Reverse Engineering Advertising
In 2017, Rory McShane started what was called at the time McShane LLC from his garage with one employee at his house off Desert Inn and Eastern. The advertising firm worked with clients ranging from political candidates to non-profits here in the Las Vegas valley and across the country.
The firm started with a simple idea – bringing “Big Data”, known as microtargeting into every level of advertising from political campaigns to public affairs projects and businesses.
By 2020 the firm had opened an office in Las Vegas and Washington, DC and counted among its clients’ members of the United States Congress, state political parties, Clark County Judges, and major corporations.
That same year, the firm’s founder Rory McShane was recognized for his innovation in advertising, being named one of the 40 top consultants under 40 years old by the American Association of Political Consultants and was recognized by Campaigns and Elections magazine as one of only 16 rising stars in the political advertising and strategy industry.
In 2021, the firm then known as McShane faced one of its biggest challenges yet helping the San Antonio Police Officers Association protect their collective bargaining rights in a heavily contested ballot initiative. Despite being outspent heavily, RMC used big data to isolate individual voters most likely to be persuaded to support the union, then matched those voters to their home IP addresses, mobile device IDs, social media accounts and television streaming services and relentlessly pounded persuasive messaging – ultimately resulting in a 1.5% victory for the Police Officers Association. In that election, RMC’s algorithm correctly predicted the turnout of 99.8% of targeted voters.
After the election, San Antonio Police Officers Association President Mike Helle said, “The McShane team and their partners at Public Alliance delivered an incredible victory for the San Antonio Police Officers Association. They used data and cutting-edge tactics to defeat Proposition B, at a time when no other anti-police ballot referendum had been defeated in the country.”
2022 saw the firm’s largest growth ever, growing 1000% from its first full year in business, 2018. RMC (then McShane) was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5000 fastest growing private businesses in America and won more than fifty advertising awards from industry associations and publications. Their client list grew to include groups like the American Federation for Children and the American Jewish Congress.
In late 2024, the firm rebranded from McShane LLC to Revolutionizing Microtargeted Campaigns, RMC, with the founder, Rory McShane explaining that far too much of the credit for the company’s success was being laid at his feet, saying “we have absolutely brilliant ad strategists here who are smarter than I am and more creative than I am and the old name gave people the idea that I was doing this myself.”
RMC has staff across the country from Nevada to Washington, DC and Texas to Idaho – but the nucleus is a sprawling office in the heart of Las Vegas where graphic designers, email copy writers, strategists, and ad creators work under one roof meeting all through the day to come up with and pitch ideas to their clients.
The firm’s second in command Vice President Steve Hilding explained to me that RMC is special kind of firm, not just because of how they use data but because they try to be just the right size.
“Normally advertising agencies have hundreds of employees and thousands of clients, and if you ever meet the executive team, it’s the day you sign the contract and that’s it. Then on the other hand you have the one guy who works out of his house and goes on Craigslist or Fivver to find a subcontractor to actually create the ads and place them. Even though it isn’t the easiest way to make money – we think by being the middle ground between those two models we have an uncommon level of success. At 18 people we have everything our clients need under one roof – but me, Rory McShane and the senior staff know what’s happening with every client, every day.”
Sitting in his conference, adorned with awards on each wall explaining how they integrate data in advertising, McShane looks as far away from a central casting ad man as possible with his cowboy boots and neck tattoos.
He explained to us that for entire history of advertising, agencies started with the budget, then split that budget into various mediums, then tried to figure out what consumers they could target with that medium.
McShane says his strategy is completely different, using the approximately 220 available data fields, they build a profile of what the ideal consumer would like, then set out to match that consumer to available mediums, their social media accounts, their IP address, their mobile device, etc. – then launch advertising just to those consumers they believe have the highest likelihood of converting.
I mentioned a friend of mine who owned a business installing garage doors on large commercial properties as an example, McShane explained that he would start by finding data on commercial property owners of warehouse space above a certain size, then match those building owners to the digital accounts and run targeted advertising specifically, and only to them.
“I’m not the guy to hire if you’re selling Coca-Cola, it’s a cheap universally appealing product and almost anyone is a potential customer. Clients hire us when they’re marketing a product, campaign, or initiative that has a small but highly valuable potential user base. It’s finding the needle in the haystack.” McShane said.
When asked about his favorite projects, McShane didn’t talk about a campaign victory or an advertising award. He told us about his company’s charitable projects. Every year, RMC gives away dozens of turkeys and Thanksgiving dinners to needy families across the country. Last year they gave away over 400 Halloween costumes to struggling parents in the Las Vegas Valley. To fund the Halloween project, McShane cancelled the company’s yearly corporate Christmas & Cigar Party in Washington DC.
“I thought about what it might feel like for some kid to walk into his school at Halloween with the other kids in costumes and not be able to dress up. There are a lot of problems in the world, but that was one I could fix. Screw a cigar party.
From their early days in political advertising to now, it’s clear that RMC is something different in the advertising space, with their website proudly boasting that “For decades political and corporate marketing has been dominated by country club members in blue blazers and khaki pants and for decades it’s failed, miserably. 22 years ago, Steve Jobs released an ad called “Think Different.” Jobs told us, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.” McShane refers to his team as the rebels of advertising, with no respect for the status quo.
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