Gyro Scopes Gen X for Big Bucks

Highly desirable cutting edge account seeks Gyro over 40 other agencies.

Gyro Advertising Worldwide, the tiny 15-person agency in Society Hill, has beaten out almost everyone on Madison Avenue for a highly desirable ad account with a cutting edge America Online project. More than 40 of the nation's major agencies competed for the $6 million advertising account for The Hub, America Online's edgy, hypercool "channel" for twenty-somethings. Gyro, ironically, wasn't among the 40, which is evidently the coolest way to compete for something like this. "We don't pitch anymore," explains Gyro veep Shyamala Joshi. "A client will meet with us and if they don't immediately click with us, they'll know we're not right for them." After the Hub execs narrowed down the 40 competing agencies to four-including big advertising names Black Rocket, Mad Dogs and Englishmen and Butler Shine Stern-they called Gyro. "Gyro speaks the same language as the Hub audience," says Jonathan Sacks, the New York-based Hub's general manager. "They are hip. They are trendy. They under-stand our demographic better than anyone." Gyro's president Steven Grasse is less modest about being the voice of World Youth Culture: "We own this territory. If we're in a review against you and it's our market, you may as well pack up and go home." The Hub is a joint venture of America Online and New Line Cinema, and Gyro hopes to do promotions and "guerrilla marketing" tie-ins with the movie company. Focus groups in New York and Los Angeles will be sampling Gyro's work over the next two weeks.