This Agency Wants to Blow Up Your Brand’s Website

“This is the truth: Nobody cares about someone launching a new website,” says Eric Rojas, founder and CCO at New York-based agency Six+One. But what if someone’s new website meant that your brand would get one too?

To promote its revamped digital home, Six+One is ‘blowing up’ its old website – and not just that; they could blow yours up too. Don’t worry though! They’ll build you a new one.

Six+One is inviting brands to head to the landing page blowupmywebsite.com, fill in their company details, and give their reason for needing a new website as well. From there, they’re going to pick one lucky winner and do up to $12,000 worth of website building, to help the brand “blow up and make waves themselves”.

This is all part of the agency’s ‘Disruption for Good’ mantra, and more specifically, its initiative: Random Acts of Advertising. This involves helping deserving causes to connect with audiences by improving their design and communications, or by marketing brands that need help, or which don’t otherwise advertise. “We feel like we have an opportunity and an obligation to provide our services to things that people never really think would need it,” says Eric.

Over the years, this initiative has involved creating a 30-second ad for anxiety relief cat mix brand, Pet Honesty, ‘rebranding’ Thanksgiving and Friday the 13th, and even redesigning restaurants’ health and safety signage. “Our team gets excited about it because it's something different and unique, and it's super creative,” he says. “We do it the way we want to do it, and that's kind of liberating.”

Now that Six+One is launching a new website of its own – one of the agency’s areas of expertise, making up around 15-20% of their business – it seemed only natural for the next Random Act of Advertising to be building someone else’s. 

Six+One has all the tools and talent in-house, designing and developing as many as 10 sites each year for a variety of start-ups and established names. In the past, Six+one has helped brands like sports drink BODYARMOR become household names, and at his previous companies, Eric helped to brand the likes of Pirate’s Booty snacks and VitaminWater.

“A lot of people nowadays don't go to brick and mortar stores,” he says, explaining the value of a digital storefront today. “The first time most people are ever going to interact with your brand is via your website. It’s the first communication touchpoint where someone, by choice, has decided to interact with you. It’s not a commercial or a banner they’ve never asked for. If they type in or click your URL, they are ready to have an experience with you as the brand.”

With this in mind, he says it’s imperative for the website’s UX to embody the brand experience and match the first impression they’d want to give in-store. The strategy Six+One subsequently employs is to build a “communication flow” using aesthetics, copy and other design elements, whereby page visitors are directed towards the deeper information, without being bombarded up front. “We’re giving you just enough that if you want to go deeper, you can, but we're not giving you the whole kitchen sink all at once.”

Using this same approach, the winner of the new website – to be selected by Eric and the team next month – will have their existing website deconstructed, working with Six+One to identify pain points and goals for the new website, and align on how to be disruptive among other websites within the same category.

For Eric, one of the keys is to not overwhelm the page visitors with ‘bells and whistles’. “I love when a consumer feels like they are driving the website, and not that the website is driving them,” he says. “That means the UX is super clean. I love the idea of a ‘power scroll’ where as someone scrolls down, things start to form, and as they scroll up, they go away. It makes them feel like they’re in control of the website. 

“If I feel like I have no control over the website, I'm not going to stay there. I don't have time for this; I easily click out. And the truth is, most people, if they click out of the website, are never going back. People don't realise that you really only get one chance, unless I’ve got to buy a product from you - and if so, I might try to find it on Amazon which might be easier.” 

For this Random Act of Advertising, Eric shares that Six+One is looking for a brand with an incredible story or product – but which they might not know how to market right now. “We find a lot of brands at the five to eight year mark hit a ceiling and need to reinvent their brand a little bit. They’ve done enough to get somewhat of an audience, but now need to reposition in a way that grabs a wider audience, without alienating your old one. We do a lot of that for those kinds of brands, so something like that would be great.”

The agency would also embrace the opportunity to work with a larger brand seeking to build a digital hub, facilitating community engagement beyond its products. “So we're not just building a platform to sell a product, we're building a platform to engage an audience.” This is something that Six+One accomplished recently when redeveloping the website for drinks brand Seagrams Escapes.

“What we’re trying to do is just give back to a brand who needs help, to give back to the community,” says Eric. “That’s Random Acts of Advertising. Why don't we give away services for free once in a while? Would that really hurt us? Is it a weird thing to do? I don't think so.”

Brands can apply to ‘blow up their website’ here until March 10th.