Rob Baiocco and Maureen Maldari left Grey with a shared conviction that marketing had gotten hopelessly overcomplicated. In 2014 they opened The BAM Connection in DUMBO — down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass, as Baiocco is happy to spell out — with a trademarked process called the One Shot Answer and a theme line that doubles as a filter for every brief. He is chief creative officer. She is CEO. The name was theirs before it was an acronym.
Early work included Wrangler, Terlato Wines and a stroke awareness campaign for the American Heart Association. A few years later came [ yellow tail ], the agency-of-record win that put a Super Bowl spot on the board.
“Complexity strangles creativity,” Baiocco says. “Simplicity liberates creativity.”
More than a decade in, the acronym has become a nickname and the door to the holding companies stays closed.
Two Grey veterans, one bridge and a name that stuck
BAM started life as the Baiocco and Maldari Connection. Now it goes by the shorter version, and Baiocco has the explanation ready.
“It’s like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met,” he says. “The BAM.”
The location is equally literal. The agency sits on the edge of the Manhattan Bridge, not between the two rails — which, Baiocco points out, makes it properly DUMBO. Down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass. Some agencies pick a neighborhood. This one moved into an acronym.
What the BAM is known for: crushing a brand into a diamond
Simplicity is the answer to almost every question here, and Baiocco has spent years defending it from the obvious misread.
“A lot of times when we talk about this, people think simplicity means simpleton,” he says. “We don’t dumb it down, we smart it up.”
The hard part isn’t cutting 11 messages down to one. It’s aggregating, prioritizing, forcing choices and landing on something singular that everything else can live underneath.
“You crush all that brand stuff down into a single thing,” Baiocco says, “and then you hit the light and it refracts in a million directions.”
Three things the BAM does differently
First is the One Shot Answer, trademarked at founding. Maldari describes it as identifying the undeniable truth a brand can uniquely own — and the discipline is unforgiving. Six words or less, packed with fertility, singular in what it says.
Second is craft: finding the language that opens white space for a brand to move into.
Third is the spark. Momentum in the marketplace, not just a good deck.
Baiocco has sat through the brand arrows, the brand houses and the DWEEB process at Diageo more times than he cares to count. “Everybody’s got their own kind of structure,” he says. The BAM built one that has to be sharp.
Interference is the enemy
For Maldari, independence is the easy answer. She and Baiocco grew up in environments where growth of 40% or 50% still came with a mandate to cut people.
“We want the autonomy to make our own decisions,” she says. “We put people first, which is — we didn’t grow up in environments where people were first.”
Baiocco’s word for the alternative is interference. “You got yourself and your client, and then you got all this interference in between you that’s throwing wrenches into things.”
Take that out and something simpler happens. “You make shit happen.”
Straight shooters who are in it for the ROI
Ask each of them why a brand should hire the BAM and they answer each other’s question. Maldari goes to process — the room full of clients who each write three words that define the brand, then discover they’ve produced 15 different versions of it.
Baiocco goes to the money. “We’re in the business of selling stuff,” he says. Every piece of communication is trying to transact or attract, and the only real difference is a sale now versus a sale down the road.
“No one gives you a million dollars and says, go have fun with it and don’t sell anything.”
He also refuses the old trade-off. Fun and ROI are not mutually exclusive — and boring isn’t one of the B’s in B2B.
The blowfish, the TikTok and the paint and sip
Staffing here is a blowfish. A core of about 25 people that balloons to 50 or 60 when a Super Bowl spot needs making, then shrinks back.
“Small on purpose,” Baiocco says. He calls the model core plus crowd — the thinkers stay, the specialists come in when the work needs them. The BAM has run it since roughly a year into the agency’s life.
The recruiting pitch, though, is the TikTok account, which the employees own and which has gone viral more than once. Maldari’s timesheet-chasing video pulled in around 4 million views.
Add hybrid weeks, two office days in summer, monthly paint and sips and a mantra they’re still working toward: joyful success.
Not weirdos. Fighters.
Offered the weirdos, misfits or underdogs question, Maldari picks a fourth option.
“We probably consider ourselves fighters,” she says. “We don’t stop until we crack it. The name is not just an acronym; it’s really the spirit of the company.”
Baiocco has the martial arts background to back the metaphor up, and a book and a new Substack on how those principles translate to business. His favorite chapter is perseverance, and his favorite proof is watching his taekwondo instructor strike a stone 29 times before it broke.
“You got to hit the brief 29 times,” he says. Nobody walks in with the idea on the first swing.
Dear Peter Choi and Mark Pritchard: let’s pick this back up
Maldari’s shout-out goes to Peter Choi, a few months into a new job, who held up the BAM’s work as some of the best his company had produced. “So let’s continue to talk,” she says.
Baiocco goes bigger and more obvious. Mark Pritchard, chief brand officer at Procter & Gamble, who was Ad Council president back when Baiocco served on it during his Grey years. The BAM is a P&G roster agency and picked up early projects out of that relationship.
“I’d like to rekindle that,” Baiocco says.
Learn more
The BAM Connection
Rob Baiocco LinkedIn
Maureen Maldari LinkedIn
The BAM Connection LinkedIn
Contact: https://www.thebam.com/contact
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
