Campfire Acquires The Advance Guard

New York-based entertainment marketing shop Campfire has bought up The Advance Guard, a consultancy whose focus lies on the consumer conversation side of emerging technology and community platforms.

Having already collaborated with Campfire on projects including HBO’s True Blood viral and Discovery’s “Shark Week” marketing, Advance Guard’s co-founders Steve Coulson and C.C. Chapman will now transition into creative director roles at the shop. The new roles allow Coulson–who’s held agency director roles at JWT and McCann and created the blog YesButNoButYes–and Chapman, a social/new media vet, to join in on the creative process from the ground up.

“We’ve worked with Steve and C.C. for a couple of years now,” Campfire managing partner Steve Wax tells us. “Part of what was attractive about buying [The Advance Guard] is that they could be there from the beginning when ideas percolate. It’s really important that you consider audience outreach, engagement tactics and key bloggers as part of the creative idea. Understanding the tactics of the new market is actually doing it and they’ve got a lot of knowledge of tactics in creating viral.”

The acquisition now brings Campfire’s head count to a total of 25 staffers.

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