Marketing Slump

On a day in late August, the staff of AdvertisingWorks in Naples gathered for a meeting to learn the firm would be shutting its doors. Employees, including director of corporate communications Vivian Dawson, had seen it coming—even though it took a while to accept that the award-winning company was closing.

The breakneck pace from a couple of years ago, when the staff worked late hours to accomplish clients’ marketing needs, wasn’t required as often. The 180-degree turnaround happened over time as the market changed and clients were unable to stimulate sales, says Dawson.

"They just realized spending money in the traditional ways was not going to make a difference to the economy, so they pulled back," she says. Clients chose less newspaper advertising and axed plans for brochures and other collateral material, Dawson says.

As Advertising Works’ clients cut budgets, owner Lisa Peteler says she was faced with replacing a lot of builder-developer clients with those in other types of businesses, and she would have had to downsize her 15-person staff.

"I would have had to lay off to move forward. I chose not to do it," she says. "My people were too good, and my attitude was, ‘We’ll go out together. Nobody deserves to get laid off.’ That was my way of going out on a high note."

Peteler says none of her clients, which included Centex Homes, dropped her. "I could have stayed in business. I would have had to diversify, and if I was going to put [in] that time and effort, I didn’t want to be in Florida," says Peteler. She owns a second home in Colorado, where she said she plans to move.

Other local marketing, advertising and public relations firms, from one-person shops to large agencies, also have been hit by the real estate slump.

Fort Myers-based Spiro & Associates cut its staff by three in September. Two worked in the firm’s public relations department, which CEO Christopher Spiro says was receiving less work as clients were either doing away with public relations or trying to handle it in-house. The other was an information technology person, which he describes as a luxury in a down market.

The situation hasn’t reached panic status, but some in-house public relations people in the construction industry are on guard, says Cyndee Woolley, president of the Public Relations Association of Collier County.

"You’ve really got two types of companies," says Woolley, director of corporate communications for Naples-based Professional Building Systems. "Those that are progressive and know that times are lean and [they have] to focus on sales and marketing and keeping their name out there. Then there are those that see that monetary line item, so there are some layoffs going on."

Firms that stay busy attribute it to their decision not to have too many clients in the same industry, despite the temptation that existed to do so when the real estate market was hot.
"You’re opening yourself up for serious economic damage if that market takes a dive," says Teresa Morgenstern, founder of WordPlay Inc. in Naples.

When partner Tracy Southers joined the firm two years ago, they decided to make an effort to add clients in industries including retail and restaurants, professional services, hospitality and recreation, business organizations and nonprofits, Morgenstern says. Of its nearly 30 clients, about seven are in real estate.

At AdvertisingWorks, Dawson saw the hazard of focusing too much on one industry. "Although those of us who were in staff positions were not running the company, we certainly were fully aware of the company getting quieter in terms of its activity," she says.

Since the firm shut its doors, Dawson, 58, considered freelancing. She considered leaving Southwest Florida, but decided that might have been a tougher road than using her network of contacts.

"With my history at Gulf Bay Group of Companies [where she worked for seven years] and AdvertisingWorks, at least I had some tenure in town. That all came back to serve me extremely well at the end of the day," she says.

Three weeks after her last day at AdvertisingWorks, she started her new job as public relations manager with Miromar Development Corp.

AdvertisingWorks’ last official gathering was at the Collier Building Industry Association’s Sand Dollar Awards. The company took home 15 of the 20 marketing awards, Peteler says.

"I think it was a little bit of a shock when the biggest, most decorated marketing firm fell to its knees. It gave the other marketing firms a deal of concern," Dawson says. "We had tons of glass awards and no place to put them."