• by John Gaffney , November 11, 2002

Somewhat quietly, in Mountain View, CA a small ad agency is making some big noise in the tech sector. After growing from a creative shop to one that includes branding, media and event marketing services, NIA is having a great Q4. It just signed five new accounts over the past week, including Vividence. Previously it has worked with Apple and Adobe among others. We asked CEO Bob Godfrey about the state of small agencies and the tech space.

MDN: Do smaller agencies have any real advantages in today's world of monolithic holding companies?

The agencies that remain intact are either branches of the top 20 firms or those few who managed resources carefully. They are, however, still dealing with residual overhead costs (leases, capital equipment, etc.) and have been unable to retain key talent, which in turn makes client retention and satisfaction difficult. Many of these firms are struggling to stay in business. These problems affect large and small agencies alike, but a smaller agency that is flexible and able to respond quickly to client needs and still make money at a lower project fee is well positioned to take some of the business that's out there. We've effectively competed against much larger firms by keeping our overhead low and putting our profits into developing our key personnel and program offerings.

MDN: What media developments have surprised you most so far this year?

Other than that the downturn has persisted so long, I'm surprised that in light of fewer advertising dollars and vastly increased competition, the B2B print advertisements that are running in the technology publications are still so poorly thought out, written and executed.

MDN: How do you best communicate tech products and services through advertising in today's market? What are the best vehicles to communicate tech products (meaning media properties?

Well, taking a glamour shot of your semiconductor and running a headline that it's 2.058% faster than your competition is a pretty good way to waste your advertising budget. One of the things we help our technology clients focus on--and this is not intuitive for a highly technical management team--is to communicate the customer benefit in plain English. We take pains to drive readers to web pages for more information and strongly recommend running concurrent e-mail and public relations campaigns to increase the likelihood getting recognition with the target customer.

Since the crash, there has obviously been a contraction in the available vehicles, but we've had excellent results in concentrating on high level business publications like CIO Magazine once we've helped our technology clients understand the business benefit messaging.

MDN: What's the strongest part of your sales pitch?

Over and over, our clients tell us that there's an enormous competitive advantage in the ability to turn to one source for branding, advertising, marketing and public relations. Specifically, it helps in the consistency of message and program execution, and it is also a significant cost benefit.

MDN: Last book read?

The last book I read was The Best American Short Stories of 2002, edited by Sue Miller. Of all the stories, I think I liked E.L. Doctorow's "A House on the Plains" the best. But my favorite books are a four novel sequence called The Alexandra Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea) written by Lawrence Durrell in the late 1950s.

MDN: Favorite movie?

Since traveling to Africa is one of my favorite hobbies, I'd have to say "Out of Africa" is my favorite movie. It's a great tale of adventure and romance based on the life of Baroness Karen Blixen, a Danish woman who ran a coffee plantation on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and later wrote books about her experiences under the name Isak Dinesan.