My, has Mullen come a long way. What was once merely a reliable regional shop is now attracting the hottest digital brands around — including Google and LivingSocial — and gets entrusted with international campaigns despite the fact it doesn’t have any offices abroad. In 2011, Mullen found 20% revenue growth while having a lot of fun with its work. For Zappos, it executed a zany homepage takeover on Yahoo’s website so viewers saw a scantily clad man running across the screen. The point was to demonstrate that Zappos is about a lot more than shoes. To get the word out that JetBlue lets passengers’ first bag fly free, it set up an exhibit of celebrity luggage in Los Angeles that also raised $50,000 for DoSomething.org. Its biggest project was leading the international brand launch for Google’s Galaxy Nexus phone, for which Mullen’s creative is running across four continents. The agency is charting the course for the next generation of leadership, making Alex Leikikh president in its Boston office as Joe Grimaldi moved to Chairman-CEO.

Big congrats to all of the agencies profiled in the A-List issue, in particular McGarryBowen, Ad Age’s Agency of the Year, and Droga5, Creativity’s Agency of the Year. Winning and being bold was their recipe for success.

Here’s what we won:

• Best Use of Out-of-Home – JetBlue “Taking it to the Streets,” where we introduced JetBlue’s new travel service by converting bus shelters into mini vacation hubs.
• Best Use of New and Non-Traditional Media – JetBlue “Celebrity Baggage,” where we introduced JetBlue’s free baggage service in LA via interactive outdoor media which linked to mobile, by which consumers could bid on celebrity’s travel bags in real time.
• Best Use of Media Research – for Barnes & Noble/Nook
• The Risky Business Award – Zappos “Naked Man,” where we convinced web channel Yahoo, to let our Naked Man (Arthur) run across their homepage.

• The Rising Star Award – Katie Thompson, VP Associate Director, Digital Media, for her work on JetBlue.

The awards were part of Media Innovation Day, hosted by the AdClub of Boston.  It featured speakers from XBOX Live, Yahoo and Mullen client Glenn Kaplan, VP, Creative Director at Barnes & Noble.

Congrats to all the finalists and winners in the Maven Awards and good luck to the AdClub in the kick-off of the big annual Media Auction.

Left to right: Mullen's Stephen Larkin, John Moore, Alex Leikikh, Mark Wenneker and Sheila Leyne

Cool news -  Mullen has been named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Advertising & Marketing.The news broke in the March special issue on “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.” In addition to the Big 50 (which included Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix) Fast Company published industry specific lists for the following sectors:

• Advertising & Marketing
• Biotech
• Design
• Fashion
• Mobile
• Music

In explaining the selection of Mullen, the Fast Company editors said:

For an internal transformation that helped it win new business from progressive social-media-savvy clients such as JetBlue and Zappos.

It’s awesome to be on the same list as Google Creative Lab, Wieden+Kennedy, Vivaki, 360i and all of the innovators in our space. Many thanks to Fast Company for taking notice of the changes here and to the progressive clients and talented Mullenites who make it all possible.

John Moore - Ad Age Media Maven 2010

Mullen’s commitment to keeping media and creative closely connected has been rewarded as our Chief Media Officer John Moore has been recognized as an Advertising Age Media Maven.  As you’ll see in the Ad Age report, John was given this prestigious award based on his passion for media innovation, his major contributions to the agency’s new business success and innovative media executions that our mediahub group created recently for Olympus, Timberland and Zappos.

John joins a group of 18 media luminaries selected by Ad Age including, Brandy Ruff from Mullen client Alberto-Culver, Christopher Batty from Gawker, Ian Tait from Wieden & Kennedy, Brian McMahon from IPG’s Orion Trading, Seth Kaufman from Pepsico, David Levy from Turner Broadcasting and Colleen Fahey Rush from MTV Networks.

It’s been a couple of great weeks for mediahub, which also picked up a series of awards for media innovation from The AdClub recently. However, all is not rosy for John, as his beloved Boston College Eagles got wrecked by Virginia Tech over the weekend.  Hopefully being named an Ad Age Media Maven will ease the pain.

Ironically, Fast Company reports that Zappos’ best customers are the ones who return the most merchandise. Just goes to show the power of great customer service.

If you’d like to see all of the creative in the new Zappos campaign, including the other TV spots, digital and print, it’s all posted on this Mullen landing page.  We’d love to hear your thoughts.

This is the second of three :30′s in the Zappos campaign. Another spot called Jesse broke last week. The reviews so far are good. Please let us know what you think.

There is one Zappos TV spot in the market so far. Many more creative pieces to follow. Thanks, as always, to the awesome customer service team at Zappos for the inspiration.

We’ll keep sharing new creative from the campaign as it breaks. There’s more TV, print, online, social and even airport bins to follow. Please have a look at Stuart Elliott’s column in the NY Times if you want to know more about the campaign.

There are many people to acknowledge for their contributions. Please take a look at the full list of credits on Mullen’s YouTube channel. Special thanks to Aaron Duffy (same guy who directed Google’s Parisian Love) and Special Guest for his directorial and their production work.  Special thanks also to puppeteer Randy Carfagno for making the Zappets. Biggest thanks of all to the incredibly nice employees of Zappos who inspired this work.

This work was inspired by the amazingly unique culture and genuinely happy customer service we discovered at Zappos when pitching their business in a wide-open review last summer.

Please check back next week to see the final creative.