The Marketers' Market

Demand for this region's marketing companies is clearly high. There are full-service firms, and specialty firms. There are big firms with stability, capability and overhead. There are small firms with talent and an answering machine. Marketing firms can either perform a function with which a business chooses not to burden its own payroll, or offer a fresh look at communicating more mature ideas and product information.

But the demand is high for one reason: marketing firms help businesses reach their goals, even if those goals include proving they have built a better mousetrap.

Life in the Small Shop

It's hard to imagine a more likely person to make it in a small communications shop than Mark May. For the first five years of the last decade he was the creative director of Gulf Shore Life, the premier, high-dollar lifestyle magazine peppered with dipped in slick ads. After winning dozens of awards, he left to open his first small shop. Two years later, top-of the-line developer Watermark Communities Inc. drew him back into a corporate fold.

Two more years passed, and he went back to the street to control his own destiny. Today, his venture, M & M Communications, is prospering. May just bought an office condo in Naples.

He is sanguine about his work history. "It was good experience," he says. "Various types of subjects."

"I am full-service to piece meal," he explains of M & M Communications. For him, full-service means developing a campaign's concept, executing it and placing it in the media. "Or it could be just a brochure, depending on the clients."

For both him and his clients, May says that being a small shop is both liberating and limiting. "The advantage is that I don't have more than one client in each type of business." He explains that there are only so many strong ideas within each client group, and "that's what you want to focus upon."

There are disadvantages, he says. "Volume. You can only take on so much." May has only about six projects on the board at the same time. This service level is why he feels his clients eschew other shops in favor of M & M. "A lot of clients come to me because they went with [one of] the big ones, and they were just a small or medium client."

When clients call May, they can be assured of his complete attention. "This is a service industry," he explains.