Zulu Alpha Kilo opened its doors eight years ago when founder Zak Mroueh decided to leave the agency world he knew. After twenty years in the business, he'd seen the good, the bad, and the ugly and he was tired of it.
As he took the leap and started his own shop, he made sure it wouldn't be your typical agency. He wanted Zulu to run counter to all the things he disliked about the ad business. He set out to create an agency experience that would see Creatives and Strategists truly working as one holistic creative team, and an experience that would better engage clients in agency work. So far it seems to be working, with top clients such as Bell, Corona, Interac, Harley-Davidson and Audi all leaving their traditional agencies behind and entrusting their brands to Zulu.
To this day Zulu continues to challenge the industry. There is the recent 'Say No To Spec' film that challenges the age-old new business pitch practice of spec creative work. And now Zulu has a website that is entirely counter-intuitive. Bucking the trend is the very reason we exist.
The 'big idea' behind our new website is to surprise the industry by creating an agency website that is a parody of agency websites, making fun of the industry and ourselves in the process.
Most agency sites look, act and say essentially the same thing. They are all laser-focused on promoting themselves – showcasing their great work and proprietary process, listing all their great clients, awards and accolades. And of course, making it very easy for prospective clients and hires to find out how to contact the agency.
Our new site on the other hand, includes videos of fictional co-founders and an overview of our patented Holist-I-Think strategic process. It highlights our client complaint counter, our Super Buzzword generator, and even a case study for fictitious clients like Plan C Condoms. It showcases our latest creation - the world's first 'venereal video' and of course, makes it very difficult for anyone to find our address or contact information.
So you might be reading this thinking we're crazy – a website that does nothing to promote the agency and makes it hard to contact us?! And you might be right but without question, it's working.
Global trade press coverage drove an initial +2300% spike in website traffic which 5 months later has sustained at +250%.
A surprising number of people have commented on how long they have spent on our website and have reached out to us with praise. They have loved the responses they are getting from Zulu – not from actual Zulu employees but from the fictional co-founders featured on the website.
Job applications are through the roof and new business interest has spiked with both complimenting us on our website unsolicited. We are attracting the kind of crazy clients we like, not those that prefer conventional agencies with conventional websites. We even had a pitch consultant in Australia tell us that he loves our website so much he is going to find us a client... in Australia.
But most importantly, the new website reinforces our unconventional nature has made current clients proud to work with us, and our employees proud to call this agency home.
