ook a minority stake in the Haggar clothing company as part of its arrangement with the manufacturer. But similar work continues today. Many media agencies are developing practices in what is called  principal media,  a term meant to describe the process of buying up commercial inventory from media companies and re-selling it to advertisers, rather than simply negotiating prices and placements.

RadicalMedia is testing these waters as more advertisers demonstrate a yen to create their own content. Geico is working on a holiday-themed special that is expected to utilize the many ad characters it has created over the years. Athletic-clothing brand Under Armour has set up its own internal studio to better handle its content needs as more advertisers work to capture consumer attention across a wider array of media outlets.

 The idea of being able to use entertainment to solve brand challenges and really commercialize our strengths is where I think what we're working on in terms of the future. This is the destination for music storytelling, whether it's theater adapting to streaming or television, whether it's artists who want to tell their story in a different way,  says Barocas who says that  being able to take that strength and commercialize it  will give Radical Media an incentive  to be true partners  with advertisers, artists and media and entertainment companies.

Kamen sees the new moves as part of the original maneuvers that originally gave rise to Radical. The  constant disruption  of the media and marketing industries  has been going on forever, : he says. When he and Scherma founded the company,  we always looked and wanted for Radical to have an attitude of embracing whatever those changes will be. HE adds:  We've sometimes been ahead of the curve. 

In an earlier era, Radical Media was involved with an MTV dating series,  Gamekillers,  that was produced along with the advertising agency BBH and was backed by a sponsorship from Unilever's Axe deodorant. Some of the personality types used in the show were also featured in Axe commercials. And Radical enjoyed a long working relationship with the iconoclastic ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, which devised work for Nike that took the company well beyond the typical 30 second commercial.

New concepts with similar themes have surfaced in the broadband era. Some advertisers can back documentaries or series that end up alongside more traditional content selections on Amazon's Prime Video or NBCUniversal's Peacock.  There's no question that brand dollars are going to continue to play a role, even in this streaming universe,  says Kamen. Marketers will need to determine how to make advertising part of the on-demand experience, but  How do you do that effectively? How do you do that tastefully? How do you do that while embracing an audience and making sure that you're appreciated for having brought something? 

The executives say Radical's current team will remain in place. Chris Kim, Dave Sirulnick and Jim Bouvet, who head up the company's studio, entertainment and commercials divisions, respectively are expected to continue in their roles.

Barocas is in many ways making a return to RadicalMedia, rather than an arrival. He worked alongside Radical's team when he held a job at Wieden, and Kamen gave Barocas and others time to develop Anomaly in Radical's offices. He intends to keep burnishing the company's hard won skills in bringing advertisers  something incredibly different  than others, Barocas says. In an industry that is shifting to accommodate new technology, even RadicalMedia wants one thing to remain the same - its reputation.