Rockfish Merger Nets Clients

Rockfish Interactive has tripled in size since it was spawned early this year by a merger of Fort Smith’s McIntosh Group and Fayetteville’s Rockfish Studio.

The merged company has hired 15 employees since January — going from seven to 22 — and the owners plan to hire about 10 more by the end of the year to work at its offices in Fort Smith and Fayetteville.

“I want to have relationships with some of the most successful companies in Northwest Arkansas and beyond this area, and I think that will happen as we hire some of the most talented people,” said Kenny Tomlin, president of Rockfish Interactive in Fayetteville.

Rockfish Interactive is owned by Tomlin and Steve Clark of Fort Smith, who bought the McIntosh Group last year from founder John McIntosh.

Tomlin said Rockfish Interactive is an advertising and design agency that specializes in interactive application development and print media.

The merger was finalized in March. The new company offers the same services the two companies provided, but operations have been streamlined, and traditional advertising agency know-how has been combined with high-tech interactive Web expertise.

“For a lot of the business opportunities that are out there, there’s a convergence of traditional agency marketing services and interactive,” Tomlin said. “Most companies are looking to invest their budgets from the marketing standpoint, both interactive as well as traditional media marketing.”

Rockfish Interactive’s biggest client, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., recently tapped the agency to rebuild and launch Walmartfacts.com, a corporate communications Web site.

But it isn’t about accolades or the star clients, Tomlin said. Instead, Rockfish is about the team. And if that team happens to make award-winning designs and garner star clients, then that’s OK, too.

Growth Curve

The company has 20 active accounts, six of which are national — including Lexmark, maker of drivers and software for printers.

Other regional accounts are O.K. Industries Inc. and Rheem Manufacturing Co.’s Air Conditioning Division, both of Fort Smith. The City of Fort Smith and its Chamber are also clients.

But Tomlin said in order to have the star clients, Rockfish needs to have star employees.

“It’s sort of my conviction that if you hire good people, that good business will follow and growth obviously follows that,” he said. “My goal right now being a young company is to hire some of the best people in the business to work for our company …

“Honestly, right now we’re growing about as quick as we can hire people and keep up. Our anticipation, looking to 2007, is that we’ll continue that growth curve.”

Tomlin won’t divulge revenue for the new company, saying that’s one way to measure growth, but he prefers to measure it by how his company is attracting talented employees and some of the best clients.

Offering the services Rockfish Interactive can now provide should lead to growth — both for new clients and old ones, he said.

Interactive Solutions

Tomlin has been in Web development for more than 10 years, getting into it during the Internet boom. And right now, Web application development is big for marketing, he said.

It’s become so much more than just a Web site with company information, like an online brochure. With technology that is available now, it’s about developing Web-based application that can perform functions like Internet sales through e-commerce and online corporate communications tools, like Walmartfacts.com. Tomlin said the company can also provide Web-based training and customized software development such as interactive CDs for presentations.

He said about 80 percent to 90 percent of the interactive work it does is Web application development.

On June 30, Walmartfacts.com was launched to much fanfare from the retail giant. The Web site was Rockfish’s first big account with Wal-Mart, and Tomlin said he hopes it’s the first of many partnerships with the company.

Tomlin said the Web site is important for Wal-Mart because it’s how the company communicates with the world. The Web site was one of Wal-Mart’s attempts to combat negative publicity and get its side of the story across to the public.

“Wal-Mart, from a public relations standpoint, is probably the No. 1 target in America right now,” Tomlin said. “There are very few things more important to Wal-Mart than making sure that they’re engaged actively in communicating to the media and to the public.”

The company isn’t only looking to produce applications and software for other companies but also internally. At the end of July, Tomlin said Rockfish will launch its first company-owned Web-based application. Fourthbook.com is a Web-based church management application site that allows churches to manage their membership, financial giving, run reports and send out mass e-mails.

“I think having the ownership of these types of applications that we’re managing internally also provides us experience that we can offer to our customers,” Tomlin said, “where we’re sort of learning on our own.”

He said there should be about six such applications that would be available to various industries — locally and nationally. Those using the applications would pay a monthly fee for the Web-based service.

Merging Experience

In July, Rockfish added a crucial member to their marketing team. Chip Paris joined Rockfish as vice president of marketing. He left St. Edward Mercy Medical Center in Fort Smith, where he was director of marketing and planning for more than seven years.

“That convergence [of the McIntosh Group and Rockfish Studio] is the most exciting thing of all of this,” Paris said. “It’s rare to find one source for everything you needed. So that’s part of the excitement that we’re doing — having all those resources under one roof.”

Having the “bench depth” and experience in both traditional marketing and interactive design is a competitive advantage for Rockfish’s clients, Tomlin said. One of those is streamlining its traditional media marketing and interactive marketing.

Many times a company will spend a lot of money on marketing for professional billboards and brochures, but their Web site may not look anything like them. That’s because two different agencies may have to handle the two separate issues, Tomlin said. Having one company do all of it can keep marketing uniform.

“With the talent we’re hiring and the level of expertise that we’re going to have, there are going to be very few things that we can’t tackle for a particular client,” Paris said.

Paris said the company wants to work in a partnership with their clients. “What we do is try to help them think even broader beyond how they can use emerging technologies to meet their needs going forward in ways it can produce a better return on their investment,” he said, adding that Rockfish offers solutions to help its clients as if it were their own company.