ThompsonMurray Continues Growth During Tough Times
by June 10, 2002 12:00 am 100 views
As the economy slows down, one area advertising agency continues to grow.
ThompsonMurray has grown from 18 employees three years ago to 103 as of late May. The Springdale company was formed through a 1999 merger of Andy Murray’s BrandWorks Consulting and Mike Thompson’s Thompson Earnhart & Associates. Thompson resigned from the agency in February.
ThompsonMurray specializes in “convergence marketing,” which involves in-store displays for clients as well as direct mail, billboards and in-store radio promotions.
Murray, the CEO and chairman, said the agency helps companies market their brands inside Wal-Mart stores.
One of ThompsonMurray’s largest clients is Procter & Gamble, which manufactures everything from Tide detergent to Pampers diapers and is a major vendor to Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
“We’re very fortunate with Procter & Gamble,” Murray said. “People need their products whether we’re in a recession or not.”
Murray said the downturn in the economy seems to have hit general advertising firms like Blackwood Martin/CJRW before it affected in-store advertising firms like his own.
“We’re just now starting to see the impact of the economy,” he said.
But Murray has still been hiring because he said ThompsonMurray has been understaffed for the past six months in relation to the amount of business the agency was doing. Murray said he has hired about half of the Blackwood Martin/CJRW employees who left that company so far this year. Murray said he has a total of 11 employees who previously had worked for Blackwood Martin.
Murray had only good things to say about Blackwood and his agency, noting that Mars’ pulling its contract in no way reflected on the quality of work at Blackwood Martin.
When Blackwood Martin picks up another client or two, the agency could be looking to hire another 11 workers, Murray said.
“You don’t have the margin in this business to just idle 10 or 12 people [until you have work for them to do],” Murray said. “But Mark could be rehiring in a couple of months.
“It’s a relationship business,” he said. “We really live and die by those relationships.”