Media Works' founder and CEO Jody Berg, left, and president Michele Selby will have to move the file cabinet they posed with to make room for desks for new hires as their business, which won a major auto dealer account last month, expands. (Baltimore Sun photo by Amy Davis / October 27, 2009) |
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Thanks to a satisfied customer who gave an excellent reference, Jody Berg and her company, Media Works Ltd., got a call last month to pitch a potential client.
The Van Tuyl Automotive Group, the country's largest independent network of car dealerships, was looking for an experienced media buyer to help it place more than $30 million in advertising over the next year - a staggering amount that would more than double Media Works' annual billings. Berg remembers speaking to a Van Tuyl official one day by phone in September, and then flying to a meeting in Atlanta the next day. Proposals and follow-up meetings came quickly after.
"It was very fast and furious," said Berg, 49, Media Works' founder and chief executive.
Berg and her team impressed Van Tuyl enough for the Phoenix-based dealership group to pick them to handle its advertising spending in a wide variety of markets across the southwestern United States. It was a big win for Media Works, which had its most lucrative year last year in its two-decade history but had seen business slow this year as the advertising market slumped during the worst of the recession, according to Berg.
The company's experience in the turbulent advertising market followed a national trend. For the first six months of this year, total advertising spending fell 14.3 percent compared with the same year-ago period, to $60.87 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a New York-based provider of advertising and marketing data.
The fact that Media Works won a large account connected to the car dealership industry is noteworthy. As Americans faced a recession this year with increasing job losses, new-car buying slowed to a crawl. Car dealers spent $1.3 billion, or 47 percent less, on advertising in the first half of this year compared with the $2.4 billion that dealers collectively spent during the same period last year, according to TNS figures.
Media Works, which is based in Owings Mills, has had big clients before - the biggest previous client involved a $10 million annual spending account.
But the Van Tuyl account is the biggest one yet for Media Works, which Berg launched after working for several large companies in the Baltimore area for years. The firm has 13 employees and, before this latest account, managed about $25 million a year in billings.
The Van Tuyl account, however, is going to require more staff - meaning changes and growth are coming to Media Works.
Berg has hired five new employees to help with the work, and expects to hire two, maybe three, more.
She's having new desks and computers brought in, and dedicated her office's basement to the Van Tuyl account.
She expects that her staff will have to travel to various Van Tuyl locations a couple of times a month, so she's buying wireless Internet cards for laptop computers, so employees will have access to the Web wherever they're traveling.
And she reminded her president, Michele Selby, 49, that they need to buy a portable GPS unit, for employees to use while traveling.
"It's challenging," Selby said. "We have to visit every dealership every quarter." The company has 75 dealerships.
They're also pushing back the hours of some employees who work with Van Tuyl, to accommodate for the two- to three-hour time differences at the various dealerships.
The satisfied client that hooked up Media Works with the Van Tuyl account is Mile One Automotive Group, a Pikesville-based company that has 62 dealerships in the Baltimore and Washington area, as well as in Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Brian Williams, Mile One's director of marketing and advertising, said Media Works has handled his company's media buying in the region for the past 18 months.
He and another Mile One employee happened to be acquainted with marketing executives at Van Tuyl.
"We put in a good word for them," Williams said. "They do a phenomenal job for us."
Cassie Broemmer, director of customer retention and marketing for Van Tuyl, said she was impressed with the long and varied experience of Berg and Selby and the rest of their team.
They considered several other agencies, but ultimately settled on Media Works, she said. "We needed someone who could scale really quickly," she said.
In a sign that the advertising market could see a rebound next year, Broemmer said she expected Van Tuyl to spend more on advertising next year than this year.
The company expects to focus its advertising spending on radio, cable and network television, but still also spends a lot on print, such as newspapers. The Internet is a growing advertising space for them. Broemmer estimated that 40 percent of car sales for Van Tuyl originated from an online source, from dealer Web sites to Facebook.
In addition to the $30 million Van Tuyl expects to spend through Media Works, it spends $300,000 more a month advertising on Google's search page results.
"We're just trying to spend our money the best way we can," Broemmer said.
Berg, who grew up in Pikesville, is herself a working mother, with a 21-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son, who has balanced her career with her family by building her company offices as an attachment to her house in a wooded area of Owings Mills.
She and Selby said the work-life balance is important for them and their employees.
"There are a lot of mothers here," Selby said. "So you've got to be understanding."
The Van Tuyl Automotive Group, the country's largest independent network of car dealerships, was looking for an experienced media buyer to help it place more than $30 million in advertising over the next year - a staggering amount that would more than double Media Works' annual billings. Berg remembers speaking to a Van Tuyl official one day by phone in September, and then flying to a meeting in Atlanta the next day. Proposals and follow-up meetings came quickly after.
"It was very fast and furious," said Berg, 49, Media Works' founder and chief executive.
Berg and her team impressed Van Tuyl enough for the Phoenix-based dealership group to pick them to handle its advertising spending in a wide variety of markets across the southwestern United States. It was a big win for Media Works, which had its most lucrative year last year in its two-decade history but had seen business slow this year as the advertising market slumped during the worst of the recession, according to Berg.
The company's experience in the turbulent advertising market followed a national trend. For the first six months of this year, total advertising spending fell 14.3 percent compared with the same year-ago period, to $60.87 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a New York-based provider of advertising and marketing data.
The fact that Media Works won a large account connected to the car dealership industry is noteworthy. As Americans faced a recession this year with increasing job losses, new-car buying slowed to a crawl. Car dealers spent $1.3 billion, or 47 percent less, on advertising in the first half of this year compared with the $2.4 billion that dealers collectively spent during the same period last year, according to TNS figures.
Media Works, which is based in Owings Mills, has had big clients before - the biggest previous client involved a $10 million annual spending account.
But the Van Tuyl account is the biggest one yet for Media Works, which Berg launched after working for several large companies in the Baltimore area for years. The firm has 13 employees and, before this latest account, managed about $25 million a year in billings.
The Van Tuyl account, however, is going to require more staff - meaning changes and growth are coming to Media Works.
Berg has hired five new employees to help with the work, and expects to hire two, maybe three, more.
She's having new desks and computers brought in, and dedicated her office's basement to the Van Tuyl account.
She expects that her staff will have to travel to various Van Tuyl locations a couple of times a month, so she's buying wireless Internet cards for laptop computers, so employees will have access to the Web wherever they're traveling.
And she reminded her president, Michele Selby, 49, that they need to buy a portable GPS unit, for employees to use while traveling.
"It's challenging," Selby said. "We have to visit every dealership every quarter." The company has 75 dealerships.
They're also pushing back the hours of some employees who work with Van Tuyl, to accommodate for the two- to three-hour time differences at the various dealerships.
The satisfied client that hooked up Media Works with the Van Tuyl account is Mile One Automotive Group, a Pikesville-based company that has 62 dealerships in the Baltimore and Washington area, as well as in Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Brian Williams, Mile One's director of marketing and advertising, said Media Works has handled his company's media buying in the region for the past 18 months.
He and another Mile One employee happened to be acquainted with marketing executives at Van Tuyl.
"We put in a good word for them," Williams said. "They do a phenomenal job for us."
Cassie Broemmer, director of customer retention and marketing for Van Tuyl, said she was impressed with the long and varied experience of Berg and Selby and the rest of their team.
They considered several other agencies, but ultimately settled on Media Works, she said. "We needed someone who could scale really quickly," she said.
In a sign that the advertising market could see a rebound next year, Broemmer said she expected Van Tuyl to spend more on advertising next year than this year.
The company expects to focus its advertising spending on radio, cable and network television, but still also spends a lot on print, such as newspapers. The Internet is a growing advertising space for them. Broemmer estimated that 40 percent of car sales for Van Tuyl originated from an online source, from dealer Web sites to Facebook.
In addition to the $30 million Van Tuyl expects to spend through Media Works, it spends $300,000 more a month advertising on Google's search page results.
"We're just trying to spend our money the best way we can," Broemmer said.
Berg, who grew up in Pikesville, is herself a working mother, with a 21-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son, who has balanced her career with her family by building her company offices as an attachment to her house in a wooded area of Owings Mills.
She and Selby said the work-life balance is important for them and their employees.
"There are a lot of mothers here," Selby said. "So you've got to be understanding."
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Well deserved.
Johnn46 (10/31/2009, 9:55 AM )