Rick French, Chairman and CEO, French|West|Vaughn

How does a mid-size agency compete in a market crowded with global mega-firms and agile boutiques? French|West|Vaughn has found a way. The firm recently expanded with the opening of its Dallas office, and continues to be one of the top mid-size agencies, especially in the Southeast U.S. PRNewser recently interviewed agency chairman and CEO Rick French, who made no secret about where he sees growth opportunities: digital. "Every new business call we're getting seems to have an interest in that area," he said. Read on for the full interview. What's your take on the new business front for mid-size agencies right now? Are things heating up? I think things are heating up and have been for a good six months. With our agency in particular, we're probably seeing the most new business activity in five years, even going back prior to the recession. We're actually in some ways struggling to keep up with the leads and being able to respond to them. Who are your some of your biggest clients? Wrangler, Coca-Cola, Dey Pharmaceuticals, Moe's Southwest Grill, to name a few. Are you working with any partners when it comes to social or digital measurement and monitoring? We have our own proprietary research tools that we created, and we do have some outside analysis that we use that are widely available. We do also subscribe to a lot of research that helps us do both qualitative and quantitative research on the front end and then we're able, by creating results and measurement baselines up front, to use tools on the back end to measure the success of a program. What are some of the biggest challenges that come with running a mid-size agency in this environment? The biggest is maintaining profit margins while you're growing. In a large size firm you might have very large seven figure clients that you can depend on to be the engine that pulls it along. In a mid-size firm, you have an assortment of large and small clients and spending fluctuation. Maintaining staff and infrastructure levels so that you have capabilities to help a client as they ramp up without being over staffed and understaffed -- that's always tricky for any mid-size agency. We've been fortunate that in our 13 years, we've always been profitable, but that's been the biggest challenge. Maintaining that throughout, in particular the last few years with recession. Where are the biggest growth opportunities? Digital. Anything that bridges that divide between PR and advertising that falls into that digital pace seems to be what clients are intensely interested in. Almost every one of our PR retainers has a separate digital component co-joined to it. Every new business call we're getting seems to have an interest in that area as well. How important to your growth was opening a New York office in 2004? Not as important as opening our Tampa office several years ago. I think having a New York office helps more perceptually than in reality. There are some clients that like you have it, and it may help in new business pitches, but in truth, as a national agency, I think a lot of mid-size firms like ours can execute in many markets. The fact that you have a presence in New York is not as important as having the ability to reach audiences via online strategy and so on. I don't know if the physical office is as important as it used to be. That being said, we just opened up an office in Dallas. Although the New York office itself is nice to have and we have specific clients being serviced from that office, many of them that have been attracted to New York have been international as opposed to domestic or New York based. In terms of national clients, they seem to be less focused on where the office is and more about ideas the agency brings. You're one of few mid-size firms that also offers advertising services. What percentage of your business does that division make up? That part of the businesses is growing quickly. It's probably now 60% PR, 20% advertising, and 20% digital and social media. After actually a couple years where the advertising business was beaten down, in the last six months, it's come roaring back. How important is it for the agency to offer integrated services? It's become more important. We've offered it for a long time, but I'd say in the last year, we've seen a movement toward integration, and clients are less interested in the buckets. It used to be, "I need a PR firm, I need an ad agency." Now, it's really been about "What ideas can you bring us that can help grow our business?" Clients are less interested in how you define those strategies and more interested in if you can deliver on them. We've seen a shift, that we did not see in the past, when clients were more interested in which bucket they were hiring, and there wasn't as much integration as we would have liked. Now, we're seeing a complete erosion of the walls. On a lighter note, where will you be vacationing this summer? This summer I will be at my beach house on the North Carolina coast. I've got a house on a barrier island on the coast and I love spending time out there.

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Rick French, Chairman and CEO, French|West|Vaughn

Joe Ciarallo

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