Sunny outlook as new business rises in the east
By Adina Genn
June 23, 2006
It’s a concept that surely occurs to most executives at some point: Forgo the big city, the office politics and those time-consuming meetings and open up shop as far east as possible, with pristine views of the Atlantic and farmland, where the mind is free and inspiration can do its thing.
That’s been part of the game plan for Lynn Blumenfeld and Jill Fleming, two advertising veterans who in 2001 opened their Montauk-based agency, blumenfeld + fleming.
Yes, the setting is exquisite, said Blumenfeld, a copywriter who is prone to long walks on the beach after putting together a client pitch. “But I never worked this hard on Madison Avenue,” she said.
Fleming, an art director and graphic designer, echoed that sentiment.
Never mind that the partners now wear all the hats, handling aspects of ad campaigns that a team of account executives, media buyers and others once managed for them. As a relative newcomer to the Island, the firm had to get noticed in a sea of better-established entities. And now the partners must persuade prospects “up Island” that they’ll create and deliver innovative campaigns, even though the firm is so far east.
Participating in the Long Island Advertising Club industry awards and landing media exposure helped them win larger-scale accounts from as far west as New York City. But initially, they concentrated on local businesses, designing print ads for nearby clients, including Gosman’s Dock and Hampton Market Place. Although many newspapers designed ads for free, Blumenfeld and Fleming convinced prospects that the firm would create campaigns that stood apart from the rest.
By delivering on their promise, word of mouth spread. “More and more clients came to us,” Fleming said.
Still, they sought the attention of bigger firms outside the East End.
Those firms took notice in 2004, when blumenfeld + fleming scored 14 Best of Long Island awards, including two first-place statuettes, from the LIAC. That brought the firm coverage in The New York Times, which generated inquiries from “the big boys.”
Winning the BOLIs brought the firm enough buzz to grow from about 10 ongoing projects to 30, the partners said.
Soon after, they signed Business Wire, a worldwide news distribution service. This year, the agency’s ads for Business Wire appear in London, Germany, San Francisco and New York.
Retaining a two-person agency doesn’t faze Michael Lissauer, Business Wire’s executive vice president of marketing and business strategy. “They’ve worked for billion-dollar companies,” Lissauer noted. “They are both incredibly creative.”
A three-hour trek to Montauk for a face-to-face can be “inconvenient,” Lissauer noted. But because he lives on Long Island, the trip is manageable, and the convenience of e-mail and the partners’ willingness to travel to New York allows for easy collaborations, he said.
Distance is hardly an issue, the partners insist. While at one New York agency, “my biggest client was in Cincinnati,” Blumenfeld said. “I went there every other week.”
As new clients signed on – the agency’s Web site lists Huntington-based Advantage Title and Babylon Ford as clients – the partners hired experienced freelancers. Even with that freelance assistance, though, they rely on their instincts. Recently, while pitching a new account, they didn’t even show their freelancers’ work. “It wouldn’t have solved the clients’ problem,” Fleming noted.
For blumenfeld + fleming, the buzz continues. They won 15 BOLI awards in May, including five first-place statuettes. They followed up by pitching more clients, and they hope soon to announce new work.
Blumenfeld hopes the effort will help them achieve their ultimate goal.
“As you become successful, you get to be picky about who your clients are, and you don’t have to do the work you don’t want to do,” she said. “We want to do the work that’s visible. Creative excellence is important to us. We know it gets results.”
back to press |
