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TWST: Can we begin with a short history and overview of the CoActive
Marketing Group, Inc.?
Mr. Benfield: The CoActive Marketing Group is a full-service marketing
and sales promotion company that perceives and positions itself as a
provider of solutions for our customers ' most of which are Fortune 500
packaged goods companies. We develop and implement marketing programs
for our clients, from concept to execution. Our goal is to be the
leading marketing agency worldwide, providing strategic client solutions
from concept to execution while pursuing an unwavering commitment to
maximizing sales and profits. The key strength and competitive advantage
of our company is that we integrate consumer communication, creative
media, and strategic services. At the same time, we activate tactical
execution with the end users. Those end users, from our business
perspective, can be either the consumer or the retailer. That is the
ultimate end user or the channel facilitator to get to the ultimate end
user. That's the role that manufacturers need to have filled. In terms
of our strength, all world-class promotion agencies have to have a
strong front end. They've got to have strategy and tactics and creative
and media expertise ' all of those elements. What makes us different is
that we have a particularly strong back end. We have a close, ongoing
relationship with the sales and retail back side of the business, from
the manufacturer's point of view, and our history of success gives us a
strong platform to fulfill retail execution, post-promotional analysis
in the in-field merchandising. We have a real visceral handle on what's
going on in the business. Our top management make probably 350 to 400
calls a year with our client sales forces to the retail trade, strictly
for the purpose of helping facilitate our programs through to the field
level. That's quite unusual for a promotion agency and something we've
cultivated for quite some time. I think we're at the top of our field in
that area. CoActive Marketing Group is a publicly held company. It was
founded in 1972. We have about 250 full-time employees, and 3,000
permanent part-timers who we use for our in-field execution when that's
called for. We have about 19 offices around the country. When we service
our clients, we form brand-centric teams; we draw on expertise from each
part of the company to form support teams or service teams for our
clients, giving them the best opportunity to have whole, rounded
solutions. We don't believe that there's only one answer for every
marketing promotion. The answer to every marketing challenge is not to
put a coupon on the back of a cash register receipt or put a sign in the
shopping cart. Marketing solutions include a wide mix of marketing tools
and tactics, all used to varying and different degrees on a project-by-
project basis, even account-by-account on a market-by-market basis. We
set our organization up to accomplish that. In terms of our core
competencies, we have four primary areas that, over the last several
years, we have been either developing or acquiring. One of them is event
marketing capability, which is based in Manhattan. The Event Marketing
group is exclusively dedicated to in-store, in-field sampling activity
and retail-tainment type activity ' that is, staging memorable events at
the retail point of sale to enhance the purchasing experience for the
consumer and help the retailer with the branding aspect of the business.
That group is also heavily involved in entertainment marketing. We take
Bill Maher and Politically Incorrect on tour to college campuses. We're
co-producers of the Aspen Comedy Festival. So we have very strong links
to comedy and entertainment and we make that part of our programs
whenever we can. A second area we have that's separate and strong is our
creative and interactive group, based in Ohio. There are about 90 people
in this group, 75 of whom are purely creative. They draw, design, write,
and create, and it gives us a very sharp, highly creative edge for our
consumer promotions. We produce very high quality creative solutions for
our clients. Also in Ohio is an interactive group we formed several
years ago that we have gradually brought along. It's called
CoActivity.com, although we don't market it as such. We have a very
strong group of interactive and electronic designers out there. We do
all the Web work for Heinz, Pet Products, for Adams Golf, for General
Motors Midwestern promotional division, and other companies, from a
promotional concept and point of view and a marketing point of view, all
the way through design and execution. Interactivity accounts for an
increasingly important portion of our growth and profitability, although
we don't promote it aggressively. Another area where we're extremely
strong ' this is the engine that drove our initial growth and our
ability to acquire other companies ' is our media and account-specific
marketing group. That's based here in Great Neck, New York. We are
probably the premiere promotional radio buying group in the US. We have
a unique methodology for buying and we have a proprietary methodology
for employing and allocating media that we purchased so that not only do
our clients get the benefit of brand equity advertising, but we take a
reciprocal value of what we purchase and we make it available to our
clients' trade factors in return for specific merchandising performance.
Branding is an extremely important objective of retailers and our
strength is understanding and appreciating that and helping retailers
brand themselves by making media available to them. Recent surveys have
shown that, next to cash, media exposure is what retailers crave the
most. So we've got a very powerful tool there. It's solid, we're expert
at it, and it's profitable. It has enabled us to fuel the growth of our
company. The other group we're very excited about is our alliance with
an agency down in San Antonio that has an Hispanic marketing capability.
Every retailer has a newfound awareness of the importance of the
Hispanic population and its purchasing power in the marketplace. We're
positioned very well to target that market and we do quite well. We're
agency of record for Nabisco for their Hispanic marketing, and several
other clients. So that's a run-down of the company and its key
capabilities.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CMKG
For more information call (212) 952 7400. The
Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does
not make stock recommendations.
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