by Mary-Kate Roan
Staff Writer
It isn’t your average advertising firm. Of course, how average can a company be when they run ads that feature off-the-wall wit and use unorthodox means of advertising for their clients? But that’s the way that Rich Davis and the employees of Spark Inc. like to keep things.
As an example of their cheeky wit, the company created what have become known as the “Goons on Call” ads and plastered then all over Downtown. Originally the ads were printed in the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra programs, but caught the eye of so many people that the campaign continued. The ad referenced an agency that was out to rough up other people for the benefit of their clients.
“My mother was embarrassed,” said Davis, whose brother Jeff owns the Downtown establishment Legal Art Works.
But that’s just the way that the little-ad-agency-that-could works.
“We enjoy the humor of it,” said account executive Esther Yegelwel. “We go for piquing interest.”
“It’s kind of like the humor of ‘Seinfeld,’” said Davis.
Yegelwel explained that it is more creative to be cheeky in a way that will both generate a response and positive feedback along with interest in the client. And it’s proven to work favorably for all parties involved.
“We got a booth at a convention and got an overwhelming amount of positive responses,” said Davis. “That’s how we knew our style of ads would work.”
But despite the attention from unique ads Spark Inc. – which is on the Westside – is an advertising and marketing agency that offers customers a variety of services from public relations to brochures.
“We’re a full service agency,” said Davis, president of Spark. “We cater to medium sized businesses that either can’t afford the bigger agencies or just don’t want to go to them.”
That’s exactly why Davis started the company.
“There are lots of great companies out there that have a great story to tell and can benefit from ‘big agency’ work and strategy, but they don’t have the multi-million dollar budgets,” said Davis. “So our niche is providing that Fortune 500-level marketing to smaller companies that want to grow instead of big companies who already have grown.”
As a senior writer at St. John & Partners, Davis worked on national campaigns for companies such as Ford and Capital One. From there, Davis went on to do freelance work for three years. One of the highlights of this time was his participation in developing campaigns for the Jacksonville Jaguars through the Dalton Agency.
“Both the Jaguars and Dalton were really great to work with,” said Davis.
Calling themselves the smaller version of the bigger named companies, Davis has brought together a team full of collaborative workers who offer backgrounds that “mesh well together” according Yegelwel.
And speaking of their off humor ads, it’s not the only part of their business that grabs attention. They also have an unorthodox way of recruiting clients. One way is by sending letters or at least what can be called their way of sending letters.
“We send letters to people from their future selves,” said Davis. “They’re successful and saying that using Spark Inc. was the best decision of their lives.”
And it always tends to generate observation, added Davis. Yegelwel added that “word of mouth” tends to be the main means that prospective clients find out about Spark.
“We gain a substantial amount of attention from the ads,” said Yegelwel.
For Yegelwel, however, there is a personal reason that she works on the ads, especially those for the legal community: her father.
“My father is a lawyer,” said Yegelwel of her father Evan, a partner at Terrell Hogan. “And it’s a noble profession. I am excited to make ads that are just as sophisticated and noble as lawyers are because they are for the most part portrayed as the opposite.”
Offering their clients advertising and marketing with a personal touch, the team offers all the services of the bigger agencies with the humor acting as a garnish on an ad that generates interest and a chuckle.
“We don’t just say that we can put a person’s name on a generic advertisement,” said Yegelwel. “We say to ourselves ‘how can we put this person on this advertisement?’”
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