"They're the less famous, less expensive" Cohen brothers, says Bayless/Cronin president Tim Bayless of his star creative team.

Brothers Mark Cohen, 31, and Michael Cohen, 28, recently reunited to work for Bayless/Cronin, a newly formed Atlanta agency. Mark left TBWA/Chiat/Day in Venice, CA, and Michael left his job with Loeffler, Ketchum, Mountjoy in Charlotte, NC to partner up in their hometown of Atlanta.

Mark, the copywriter, and Michael, the art director, work together on tv spots for Bayless/Cronin clients Bellsouth, the United Way and electronics chain Hi-Fi Buys. Both attended the Atlanta-based Portfolio Center, an advertising school with a two-year program focusing on helping its students build a portfolio, with a heavy focus on concept and art direction.

Bayless/Cronin is itself a pooling of the talents of longtime friends Tim Bayless (who founded the agency as Bayless & Partners) and Jerry Cronin (former creative director at Weiden & Kennedy in Portland). The forging of their partnership coincided with the agency becoming a subsidiary of Merkley Newman Harty in early August. Both executives have a long history of producing highly creative work for clients like Nike, Polaroid and ESPN, and the new agency is focused on keeping high creative standards.

Mark Cohen says the brothers have a clear-cut approach when coming up with fresh creative content.

Their approach "is to find one good thing, one truth, about the product and talk about that, besides just saying it's better and we put the 'qua' in quality," he says.

Jerry Cronin, the creative director at Bayless/Cronin, says the brothers' style produces great visual results but can be time-consuming.

"Their strategy of looking for one truth about a product is great, but it can take forever to find," says Cronin.

In a spot for a Motorola cel phone for Hi-Fi Buys, the Cohens focused on the tiny size of the product. The commercial begins with a group of new prison inmates being led into jail, where they are harshly told to strip, are hosed down and then subjected to a full body search. Yet, after lights out, one inmate is heard making a call to his girlfriend from his darkened cell. The gist of the spot is that the phone is small - small enough to sneak through a body cavity search.

The brothers pulled in favors to get the commercial -filmed in Los Angeles by director Ed Shumacher of Ambush Productions - shot their way, with the director's casting-agent girlfriend playing a key role. Even so, the finished product was edgy and the implied hiding spot for the phone pushed the limits of the client's expectations for the spot.

"They weren't really psyched, like let's put it on prime time," says Michael Cohen. "They ended up doing a media buy more in the South Park-esque time frame at night."

Another spot, promoting unlimited night calling for Bellsouth Cellular, uses images of various people, from factory workers to air traffic controllers, sleeping on the job. The message - "Be careful how much you use it" - alludes to the great bargains to be had by talking all night, and is characteristic of the Cohens' irreverent tone.

The responsibility of producing the spot ended up falling on the brothers. The Cohens and Bayless went to Los Angeles to direct it.

"The client came back to us with less money, so we decided to put the money into the production and not pay for a high-end director," says Michael Cohen.

Findlay Bunting, a documentary filmmaker and friend of Bayless, assisted with the shooting, but the task of directing was left to the agency team. "You kind of had to reign (Bunting) in, but it was good we didn't have a director because Mark and I and Tim and I were out there and we just directed it."

Mark and Michael have filmed projects together before, although most of their early work is footage of the brothers' exploding toys.

The sons of a U.sboards||19991101. Navy doctor, the Cohens had the opportunity to spend some of their early years in Alaska, which they say also has an impact on their ad work.

"We use a lot of white space," says Mark Cohen.