Advertising Age Flubs TM Story
by January 6, 2003 12:00 am 79 views
We were ready to give Advertising Age magazine a kudo for profiling ThompsonMurray, the Springdale marketing firm, on Page 1 of its Dec. 16 issue.
Until we read the story.
Sure, Andy Murray has led ThompsonMurray through a tremendous growth stage, and he deserves recognition for doing so. From all indications, his company is booming.
But Advertising Age reported that TM’s primary rival in Northwest Arkansas, Blackwood Martin/CJRW of Fayetteville, had closed and Murray had hired away its staff of 11. Murray may have hired 11 people from Blackwood Martin, but the agency is still alive and well.
“I’ve got 29 people sitting right here in this office working,” Mark Blackwood said on Dec. 19. “They just plain made a mistake. I guess folks in New York don’t always know what they’re talking about. We’re very much alive and well and looking forward to a prosperous new year.”
Blackwood said he knew the mistake didn’t come from anything Murray had told the Advertising Age reporter who wrote the story. Blackwood said the reporter admitted he had made the mistake.
While we’re at it, we also noticed that the national trade magazine misspelled “Earnhart” in Thompson Earnhart & Associates, the name of the firm that merged with Murray’s BrandWork’s Consulting in 1999 to form ThompsonMurray.