Why Advance Business Systems’ TV ads are a little more serious this football season

Advance Business Systems spent many ads on local Baltimore airwaves searching for a marketing plan. Suits in a conference room scheming up hot campaigns.
Well, actually, they were just being cheeky.

But now, the 51-year-old document management company really has settled on a new way of marketing itself to the Baltimore area this fall. The idea, said company president Jeff Elkin, is to tell people what they do.
The company is known for providing copier and printer services. But over time, that has evolved, said Elkin, whose parents founded the company in the days of carbon paper.
“It went from just a machine sitting in the corner of an office to an onramp and offramp for information in the office,” Elkin said.
Over the last several years, the Cockeysville-based company has begun to offer more digitally focused services. Some of the new offerings reflect where printing is going, such as cloud-based and mobile printing services. Beyond documents, the company also offers managed IT, which gives each client office a virtual CIO to help maintain existing infrastructure, and map out what technology is needed.
Elkin said the company has a large number of nonprofit clients and is also making inroads with tech firms. For instance, Pixelligent is now a client. For growing organizations, Elkin said Advance can offer years of experience to help the businesses identify what they need. The idea, Elkin said, is “to understand what the objectives are and match the technology and service.”
So when it came time to prepare the ad for this year’s fall season, the campy roundtable was out. Instead of straight name recognition, the company also wants to provide a sense of what they do now.
“Our hope is that people will see them and get a familiarity and a positive sense of Advance,” Elkin said.
Here’s what debuted during Thursday night’s Ravens preseason game: