Roll of the dice that has come up 7

TAKING A GAMBLE: Gail Morris, left, and Stacey Liakos are managing partners at Omnia Agency, the Providence advertising firm the two founded in 2008. The full-service agency specializes in media buying, website development and graphic design. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
TAKING A GAMBLE: Gail Morris, left, and Stacey Liakos are managing partners at Omnia Agency, the Providence advertising firm the two founded in 2008. The full-service agency specializes in media buying, website development and graphic design. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Omnia Agency LLC is proof of the enduring value of the old-fashioned cold call.
The Providence advertising agency was a fledgling two-woman shop in 2009 when managing partners Stacey Liakos and Gail Morris reached out to Twin River slot parlor in Lincoln, which wasn’t entirely satisfied with its website and traditional marketing.
Twin River was impressed with Omnia and later that year made the firm its agency of record, helping propel the company to its current size of 10 employees and $7 million in annual sales.
As lucrative as Twin River’s business has been for Omnia, it should get better as the casino begins to promote its expansion to table games in the increasingly competitive New England gambling market.
“We were very persistent, and with a little bit of luck and timing we started working with Twin River, redesigned their website and made a television ad,” Liakos said. “Being such a small agency, to acquire them with such a large marketing budget was huge. With our team’s expertise, we see future growth to help them gain more market share and brand themselves as a destination appealing to a whole new demographic.”
Both North Providence natives, Liakos and Morris founded Omnia after their previous firm, Optimal Communications Group, began to break apart in 2008.
Liakos came to advertising from broadcast journalism, where she spent time at television and radio stations in both an on-air and production capacity before switching to the advertising world.
When the two started working together, Morris was already an advertising veteran with 25 years of experience in the business, including managing marketing for the Apex department store chain. Liakos said they decided to break away from Optimal Communications to pursue a more dynamic business plan, taking enough of their old clients with them to give the new firm a foundation.
Now celebrating its five-year anniversary, Omnia is a full-service agency specializing in media buying, website development and graphic design.
The firm does market geography and demographic research, creative concepts, logo design, online analytics, website content management and custom coding. Social media marketing is also a big part of Omnia’s campaigns, especially for smaller clients with limited resources. For larger clients Liakos said social media and Internet marketing now complement traditional ad buys in print, radio or television.
The proliferation of different media platforms has fragmented advertising budgets, requiring Omnia and other similar agencies to constantly gain new technical capabilities.
Even within Internet advertising, practices are changing rapidly, with mobile emerging and video taking over from the print-like banner ads that were the standard even five years ago.
“We were reviewing statistics on how much online video is taking over,” Liakos said. “Now static banner ads are not getting you too far. Besides social media and banner advertising, there is more programming and more ways for people to watch television on smartphones and tablets and then digital radio like Pandora.”
At Twin River, the move to table games is not just expanding the size of the casino’s potential market, but also shifting its target demographic.
Liakos said Twin River’s advertising previously targeted a predominantly female customer over the age of 45.
Now with table games, Twin River expects to draw a younger clientele, starting at the age of 25, and more males.
That means Twin River’s new marketing campaign will look toward sports, including radio and websites geared to a male audience such as barstool.com.
Omnia helped Twin River launch its new website and mobile app last month and worked on tweaking the casino’s tag line from “so much, so close,” to “so much more, so close.”
As for Omnia’s future, Liakos said the firm intends to continue growing, in Rhode Island if possible, but looking farther afield if necessary.
“It’s always something we wrestle with. Being born and raised here, it is always great to work with clients you have a relationship with, so there is a loyalty factor,” Liakos said. “But the con is there is always only so much you can get here, because the pie is so much smaller. In Boston the pie is so much larger it seems endless.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Omnia Agency LLC
Owners: Stacey Liakos and Gail Morris
Type of Business: Advertising agency
Location: 115 Harris Ave., Providence
Employees: seven full time and three part time
Year Established: 2008
Annual Sales: $7 million

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