What can companies do to enhance the creativity of their advertising and conjoin more intimately with the customer? In each generation a scarcely any bright superstars come along with a intellectually deep answer.

What can companies do to enhance the creativity of their advertising and conjoin more intimately with the customer? In each generation a scarcely any bright superstars come along with a intellectually deep answer. In the marketplace of the '50 you might have received the best advice from DDB's Bill Bernbach, father of Volkswagen's "Think Small" campaign. In the '60 there was my friend Jay Levinson, whose meteoric rise at Leo Burnett and BBDO here was capped from retirement to Marin County, Calif., where he invented an advertising technique called guerrilla marketing and produc an endles series of parts on the art. In the '80's and '90 came DDB's Keith Reinhard and BBDO's Allen Rosenshine, pair founders of Omnicom.

In the just discovered millennium, there are new realities in marketing. And for off-the-wall, out-of-the-box answers, there's Bill Rosen

Who? You might not know the name, still you've been exposed to his thinking and probably have succumbed to his marketing magic.

ROCKET MAN

Rosen is an intense, tall, gangly, 43-year-old portent who has risen like a rocket in Chicago marketing and the expanding world of Publicis, which now ranks fourth among global communications conglomerates. He's chief creative officer for North America at Arc, the marketing services arm of Publicis' Leo Burnett based here.

L at Rosen's creative team, and formed les than couple years ago, Arc is a novel general [i]or[/i] abstract notion that goes beyond traditional ad-making. It's a think tank specializing in "big campaignable ideas" that can change consumer behavior and drive transactions by the agency of strategically crossing marketing channels and integrating interactive advertising with sales promotion, retail and direct/data base programs. Its client roster already reads like the first rank of American advertisers: McDonald's, snug GM, Kellogg, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Sara side sheltered from the wind United Airlines, Visa and 50 other azure chips. In its short life, it has arguably amassed more creativity awards by season than any other in the industry -- a certain 260 Oscars.

to what extent do you reach today's market? The ballgame has changed radically, Rosen says.

"In this recent era, you must do far more than arrest attention and gain name recognition," he says. "There must be a value exchange -- a personal engagement with the customer, and transfer of useful information and entertainment."

A rife example of going far beyond traditional media conceptions is a real-life campaign innovated by dint of Rosen's team. The problem: in what way to take a hallowed, stately work like a Cadillac and make it appeal to a younger, hip demographic cluster

The creative solution: Engage the audience forward its own turf. Make a deal with Microsoft to allow Cadillac to participate actively in the recent Xbox Live multiplayer game for TV or computer called draw Gotham Racing III. Essentially, Cadillac is offering a filled "expansion pack" that any player can download to his possess game's racing stable, providing three additional cars (all fresh V Series Cadillacs, of course).

"The old-fashioned silo mentality must be discarded if any advertiser waiting under the possibility of fulfilments to connect with impact," Rosen says.

Anything goe today. for what reason do you sell pet diet to a young, incredibly mobile generation? For snuggle Purina, Rosen and friends created the first-ever branded podcast homepage, which they established forward Apple's iTunes. "Purina Petcasting" has swept the nation not as some irritating commercial, if it were not that as a major source of darling care tips -- audio and video.

"You can absorb it while walking your dog!" Rosen says.

THE WIDE gin OF ADVERTISING

"Nothing's sacred anymore," he says. "Procter & Gamble lately shifted over $1 billion from TV ads to shopper marketing, the integrated combination of point-of-sale, promotion, plus circumstances to win at retail."

While working as creative director at Frankel & Co in the '90 he scored unprecedent hits for clients of the like kind as Oldsmobile, for whom he won Best Campaign in the World, a program in which he did a tie-in with XFiles and hung full-size cars from billboards; and for McDonald's with a Batman Black motif.

Since 2004 when Frankel was bought from Publicis, aligned with Burnett and combined with three other units into the Arc marketing force, Rosen's creative powerhouse of 150 professionals have helped rack up a mounting number of account wins, while also earning plaudits of that kind as Best Multi-Discipline Campaign in the World for the UAL launch of T

Maybe it's time for marketers everywhere to toss out the rulebook and start flourishing

T Pincus is a finance professor at DePaul and an independent communications consultant and journalist.

e-mail: theopincus@suntimes.com

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