ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240035
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
TIRED OF FARMING OUT requests for promotional materials and novelties, advertising firms have expanded to offer their customers one-stop shopping.
In this era of the retail superstore - where you can get your hair cut, buy groceries, plan a vacation and have your car's oil changed under one roof - it's little wonder that other businesses have picked up on the one-stop shopping concept.
Take, for instance, The Packett Group, a Roanoke advertising agency, and its fast-growing subsidiary, Group One Sales Promotion, which has moved to new quarters off Brandon Road.
Group One was formed five years ago to provide additional services for clients of what was then called the Edmonds Packett Group. While Packett could design a traditional media campaign - a series of newspaper and TV ads, for instance - it had to farm out requests for promotional materials and novelties such as logo-laden coffee mugs or in-store displays.
That's where Group One fits in, said business manager Bruce Thomasson. Its five staff members design promotional campaigns, order and ship materials, even track down hard-to-find novelties. And clients no longer have to hire two or more agencies to manage a single marketing program.
When large advertising agencies in cities such as New York and Los Angeles want to diversify, they typically ally with, or even buy, existing point-of-purchase firms or fulfillment houses rather than create new in-house departments.
But among ad firms in smaller cities, developing such in-house units is becoming more common.
"We are trying to offer just about everything we can under one roof for clients," said Scott Sittler, an account executive with The Robert Claiborne Agency Inc., another Roanoke advertising firm
Rather than being concerned with market share - how much of the area's advertising dollars they can grab - many advertising agencies are becoming more concerned with customer share, or how much of each client's advertising and promotional work they can do, he said.
By offering an integrated program, he said, agencies such as Robert Claiborne and Packett don't have to refer clients to other agencies for additional work.
Group One has the supplier connections and warehouse space to order, store and ship promotional items for clients. But simple fulfillment is not the agency's strength, Thomasson said.
"Our real expertise is working with a client to integrate sales promotions into their sales and marketing plan," Thomasson said. "We like to find a client who has a promotional program we can manage, where fulfillment is just a small part."
They prefer to work with clients from the inception of a marketing program, to create a promotional campaign that reinforces the customer's existing advertising.
"We try to position ourselves as a marketing partner rather than a vendor," said Robert Claiborne's Sittler. Many of his agency's clients are industrial customers who don't have in-house advertising staffs. "We want to be their marketing department."
Group One started out as a one-man operation and now has a staff of five. The division's new location - in the Blue Ridge Park for Industry - consolidates its operations. Before the move, Group One's offices were in the Packett building in downtown Roanoke, while its warehouse was in Salem. The 3,600-square-foot space gives the agency 600 additional square feet of floor space in the warehouse, plus about 25 percent more ceiling-to-floor space for stacking goods.
The walls have been turned into a poster gallery, where the division can show off its portfolio to prospective clients. That's something new for Group One; when its offices were still downtown, there was little room for samples. Any mugs or pencils or posters they did keep on hand were crammed into drawers or boxes.
"We've never had a place to display all this before," said Kimbro Ogilvie, account executive and creative director. "It's always just been in pictures."
Group One counts some of the Roanoke Valley's best-known companies among its clients: Salem Bank & Trust, Moore's Lumber and Building Supplies, WDBJ (Channel 7), The Roanoke Times. Many also are Packett advertising and public relations clients.
While order fulfillment is only part of Group One's business, they must be prepared to locate products that range from the mundane to the bizarre. They use a CD-ROM database containing the names of thousands of manufacturers to find suppliers who can provide goods that fit clients' price ranges and needs.
Most of the time, clients ask for relatively common items: T-shirts, mugs, key chains, pencils. But not all requests have been so simple. Longtime client Shenandoah Life, for instance, a few years ago wanted 200 plastic Phantom of the Opera masks for a promotion. It took awhile, but Group One finally located a supplier who could ship the masks.
"If it exists, we will find it," Ogilvie said.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER/Staff. 1. Enjoying the spacious new Group Oneby CNBoffice and warehouse are product manager Johnny Branson (from left),
account executive-creative director Kimbro Ogilvie, traffic manager
Karen Kiomedi and general manager Bruce Thomasson. 2. Advertising
firms are expanding to handle their own novelty work like 200
plastic Phantom of the Opera masks used for a promotion a few years
ago. color.