The Underground: 'Never Heard of It'
One Chicago Nightlife Group Turns Marketing on Its Head

With such an effect on consumer circles, the industry has become like a Venn diagram –-expanding to encircle every aspect of life where leisure is concerned. People are buying based on buzz words, the premium brands from cigars to spirits, the fashion-istas, the celebrity tabloids, MTV, your SUV — there is no stone unturned for those looking to keep up with what is slapped with a label of “hot” or “now.”
    Familiar names with a brand new concept, Nightclub & Bar salutes three owners out there backing it up for a minute –– shaking clear the black-dot vision from the frequency of flashbulbs and beginning to think beyond the next 60 seconds in a 15-minutes-of-fame mentality that seems to have so many in this industry surgically attached to their Blackberries.
    Under the parent company Rockit Ranch Productions, President Billy Dec, CEO Brad Young and COO Arturo Gomez have been a trio, not to be reckoned with, but to be friends with over the last decade in Chicago, and their recently opened space The Underground is set to offer a military-styled oasis away from obnoxious nightlife. The whole concept is about simplifying the nightlife experience, and welcoming back the idea of a venue as a place to hang out and make friends, rather than to see and be seen.
    Among their first efforts together as a trio, Dec, Young and Gomez took over the already open, but floundering nightclub Le Passage on Chicago’s Oak Street. Brought back to life by the team some seven years ago, Le Passage is still operating today, only in much higher revenue streams. Shortly after saving Le Passage, the group found investors and opened Rockit Bar & Grill, their wildly successful restaurant concept. Both Rockit Bar & Grill and Le Passage nightclub stand as mentors and mental notes that led the group to decisive moves in opening The Underground this winter.

Social-ist Party

    With a design by Architect Bill Ewert, The Underground’s internal aesthetic delivers on the promise that the space is not just another overrated, superfluously-designed hotspot. “I think people are very pleasantly surprised that we have offered them something different in Chicago, and really, America,” says Young, who remains heavily involved during all of the design stages at each venue.     “It’s unique. When you walk in, you don’t feel like you are in a bar or a lounge. You feel like you are in a safe house somewhere. It’s a different experience.”
    The Underground is a 5,000-square-foot subterranean space, which, despite the high ceilings, has a sense of security and safety –– a play to escaping the weight of the outside world.
    Classic bottle service is served on tables resembling old ammo crates, and the exposed pipes on the ceiling were painted and incorporated to elevate the feel of a military bunker.
    Another striking design feature is the 50-foot-long world map that stretches from mid-level to the ceiling along one wall, lit from behind by tiny pin-point lights like a CIA tracking map.
    While Le Passage is associated with the finer things in life, soft angles and sensual service, and Rockit Bar & Grill kicks out a Classic Rock image and fun cuisine, the guys wanted The Underground to be, first and foremost, a place for socializing. A space where Young says “people come to meet people, but they stay for the music and the drinks,” the design helps to bring the group’s social interaction priority to the forefront.
    “Once people get inside, it is like a party in someone’s basement,” Dec says.
    “Where in a city do you ever feel like you could turn to the people next to you and say ‘hi’ and just talk about anything? The space echoes to the core of what restaurants used to be back in the day. You can always get food and liquor at home cheaper, but what we are really selling is going back to the root of what a restaurant is. It is pulling people together and giving them a platform to interact and feel included and noticed. I am not out to be the No. 1 keg beer seller; I am giving people a  platform to socialize.”
    Even though there was a lot to be excited about, the group worked tirelessly to make sure the debut of The Underground was as slow and as drawn out as possible. The emphasis from the start was not secrecy, but selectiveness, and it has been a key concept amongst the trio bringing Chicago in to the see The Underground.
    “The last nightclub that we opened (Le Passage), we wanted to slam dunk the first day and see how the business reacted after that,” Gomez says. “I think it was a totally wrong approach. We realized a slower, more calculated approach is a better way to execute.
    “Whereas most people who open any kind of a bar or nightclub typically try to create as much hype as possible before opening, and then the opening night is just a mosh pit, we just wanted to take our time and make sure the staff knew what the hell they were selling and service was where it should be and everybody felt really comfortable about the number of people in the room — really focusing on the overall customer experience rather than just opening.”

Marketing To A Different Drummer

    The initial invite list included the city’s prime influencers who shared a common goal. Whether from a political, social, celebrity or business background, each person in attendance those first opening nights was a person Dec saw as vitally interested in improving and expanding the Chicago nightlife scene.
     “We didn’t have flyers going around, but we had these buttons,” Dec says. “We put buttons on all of the influencers, key media and decision-makers — with The Underground logo on them.
    The buttons, attached to recognizable faces and people “in-the-know” around the city, became desirable commodities amongst eager future patrons. For Dec, Gomez and Young, they were inexpensive marketing tools producing ineffable results.
    “It’s totally just supply and demand,” Dec says. “It is the same as what you see in other markets like Playstation 3 –– not making enough of what people want, building the hype and building the overall demand.”
    The guys kept going. Backing the buttons and the days of soft grand openings as a sort of supportive skeleton was the publicity augmented by the concept’s viral videos –– a craze that is sweeping the Internet without much notice from the bar industry until now.
    “The idea was to do the whole spoof on the Mac commercials,” Gomez says. “We kept the focus of putting something out to the public that would be appreciated and forwarded on to, hopefully, thousands of other people.”
    The videos, posted on the Web site YouTube.com and on the venue’s site TheUndergroundChicago.com, are extremely lighthearted, pointing a sarcasm-ringed finger at stereotypical nightclub operators and patrons who take themselves too seriously. In one particular video, celebrities such as Joey Slotnick, Macy Gray and Jeremy Piven — all friends of the crew at Rockit Ranch Productions and willing accomplices to the parodys’ aim –– joke that they have “never even heard of,” The Underground and that going there is unwise.
    All of the other videos, directed by David Schwimmer of “Friends,” mimic the Mac commercials with two people, each representing a nightclub. With Dec representing The Underground, the other actors represent a series of clichéd nightclub types such as “the touchy guy nightclub” and the “tough guy nightclub” to illuminate, through humor, exactly what The Underground is not.
    The use of free Internet video posting allowed the group to put out a commercial — in essence — at a fraction of the cost of a television spot, that could be forwarded exponentially without end and included the added bonus of tracking viewer numbers.
“We were able to track the amount of hits and views on Youtube.com,” says Gomez.
    “The first week that we launched it, we had over 100,000 hits in first three days. It’s been a huge, huge success.”

Chicago’s Rise

    Beyond the loose theme of intrigue and espionage, beyond the innovation of viral videos and a calculated, slow launching, The Underground group hopes to carry more weight than most in terms of changing and innovating urban nightlife in the Windy City.
    Dec’s willingness to become almost a brand in and of himself, constantly dressed in a logo’d t-shirt or hat and networking 18 hours a day some days, really displays the level of commitment to making his role in this industry a lifestyle. Although slightly more behind the scenes, the same easily could be said for Gomez and Young as well, and the three view Chicago as a prime location to accomplish it all.
    “Chicago is a very relationship-based city,” says Dec. “It is very loyal, and if you take care of people, they remember you. Chicago also has a lot of talent. Musically, from Kanye West to Smashing Pumpkins coming back, to the restaurants being the top in the world, our nightclubs are making noise nationally with other cities definitely. From the White Sox winning the World Series to the Bears going to the Super Bowl to Barack Obama, everyone is talking about Chicago.
    “We have so much action going on, but it is not in our nature to scream about it to everyone on the coasts,” he says. “It just doesn’t go with the culture here.”
    Screaming or whispering, living in Chicago and being connected in food and beverage means knowing these three guys. And because of them, being connected in food and beverage in America today means taking serious notice of Chicago.
    “What speaks in the end are real numbers,” says Dec. “Real business. Real activity. It is here, and it has been creeping up on everyone from every angle.”                             NCB