting and would get noticed. That was what was missing in New England.”
He founded Nail in 1998 and talked Beckett into joining him in Providence.
“My wife and I knew we were East Coast people,” Beckett said. “I had a couple of job offers in Boston and an offer at Nail for a fraction of a fraction of [those] salaries and I said [it] would be crazy to go to Nail. So that’s what I decided to do.”
The two had little trouble building their brand into what they wanted.
With little market competition but easy access to Boston and New York, they were able to build a client list that appreciated their form of advertising.
Getting paid for that work was, initially, a different story.
“We somewhat naively believed that if we did great work, everything else would follow,” Beckett said. “But we were so passionate about the work we would often sort of give it away, frankly.” Since 2006, Crisp has been making sure that didn’t continue to happen, balancing his co-partners’ artistic spirit with his business sense.
Crisp was working at JWT-DDFH&B Advertising in Dublin in his native Ireland. He and his wife were looking to relocate to the Cape Cod area after being smitten with the location during a vacation they took that was inspired by the film “Jaws.”
A headhunter found Nail for him and since it seemed a good fit, the Crisps swapped Providence for Cape Cod.
“They were the creative geniuses and looking for someone to make sure they made a cent or two at the end of the day,” Crisp said.
Nail, which was chosen as the firm’s name because “it’s sharp and can puncture things” and “if you put enough nails in the right place you can build something,” said Beckett.
It was responsible for a now famous Mike & Ike “divorce” campaign last spring in which the firm, contracted by the Elevator Group, an ad agency in Scituate, Mass., intimated that Mike and Ike were real people [who in reality never existed] who were parting ways after things had gone stale in their relationship.
After the campaign, which was parodied by various media channels including The Huffington Post, the candy was generating sales three times faster than the rest of its category.
“Typically you would approach a marketing problem by finding out what is special about this product that the competition doesn’t have. This was tricky because it’s really chemically identical to competitors,” Beckett said. “We thought it would be hysterically funny. Amazingly, the client did, too. That’s an example of a brave client.”
Nail has regularly won awards since the company’s inception, including for their work with The Providence Journal and Rhode Island Food Bank at this year’s annual Hatch Awards that honors the work of advertising agencies and professionals in New England.
The trio said that the awards allow clients looking for their particular type of work to find them.
“One thing that’s important is we found that with award shows it’s almost a screening method. We aren’t the right agency for every client,” Beckett said. “The work we do tends to be out of the box a little bit and that involves the perception of taking a risk.” •COMPANY PROFILE
Nail
Owners: Alec Beckett, Brian Gross, Jeremy Crisp
Type of Business: Communications agency
Location: 63 Eddy St., Providence
Employees: 23
Year Founded: 1998
Annual Sales: WND

No posts to display