Watch Ninth Street on TV

Ninth Street has long served as one of the major hubs of commerce and civic activity in Durham. From its inception as one of Durham's first and longest continuously-operating business districts, it has carved a distinctive place in the city's history - a place with a unique mix of college students, neighborhood residents, quirky shop business owners, and independent artists. But unlike many other parts of Durham memorialized in movies  (good and bad), I could not find any references to filming taking place on Ninth Street itself.

Well, things are about to change with a new television show called the "Pitch" (AMC), which pits two advertising agencies against each other in an effort to win a potential client. The first episode features Durham-based McKinney company against Los Angeles agency, WDCW. Both companies are chasing Subway, a fast-food franchise. McKinny won the competition and the winning advertisement, called “Freestyle Breakfast,” was filmed at 705 Ninth Street (a Subway franchise) on Ninth Street in Durham as Lethal rapped his way through the line at the restaurant.

The show premiers on AMC on April 30 at 9:00 pm EST. You can see the episode featuring Ninth Street subway here. The article from the Herald Sun describing the show and McKinney's win is reprinted after the break.

Durham ad agency wins ‘The Pitch’

BY BETH VELLIQUETTE

bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 919-419-6632

DURHAM – A fast-talking Kansas City rapper named Mac Lethal rapping about eating breakfast at Subway helped McKinney, a Durham ad agency, win the sneak-peak episode of a new television show called “The Pitch.”

The idea behind “The Pitch,” is to take the viewer behind the scenes as two advertising agencies compete to win the show within a seven-day period.

The first episode, which aired Sunday night, pitted McKinney, an agency located on the American Tobacco campus in Durham, against a Los Angeles agency, WDCW. The assignment, as shown on the AMC TV show, was to create an advertisement that would appeal to the 18- to 24-year-old demographic to convince them that Subway would be a great place to get a fresh breakfast.

The Subway people, led by Subway’s Chief Marketing Officer Tony Pace, also wanted the agencies to find the next Jared, a famous fan who became a spokesman for the company, according to Jonathan Cude, chief creative officer at McKinney.

Within the McKinney office, they looked too some of the younger employees to come up with ideas for “The Pitch,” and one team looked to YouTube, where they found Lethal rapping about how to make pancakes in a video that was starting to go viral, Cude said.

“We were trying to reach a young, young demographic, so we knew that social media and music were two things we should explore to start connecting with them,” Cude said.

Producers for the show contacted McKinney last August about the agency appearing on the show, and they filmed for seven to 10 days in December. They filmed the initial meeting with Pace, then at the office in Durham as Cude and group creative director Liz Paradise talked about ideas with their staff, and finally back up at the Subway world headquarters in Milford, Conn., for the final pitch.

The winning advertisement, called “Freestyle Breakfast,” was filmed at Subway on Ninth Street in Durham as Lethal rapped his way through the line at the restaurant.

Watching the show Sunday night was almost more nerve-racking than giving the pitch and waiting for the results, Cude said.

The crew probably filmed about a hundred hours at each of the two advertising agencies and then edited it down to a 42-minute show, he said.

McKinney, Subway and Lethal are in discussions now about the future of the advertisement that McKinney created for the show.

McKinney is an independent advertising agency with about 200 employees and clients all over the world. In fact, it only has one local client, Cude said.

“I think it’s an opportunity to enhance our profile to be seen by more people,” Cude said about the television show. “It gives more people a chance to know who we are and to get to see the kind of talented and passionate people that work here every day.”

The official premier of “The Pitch” is April 30 at 9 p.m., which will be followed by a repeat of the show featuring McKinney at 10 p.m. After that new episodes of “The Pitch” will air for the next eight weeks at 10 p.m. each Monday.

The full episode featuring McKinney can be seen for a limited time at AMCtv.com.