By LOUIS LLOVIO
Original story on the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s website
With the economy in a tailspin last year, one of the industries hardest hit was the advertising business as clients, especially retailers, cut way back on their marketing budgets. Many ad firms had to lay off creative talent and other employees. Some closed shop.
But the Richmond-based advertising agency Big River not only survived, it prospered.
President and CEO Fred Moore said Big River was able to do well in the difficult environment because it never deviated from its core principles and practices. “It’s all about trusting who you are and what you do,” he said.
Undeterred by the downturn, Moore moved the agency into a new 7,000-square-foot Tobacco Row office last year as other agencies were losing clients and cutting staff.
“It was a leap of faith,” he said.
And it’s a leap that is beginning to pay dividends. In recent months the agency, which already counts MoonPie and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield as clients, has added several large new clients, including the highly sought-after $24 million-per-year Virginia Lottery account.
It also added the Washington-based National 4-H Council, and Henrico County-based TBL Technologies.
Moore credits his agency’s recent and long-term success on its approach — which he said is being efficient and smart.
“We’re like Navy SEALs; we’re small, but we’re very effective,” he said comparing Big River to the elite military organization.
Moore said Big River’s size and level of expertise allows it to take a surgical approach when it works with clients.
The firm has 20 employees, up from about 16 or 17 last year, most of whom have several years of experience at bigger agencies.
“There is a lot of hard work that goes into” creating effective advertising, said Terry Taylor, Big River’s creative director. An industry veteran, he joined the firm shortly after it opened in 2001. “People come to ad agencies and they expect some craziness, but it’s a craft and like any craft, there’s a lot of trial and error.”
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Big River’s approach to advertising is that there is more to a campaign than a new logo, website or TV ad. While those components play an important role, the essential element is a clear message that tells the client’s story, Moore said.
Moore points to Big River’s work on the investment banking firm Harris Williams & Co.
Big River found that the firm was trying to reach bigger companies than its specialty — the middle market.
Instead of trying to create a brand for Harris Williams that could alienate some clients and it might not be able to live up to, the agency figured it should embrace its strength, Moore said.
“We have to come at it from [the customer's] perspective,” Moore said,.
The agency created a brand that touts the message: Welcome to the Middle.
Harris William’s literature and website all reinforce its strengths in the middle market.
For a brand to really take on a life of its own, it takes a lot of internal discipline and patience, Moore said.
“If you stick with a brand, great things can happen,” he said, noting Apple Inc. and its consistent messaging as an example. Apple has marketed itself so well that even though many of its products are not market share leaders, they are prized as status symbols, he said.
The National 4-H Council bought into Big River’s approach and hired the agency this year.
It picked Big River because of the agency’s ability to communicate the council’s brand, said Andy Ferrin, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the agrarian educational organization. The council needs to project a consistent image and message across a national network.
“What we wanted when we began looking for an agency was to create a strategic partnership,” Ferrin said. Big River “really listened and understood what we needed to do.”
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The economic downturn hit the Richmond ad community hard.
“Last year, it was almost tragic to see [the number of] people who were coming to our socials and events looking for work,” said Rob Reid, president of the Richmond Ad Club and associate media director at Richmond-based ad agency Neathawk, Dubuque & Packett.
According to the industry publication Ad Age, the U.S. ad industry–advertising, marketing services and media–has cut 163,400 jobs, or 10 percent of employees, since the start of the recession.
While Reid did not track exactly how many people were let go, he said it was clear hundreds were out looking for work.
Reid said Richmond’s ad community may have been hit harder because it has an unusually large number of significant ad agencies for the size of the market.
One of the area’s better known firms, RightMinds, was one of the hardest hit. Two of the firm’s largest clients, S&K Famous Brands and Land America Financial, filed for bankruptcy and eventually went out of business, leaving it with thousands of dollars in unpaid bills.
RightMinds was forced to lay off staff and move from its state-of-the-art office in Shockoe Bottom. After struggling for months, it shut down for good this month.
But agencies that were able to weather the storm are seeing better days. Elevation was able to hold on to all of its employees through the downturn and is now adding staff and expanding its Richmond office.
The Martin Agency, the area’s largest, last year was forced to lay off about 24 employees because clients cut back on spending and it lost one of its biggest clients, UPS. But Martin rebounded and wound up having one of the best years, landing several new accounts and being named by Adweek as the 2009 ad Agency of the Year.
Reid said the Richmond ad community is bouncing back.
“The [request for proposals] are increasing, and the business development people are very busy,” he said.
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Moore founded Big River in 2001. To run the agency’s creative department, he brought along Taylor, a friend and industry veteran.
Taylor, in advertising since 1981, spent time working at some of the country’s biggest advertising agencies, including stints at Chiat/Day, Ogilvy & Mather and BBDO.
The two men met in 1995 when they worked at Earle Palmer Brown’s Richmond office.
Taylor left in 1996 for New York, but came back several years later to work at Arnold Worldwide’s Richmond office, where Moore was working.
Taylor joined Big River several months after it opened in 2001. In its infancy, the agency partnered with Martin and leased space from the powerhouse. Moore bought out Martin’s share in 2007.
While Taylor and Moore have a hand in everything that happens at the agency, Big River creative work is collaborative.
At a recent brainstorming session, nine staff members from all facets of the agency sat around a conference table packed with snacks while they discussed Virginia Lottery’s products and how to market it to a core demographic.
Kelly Slothower, Big River’s director of account planning, led the session that was part learning about the lottery and part a freewheeling gab session with participants shouting out ideas — some feasible, some off the wall.
But the free-for-all had a serious purpose — to generate ideas that might not pop up if a creative director was sitting alone with a laptop and a cup of coffee.
Slothower laid out basic ground rules at the start, including the need to postpone judgment, encourage wild ideas and build on others’ ideas.
For the uninitiated, the ideas came up so fast it was tough to keep up.
“It’s amazing to be in a room with a group of really smart, creative people when they start putting ideas on the table,” said John Hagerty, a spokesman for the Virginia Lottery who sat in on the brainstorming session.
The normally outspoken Taylor didn’t say a word, sitting back and watching the action.
“I usually stay quiet in [brainstorming sessions] because when the creative director starts yapping, sometimes people don’t participate with their ideas,” he said afterward. “And ideas are what we are about.”
