Trade Area Marketing Group

     

 

     We offer consulting services to CEOs, CMOs, and CFOs of consumer product and business-to-business companies on their marketing communications agency relationships, structure, and costs. This includes analysis of marketing service needs, analysis of current expenditures and forecasts, selection of new agencies (digital, sales promotion, media, PR, creative, licensing, direct marketing, and direct response, or full service) new or renegotiated agency compensation agreements, agency onboarding, and relationship management.

 

     We consult with the CMO and CEO offering hands-on strategic help in tackling unforeseen developments and conditions impacting on business that call for radical new marketing and sales programs whether domestic or international that the current organizational structure is not equipped to handle in the immediate time frame. We have taken assignments globally and where necessary have functioned as interim management during transitions and assisted in sourcing as well as identifying new and changing existing distributors.

 

     We are neither a big firm nor a firm with virtual offices. When hired, clients get the collective thinking of partners living in close proximity to each other, who work together every day. We have no templates. Each client is unique, as is the level of service required. More often than not, when we are called in for a search, the cause is not an unforeseen cataclysmic event, but an evolutionary change, However when it does happen, for example when an important new product launch does not go as expected and we're asked to participate directly with current team members to arrive at new positioning, creative, packaging or promotion to reenergize the products or develop alternative advertising for the CMO to consider we function as part of the team in a non-threatening, non-adversarial manner. For another example in an actual case, the CEO and CMO felt R&D needed the support and design capability of an outside design company and we suggested looking at Ideo and Frog among others to help grow outside the core business. 

 

     We've also found ourselves in the midst of a client's competitive landscape that is dramatically changing, or there has been a planned, major strategic and sensitive shift which is being implemented that may include importing outsourced product which affects the labor force, customers, and reputation, so it is imperative the leadership team has the right PR partner crafting the public statements, and the right licensing agency bringing the right partners to the table to insure quality never suffers. 

 

     From an investment perspective, we are called in to find agencies in marketing communications that complement a private equity firm's well thought out investment strategy and portfolio vision. While on the other side of the fence, we have had clients who have built their advertising or promotion agencies and have decided to consider the exit options that we have laid out and helped them realize.  

 

     More detailed discussion on agency search & compensation, agency merger, purchase, and sale, and our hands-on work with clients who face difficult and unforeseen challenges that need creative solutions and/or significant tactical support can be found in the five sections under What We Do in the menu bar , or the buttons below.