by David Ball
Staff Writer
Growth is something Rich Davis, president of Spark Inc., is certainly familiar with.
He started his Jacksonville advertising and marketing agency in 2004 with only one employee. In 2005 he doubled his total staff to four, and then he doubled it to eight in 2006.
Although he didn’t double his staff again in 2007 (there’s now 10), Davis did hire new Account Coordinator Esther Yegelwel, who will take on some key responsibilities while Davis focuses once again on marketing the company and attracting new clients.
Although Davis said he wasn’t putting the Spark brand out in the public as much as usual, this past year was probably the most exciting for the company that Davis says offers “Fortune 500-level work for companies without a $10 million budget.”
“I bill ourselves as a mini Dalton Agency or a mini St. John & Partners,” said Davis. “But I think the biggest thing we did in 2007 is work on clients I’ve always dreamed I’d be able to work with at my own company.”
Last year Spark landed national accounts with Papa Johns and Icahn Associates Corp. to market internally to the companies’ thousands of employees. Spark also expanded its health care marketing campaigns into practices in South Florida.
But most exciting, said Davis, was the opportunity to work with Wall Street investment firm The Abernathy Group. Spark staff developed corporate brochures aimed at attracting “small” investors looking to invest in $750,000 to $2 million, and the work brought the Spark’s staff up to the Big Apple.
“We had added a client in New Jersey who worked across the bridge from Manhattan,” he said. “It was really cool to visit the client in New Jersey and then look across the bridge and see the Manhattan skyline. And then there we were, walking down Wall Street to meet our other client.”
Davis said his success has stemmed from the new way his company approaches the old business of marketing.
“A lot of traditional ways people advertise isn’t working anymore,” he said. “You have to try and find the things you can do that are not the traditional 30-second spot or print ad to get amazing results.”
Davis used the national example of dark horse Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee surprising many with his win in the recent Iowa caucus over polling favorite Mitt Romney.
“Romney did everything traditionally like you’re supposed to, and Huckabee did all these interesting, quirky, upbeat things and he ended up winning,” said Davis. “I think there’s a lesson to be learned. What worked yesterday won’t necessarily work today.”
Davis employed that thinking in a 2007 “get out and vote” campaign with the Supervisor of Elections offices in Duval and other nearby counties.
There were the traditional TV and print ads, but Spark also had the elections supervisors themselves stand on street corners holding signs like candidates. Except, the signs read “vote for whoever.”
“People did these double-takes at seeing people who were passionately trying to promote nobody, just the act of voting,” he said. “It created a lot of buzz downtown and got great coverage from the local media, and it cost virtually nothing to do.”
Buzz is something Davis has created since the start of his career. Coming out of college as an English major with no advertising background, Davis went to one of the biggest firms in Jacksonville, St. John & Partners, and simply said, “give me a chance.”
“I told them I’d work for free. I just wanted to get in the door,” said Davis. “I worked for three months and I proved myself.”
Years later, Davis’ newest employee took a similar path. Davis’ brother, Jeff Davis, owns Legal Art Works and learned that local attorney Even Yegelwel had a daughter just graduating from college and looking to enter advertising.
“Her degree was in criminal justice, and she interned with us,” said Davis. “She proved herself. She was the first person at the office the first day of the internship, and I hired her three months later.”
Yegelwel will meet with clients and determine the best course of action to meet their goals or grow their business, whether it’s a Web site or PR blitz. Davis said she’ll start with the unexpected ideas first.
“In working with a client, we throw out all the expected ideas first and work in the reverse way,” he said.
And as far as growing any further, Davis said although he wants to compete with the big marketing shops, he doesn’t want to compete with their payroll.
“I want to keep it small and intimate,” he said. “There’s something great to me about having a small group of people really passionate about the work. No office politics, just everyone doing their best job possible.”