McClain Marketing expands to NYC
Photo/Carol Coultas
Sue-Ellen McClain, president of Portland's McClain Marketing, decided to open the firm's new interactive division in New York City
Sue-Ellen McClain, president of Portland's McClain Marketing, surveyed the softening economy last year and decided it was time to move. Not from the firm's modern offices in the former Nissen Bread factory on Washington Avenue, but rather to a tony Manhattan address in New York City, where the agency just opened its interactive division last month.
"We've grown steadily over the last eight years, and in the last two years have focused on the interactive side of the business," says McClain, who applies the term to all electronic media such as web development, social networking and new media. "We could see that traditional advertising was losing its luster and if we really wanted to grow, expand and be strong, it would be through interactive opportunities."
New York City is the epicenter of that creativity, says McClain, and has a potential client base exponentially larger than Maine's. Plus, the recession has slowed business here but worked in her favor in the Big Apple. The lease on the 1,800-square-foot office McClain opened on West 24th St. costs $5,000 a month. Two years ago, it was $8,000 a month.
"Two years ago, we wouldn't have been able to do it; the rents were exorbitant," she says.
New York City held other promise. In addition to a much bigger market, it also commanded much higher prices. McCain says a typical New York City marketing firm will charge $200-$250 per hour.
"We charge $125, for the same quality of service or better," she says. "We can utilize the Maine cache in that market."
The firm has hired two new developers to help staff the NYC office, which is headed by McClain's 26-year-old son, Travis. Aside from fulfilling the dream of any young, single professional to be living in Manhattan, McClain says having staff in the city exposes them to the latest technology in an intensely creative environment, a dynamic that will help McClain clients whether in New York, Maine or elsewhere. The firm, which employs 15, specializes in providing services to professional clients such as accountants, insurance and architectural companies and law firms.
The exposure will enhance the agency's ability to stay in the front of the interactive pack, where McClain says the firm has already made its mark. It recently introduced its own proprietary web software called CIMpliciti, a "robust and completely customizable" program that allows users to continually update the back-end of a website themselves, says Travis McClain.
The software is one of the products McClain expects to help grow the interactive side of the business from its New York City headquarters. It also has developed a specialty in e-campaigns and search engine optimization, part of its strategy to become a strong, reliable boutique agency, says Sue-Ellen McClain.
"We don't ever talk to a client and not include websites in the conversation," she says. "Interactive will only get bigger and better. These tools are very solid ways to market, replacing traditional tactics in some cases, or as resources to interact with traditional print and broadcast."
The firm reported revenues of $2.5 million in 2008 and expects the business from the New York office to match the Maine-based operation by the end of 2010, then double it by 2012.
Open since June 1, the NYC office has already held a number of meetings with prospective clients, including large commercial real estate developers, and expects to land some new accounts by mid-July, Travis McClain says. The Maine and New York staffs stay in daily contact via webcams perched on 52-inch monitors in their conference rooms.
Sue-Ellen McClain, who acquired the agency in 2001 from partner Jim Hauptman, is excited about its prospects. Not only does it feed her entrepreneurial nature, but her daughter is finishing her MBA and will join Travis in Manhattan.
"That's kind of a neat part of it for me," she says of the agency's familial future. "And becoming more so."
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