McIntosh Adds Partners, Asks ?What Can it Be??

Abstract art might have helped The McIntosh Group Inc. frame its corporate culture, but when it comes to taking care of business the marketing firm’s team members are definitely “impressionists.”

Client after client said the Fort Smith shop won them over with the kind of “global thinking” and “wow factor” presentations that normally come from New York’s Madison Avenue. TMG’s results are three straight years of 10 to 15 percent sales growth during an economic period in which agencies nationwide have felt declines in advertising/marketing spending.

Homegrown TMG is getting it done, founder John McIntosh said, by turning those powerful first impressions into lasting client relationships.

Cameron Smith, president of prestigious Bentonville executive search firm Cameron Smith & Associates Inc., said he chose TMG because of its professionalism.

“They rented a suite at Embassy Suites and had me up there for a big presentation like I was Procter & Gamble or something,” Smith said. “It was lights, camera, action, and my jaw hit the ground. They also designed my Web site, which now is exceeding 50,000 hits per month and is a central part of our business.

“They taught me about marketing my business and name as a brand. I had never thought of myself as a brand before, but I have seen immediate returns from going with McIntosh.”

With more than $4 million in annual sales, TMG’s success and expertise in consumer-oriented brands prompted it in June of 2004 to open a 3,000-SF branch on the downtown Bentonville square — in the heart of the retail supplier enclave for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

McIntosh, who ran the company as a sole proprietor for 13 years, took on two new partners in January by allowing Cameron Clement, TMG’s creative director, and Tom Kirk, the firm’s new president, to buy an interest in the business.

The privately held firm has kept terms of the deal confidential.

Kirk came from Chep USA, an Orlando, Fla., pallet and container titan. He was vice president of operations at Chep. His arrival allowed McIntosh, 58, to refocus as director of account services where he can be hands-on with a number of larger accounts, facilitate strategic planning and pinch-hit whereever else needed.

TMG, which also opened a Juno, Fla., office in 2000 to serve its south Florida Rheem Air Conditioning accounts, manages more than 25 brands on an ongoing basis and consults or collaborates for several others. McIntosh said the recent expansions are intended to help grow the business, but TMG is not trying to reach a critical size.

Instead of trying to serve 70 to 100 good brands, McIntosh said his firm would rather add five or 10 more great ones. What is critical, McIntosh said, is maintaining close client relationships and continuing to focus on the philosophy that has made TMG a regional power — “welcome the possibilities.”

The Mindset

TMG requires all 20 of its employees to create an abstract painting. They decorate the firm’s 7,500-SF hip second-floor office on Fort Smith’s historic Garrison Avenue.

The exercise, Clement said, is about exploring options, finding order in disorder and what people choose to see when faced with a challenge. TMG’s leadership team even made some notes about the process behind their own creations for this report.

“TMG’s strategy is to ask, ‘Why not?'” Clement said. “Not what it can’t be. Not what it wouldn’t or shouldn’t be, but what can it be. That’s the attitude, that’s the philosophy that serves clients and their brands. We are passionate about the brands and products we serve. We don’t let them serve us, we serve them.”

Catherine Frederick, a TMG vice president and accounts supervisor, said serving brands means building intimate client relationships. That way, TMG can both help focus on the big marketing picture while remaining in tune enough to help clients adjust to changing needs.

“There are firms locally that are project houses, where they can hammer out a direct mail piece in a day,” Frederick said. “That’s not what we do. That’s not our niche. We build client relationships and one- to three-year commitments where we can help make a real difference. We’re not just in it for the day, we’re about enhancing the brand and a real return on investment.”

Clement, TMG’s director of brand development, oversees brands and messaging and how those play out in products. He said TMG’s open-mindedness is not intended to just generate any old wacky idea, such as “the first Arby’s on the moon.”

The mindset is built on finding innovative solutions that add real value to brands whether that’s in the form of unique marketing strategies, new target markets or even additional product applications.

The Mingo

William Chatfield, president and CEO of Mingo Vibe LLC, said his company benefited by TMG thinking globally about his add-on services for telephony products. The Austin, Texas, company was a yet-unnamed startup just a year ago in April when TMG started working through its branding strategy. Today, Mingo boasts a significant contract with a group of major international customers.

“From the beginning, McIntosh’s mindset was that our products would change the way people do business,” Chatfield said. “They thought globally from the start. Because they work with so many international customers in Northwest Arkansas, they think on that scale.”

Mingo’s technologies bridge in-office business and accounting systems to cell phones. One product could, for example, allow real estate agents, to initiate paperwork from the field by simply using their phone keypad.

The firm also markets the first MP3 pod-casting product for Web blogs. Users can, for example, receive a call update every time information is added to a public stock’s blog. The information is translated into voice data and downloaded to the phone.

Chatfield said about 90 percent of Italian teenagers own cell phones, compared to only about 50 percent of American teens. So the teen market, plus emerging markets such as Asia, were Mingo’s biggest targets.

TMG helped come up with the name, including the youthful “vibe” feel while Chatfield added “Mingo” for the “Asian sounding” river in his hometown of Tulsa.

“TMG wanted to do a holistic branding approach from our colors down to our logo,” Chatfield said. “They thought about how our employees might look, dress and act in front of customers. It wasn’t just about a package for the product.

“Their brainstorming sessions went beyond out-of-the-box. They were trying to make a quantum leap for me, which I think they did.”

The Method

When it comes to the firm’s proprietary “think-tank” process, Clement and Frederick won’t share much. That’s apparently the opposite of what goes on during TMG’s marathon brainstorming sessions.

Frederick said the process starts by TMG’s team honing in on client or product needs. The aim is to get a sense of big-picture needs, then roll with possibilities that could add value.

“We have to listen intently and become a sponge, as opposed to a diaper,” Frederick said.

Clement said “reverse thinking” exercises are involved in the creative sessions. The TMG crew puts itself in the client’s shoes, looking at processes and getting into the heads of the client’s sales staff. Clement said a brand-centric approach develops, and the team continually challenges each other to drill deeper and improve the performance of the brands.

“We had a client that saw a 12-year market share decline, based on their research and ours,” Clement said. “We were able to arrest that decline and now we believe their market share is increasing strongly. We were partially responsible, but not totally.

“The client’s success is why we come to work. Helping them connect those dots is powerful. It’s all about the client.”

The Market

According to reports by media analyst Robert J. Coen at Universal McCann in New York, advertising/marketing spending for all media saw only a 3.6 percent increase from 2002 to 2003. The previous year, it increased only 2.4 percent, and on the heels of the technology bust from 2000 to 2001 the figure actually decreased 6.5 percent.

Comparable numbers for 2003 to 2004 aren’t available yet, but TNS Media Intelligence has reported that growth in measured media (traditional media advertising venues only) was up 9.8 percent for last year.

So during at least three of the last four years, McIntosh’s sales were as much as triple the national rate of marketing spending increases.

Scott Morgan is an executive vice president at ERC Properties Inc. in Fort Smith, another major TMG client. He said the marketing firm’s popularity comes from its multidimensional approach that’s scalable for literally a company of any size.

“TMG has a strong level of expertise in brand building and brand development,” Morgan said. “This can be a very complex area, especially when there are a number of brands ‘within a brand,’ as ERC has.”

Kirk said what lured him away from his vice president of operations post at Chep USA, a division of Australian conglomerate Brambles Industries Inc., was the ability to make a difference at TMG. Brambles manages more than 265 million pallets and containers through a global network of more than 500 service centers in 42 countries, largely for retail suppliers.

TMG’s more personable size and philosophies, Kirk said, can be just as empowering for employees as they are for clients.

“It raised a lot of eyebrows when my colleagues at Chep learned that not only was I moving to a firm of this size, but that I was trading Florida for Arkansas,” Kirk said. “But the fundamentals of running a good business exist at all levels. What I got excited about at TMG was the possibilities.

“I’m an operational, blocking and tackling numbers guy but being around these creative people is fun to me. I want to let John, Cameron and Catherine do what they do so well and sit behind them and help drive the company to a better cash-flow position. They don’t have to worry with things like HR and can concentrate on creatives and clients.”

The Mac Daddy

John McIntosh said he’s elated to have Kirk and Clement as partners and Frederick on the management team because the company is stronger than ever. Clients these days demand as much value as they can get out of a marketing firm, McIntosh said, and leveraging different employees’ strengths is an efficient way to build that value.

McIntosh, a Fort Smith native, said he started learning how to build strong client relationships back in the 1970s after earning his marketing degree from the University of Tulsa, where he was also a basketball point guard.

McIntosh eventually took a shot at advertising/marketing with Bedell Inc. and moved on to Ozark Video Productions Inc. for four years before working closely with Fred Williams from 1987 to 1991.

The marketing firm was Williams McIntosh & Associates back then, but it’s well known today as Williams Crawford & Associates. McIntosh’s experiences, including an extensive community service background, finally led him to venture out on his own.

He previously chaired the Fort Smith Riverfront Development Task Force from 1996 to 2000, and served on the Fort Smith Youth Arts Coalition and Riverfront Blues Society. That work led to a number of community-oriented clients TMG has today.

“It’s all about relationships, and internally and externally what we have now is a very robust company with a tremendous amount of experience and passion for what we do,” McIntosh said. “You combine Tom’s logistics background, Catherine’s packaging knowledge, Cameron’s on-shelf capabilities and my years of experience with wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers and we’re a real value.

“When clients realize what we can do, their reaction is like, ‘Oh, my.'”