Small Business Success Story - Eggs and Advertising
Just in Time for Easter - Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
by Matt Berkley
When T.J. Kirgin joined Anchor Communications, his father’s St. Charles-based media buying/planning agency, he had no idea about the ride that was coming his way. It was a far cry from his original career path. Kirgin had left his position as a drug/gang cop in north St. Louis County in 1997 to join Anchor as a salesman. “I’d decided getting shot at for $18,000 a year maybe wasn’t the best plan,” he says.
Kirgin recalls when he was starting out in the business how he laughed at his father’s sales reps who questioned him about handling the stress of advertising. “I didn’t get what they were saying, but I do now,” he says. “This is a problematic business. There’s always something wrong, and although success may be here today, it could be gone tomorrow. You’re only as good as the last campaign you produce or the last success story that you garnish. When I was getting shot at for a living, I knew that I was going to get my $18,000. Now it’s a whole different type of gunfire. It’s a lot more rewarding, but with no guarantees.”
Kirgin’s biggest test came four years ago when the firm lost $2.8 million in renewable billing in the space of one month.
When Kirgin got the call that two of Anchor’s biggest clients, including The Mortgage Store, Kirgin’s first big account, were cutting themselves loose, the panic started to set in. At that point the company was only billing $3.5 million. In one day sales had been effectively cut by two thirds.
“There were no windows in this office to jump out of, that was the first good thing,” Kirgin now laughs. “And when I finally realized that wasn’t the answer, I saw that I’d learned lesson No. 1 in this business: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
“What happened was that I had gotten comfortable with my success,” he recalls. “I stopped looking for new business, let some smaller clients go and stopped nurturing the businesses’ growth. I was riding high.”
As the dust settled, Kirgin licked his wounds and embarked on what he called a “survival mission” to replace the lost billing and focus on closing smaller, more numerous accounts. The plan worked. In 2004, on the heels of a successful rebuild, Kirgin negotiated the purchase of Anchor Communications from his father, the man whom he credits for teaching him everything about the industry.
After purchasing the firm, Kirgin set out to restructure and re-brand its image. “We lost the broadcast advertising agency moniker and simply made Anchor ‘an advertising agency,’” he says. The company also started developing more internal expertise, setting up a public relations division and developing Anchor’s own audio and video production company to produce radio and TV commercials for its clients along with marketing, training and sales videos. But expansions aside, Anchor remains focused primarily as a media buyer, researcher and planner.
Anchor’s diversification has paid off. Today, the company serves over 75 clients in 12 states and three countries with an annual media billing of about $4.5 million. It has handled accounts with: Hansen’s Tree Service, Helitech, The St. Louis Steamers soccer team, Cici’s Pizza, Whittaker Homes, Carstar and The Shriner’s Circus.
Kirgin reports that the media side has continued to grow and bring in new business. But what excites him the most about the future of the company is the recent emergence of “smart marketing,” or New Media. Essentially, this is Google/Yahoo search engine marketing; information sources that have replaced the yellow pages and are now utilizing localized advertising capabilities.
“It’s the most perfect form of direct marketing I’ve ever seen,” says Kirgin, who hopes to grab hold of his piece of the ground floor. “In 2005, search engine marketing was a $10 billion dollar industry in the United States. This year the estimates are that it will be a $15 billion industry. We would like to grab onto as much of that as we can.”
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