#StartupAlert: 5 startups that revived ATL marketing trends

Marketing trends are crucial to any business’ success and as the world is becoming more interactive, certain trends have been left by the wayside. BTL (Below the Line) and TTL (Through the Line) have definitely had their time under the sun, but there are some companies that want to get back to the traditional method of ATL, which is ‘Above the line’.

For those who are unfamiliar with this concept, it is essentially the art of introducing a non-interactive advertisement. In other words, a method of advertising that does not rely on customer interaction. Some of the most popular examples of ATL include, Television Advertisements, Vertical Banners and Newsprint/Ads.

There are several startup companies listed on the Urban Clap, and even home service companies that have managed to bring back ATL, but we are only going to list five of the most popular lot.

Machine Zone
This America-based company has developed several free mobile games, including the ever popular “Game of War: Fire Age”, which has taken Android, Apple, and Amazon’s Kindle by the storm. It recently purchased the old Facebook Headquarters in Palo Alto and since the launch of Game of War, they became one of the top 5 game apps across all stores. The company has utilized ATL advertising by producing several television commercials, all of which have gone viral in one way or the other. This form of ATL advertising has brought Machine Zone a considerable amount of success and there is plenty of reason to believe it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

LetGo
If you have been on the internet any time in the last 20 years, you know that Craigslist and eBay have long been the major contenders in the online classifieds ring. It seems that there is no way to topple them as many have tried but LetGo has come pretty close. Having raised more than one hundred million dollars in funding, the Barcelona-based startup, co-founded by Alec Oxenford, has created an application that allows individuals to simply take pictures of their potential merchandise and post them online with little or no effort. While this is definitely an improvement over the eBay method, they might not have gotten quite as far as they have without their outstanding television commercials that provide a very humorous twist on online buying/selling.

Palantir Technologies
This private American Software company specializes in the fine art of data analysis. In the beginning, having been founded in 2004, Palantir’s first clients were federal agencies, which mean that advertising was not entirely necessary. Now it has expanded to several other industries, both the financial and healthcare industries. This alone has made it more and more necessary for the company to branch out and make use of ATL forms of advertising.

Domo
What we have here is a form of Business Intelligence, or BI, essentially delivering a service to companies that allow them to change the way that they run their business. In other words, you have a company that provides all of the benefits of information technology and business data without the involvement of IT. If you have ever tried to run any sort of company, then you know just how difficult it can be to involve an IT department and you are quite aware of the expense involved. Domo, which translates to ‘Thank you’ in Japanese has long been providing outstanding services, and their ATL advertising model has helped them to bring in more business is an industry that failed to deliver actual value for decades.

KingsIsle Entertainment
Anyone who happens to be in the video gaming scene knows what KingsIsle is, and they know that it was formed in February of 2005 which makes it just over five years old. Some of the company recruits include Tom Hall, the Co-Founder of ID Software and J. Todd Coleman of Wolfpack Studios. The idea behind KingsIsle is to create family friendly games, one of which is the ever popular Wizard 101. These games allow children to enter the MMORPG scene without exposing them to the toxic player based that they would normally find in such a community. One of the most interesting things about this game s that it does use ATL advertising which is unusual for a game that relies so heavily on the interaction of the players. The form of ATL used here is television advertising which typically involves testimonials given by current players, those being both the children and parents that play together. While other companies might stick with TTL for this type of product, KingsIsle has definitely found a way to leverage ATL and bring in new business.

(This article has been written by Utkarsh Sahu, who writes for various tech mags and admires technology with paradigm-shifting attributes.)

(Image: Thinkstock)