WIT put on a helluva show at the 2007 ADDY Awards on March 15th, and the company came up a winner in more than one way.

The gig to present the awards show came about when WIT's friends at the Rosenthal Partners suggested to the Ad Club of Washington that improv, and WIT in particular, was just the thing to spice up the annual awards fest, which had gotten a little long and droopy over the years. "When WIT agreed to do the show we knew the show would be a big challenge, but we didn't know exactly what kind," says Mike Bass, who coordinated WIT's effort.

The group created a fictitious events planning firm named the Wallace Isaacs Team (or "WIT" for short) that had been selected to present the 2007 ADDY Awards. Bass, Topher Bellavia, Mark Chalfant, Catherine Deadman and Molly Woods played employees of the firm in three pre-produced videos, a musical opening number, and quickly paced banter that trimmed the 120-minute show to a brisk 75 minutes.

With the musical help of Travis Ploeger and technical assistance from Zack Phillips and Annie Drinkard, WIT was able to convince the 395 people in attendance that their firm was real.

Sort of.

But the best for WIT was yet to come, as the print campaign that Rosenthal Partners created for the group in fall of 2006 walked away with a whopping 11 Addy awards, including the coveted Best in Print category.

"We knew it would happen," explains Bass, "because we had to practice the list ahead of the awards. But it was still odd to read our own name at the podium."

"Odd in a very good way," elaborates Mark Chalfant, WIT's artistic director.

The team at Rosenthal was understandably delighted with the results. They cited a strong partnership with WIT as a reason for their success. "The work can only be as great as our clients allow it to be," said Jim Lansbury, Creative Director of the Bethesda-based firm. "Yes, it's risky, but WIT and Rosenthal Partners are a lot alike. They offer an alternative to entertainment-as-usual, and we offer an alternative to advertising-as-usual. When we developed the campaign, we wanted to create work that was as fresh and spontaneous as their performances."

The Addy-winning pieces were part of a fall visibility campaign made possible by funding from the Upstart program, a program of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. WIT participated in the inaugural year of the program, which devoted significant funding toward marketing for audience development. The newspaper and taxi-top campaign "definitely raised our visibility," says Chalfant. "And they more than doubled our patronage during the fall run, compared to the run prior."

Check out the videos from the presentation by clicking on the images to the left, or click here to listen to the group's opening number from the show.

BUZZ ABOUT WIT AT THE ADDYS

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