While his wife Mary lay in a Women & Infant’s Hospital room sleeping soundly, just a day after having their first baby, Stephen Rosa pulled his Apple Power Book and a digital camera from its hideaway underneath her bed. He snapped a picture of their dozing daughter, then gleefully began e-mailing pictures of little Caitlyn Mary to friends and family along with the announcement of her July 16th arrival. “I just didn’t have time to go home and stuff envelopes,” Rosa said.
It’s no wonder Rosa’s company, Advertising Ventures Inc. of Providence, was recently lauded as a small business that efficiently uses technology by Cisco Systems Inc., a world leader in Internet networking systems.
“Network technology has helped us manage a virtual enterprise growing in excess of 300 percent every year,” the 35-year-old advertising executive told Inc. Technology magazine.
The Cisco Growing With Technology Awards were unveiled in an eight-page advertising supplement in the current issue of Inc. Technology, which is a spin-off of Inc. magazine. Seven judges sorted through entries from 700 companies from around the country with fewer than 500 employees. The judges – who included syndicated business columnist Jane Applegate – selected 45 finalists in three different categories, which were: fully established companies, start-up ventures, and Internet/virtual.
To get noticed Rosa said he simply responded to a questionnaire in the magazine, then got to speak with a panel of judges.
Advertising Ventures was one of 10 companies to receive an honorable mention in the Internet/virtual category. It was also the only advertising agency included and the only Rhode Island company mentioned.
“We always knew we had big talent and we had real big ideas,” Rosa said in a recent interview. “But we didn’t want to be a big agency that has lots of bureaucracy that slows the process down. What the technology has enabled us to do is keep a real small band of people and let them work wherever and whenever they want.”
Rosa founded the ad agency 10 years ago in Boston, but moved it to his hometown of Providence in 1992. He started working by himself, but now has seven people working out of a Davol Square office and an extended network of about seven others who work in remote locations. Because Advertising Ventures has been growing so rapidly, they will soon be moving to a larger office nearby, Rosa said.
Some of the agency’s regular crew of graphic designers and copy writers work entirely from their homes, according to Allen Tackett, an Advertising Ventures account executive. Those associates are able to access files they need to work on through the company’s server, then electronically send their work back to the agency, Tackett explained. “Allowing people to work from anywhere allows us to have people we might not otherwise be able to afford,” he added.
When they are out of the office, staff members also use laptop computers, cell phones and pagers to stay in touch with the office and clients.
For nearly a decade, Rosa himself has used Wildfire, which is a phone system that finds him no matter what phone he’s using – be it his office phone, a pager, or cell phone, Tackett said.
But staffers aren’t just supplied with high tech equipment, they are also taught how to use it efficiently. In a recent case, Tackett said he was able to help a software company decide how best to reach potential customers in Hartford, Conn., and right here in Providence. Through online research he discovered there were only 35 companies in Hartford that fit the target audience, while there were many more to chose from in Providence. So he and the client decided to conduct a direct mailing in Hartford and a newspaper advertising campaign here.
Rosa tries to keep up with the latest high tech developments and invests a great deal in new equipment and training, but he said he tries hard to make wise investments.
“It’s very easy to get caught up in the techno toys,” he said. “We always put it through a screen first (before making a purchase): How is this going to make us serve our clients better? How is it going to make our job easier? Will it make us faster?”
Smart use of technology has helped Advertising Ventures compete for some big accounts and win. For instance, they produce an in-house newsletter called The Link for Rhode Island-based conglomerate Textron. They’ve even won national advertising awards for it. The agency was also recently selected by Fleet Bank to create its internal communications strategy for explaining what’s going on with the BankBoston merger to its employees.
Not bad for a company that ranks 10th on Providence Business News’ list of Rhode Island’s advertising agencies, which is ranked by gross income. Advertising Ventures reported gross revenues of $1.1 million for 1997, as compared to the $5.8 million reported by RDW Group, Inc., which is now the state’s largest ad agency.
“And we’re about to sign our next two big clients,” Rosa added.
Part of the trick, he said, is being able to have access to talented workers through the Internet and being able to tap into that resource when their clients have requests they can’t handle.
“We may not have all the pieces in-house, but with our network we could work with them as effectively as if they were in the cube next door,” he said.
In the Fleet account case, Rosa said, they were able to outshine some tough competitors. “They have access to the biggest agencies in the world; we’ve got to be just as good and outhustle them to boot.”
