By TED CARTER I STAFF WRITERted.carter@msbusiness.com

n the advertising and marketing business, reaching the 75-year mark is akin to surviving the Ice Age wearing shorts,flip-flops and a tank top.

You can do it, but you won’t like your odds going in.Market collapses, creative burnout, scandals, partner

disputes and the death of the founder are but a few ofthe reasons.

So how has Jackson’s GodwinGroup managed to thrive in suchan unforgiving environment for 75 years?

You can start with how the partner-owned firm erased the beliefthat a “creative expert” was someone at least one state away. In itsplace, Godwin instituted the idea that a Mississippi firm could doMississippi’s work, the firm’s current executives say.

Once the idea took hold, the executives say, Godwin served asthe choice for Mississippi’s major businesses and institutions

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April 23, 2012 • MISSISSIPPI BUSINESS JOURNAL • www.msbusiness.com

AN MBJ FOCUS:

ADVERTISING& PRINTING

>> Firm instituted the idea that a Mississippi firm could do Mississippi’s work

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When Louisville Slugger lost its swing, the venerable baseball batmaker called on Jackson’s GodwinGroup to help get it back.

That was 1997, a year the Kentucky baseball bat maker decided it mustdo something to turnaround its diminishing market share. The call wentto Godwin, an established Mississippi marketing and advertisingcompany beginning to emerge as a regional operation.

As GodwinGroup’s official history tells it, the Slugger bats got their groove back and once again led in market share.A long track record in Mississippi and the kind of clutch

performance delivered with the Louisville Slugger account havehelped to position Godwin to extend its reach both geographicallyand in the services it offers.

Today the 56-employee firm’s footprint takes in the entire Southeast.Television and print represent the firm’s top two business categories

but digital is its fastest growing and is expected to surpass the other twoin the next few years.

Digital grew so fast, according to Chairman & CEO Philip Shirley, that in2009 Godwin signed WebMetro, a nationally known digital marketingfirm based in Los Angeles, as a partner, thus creating WebMetro/Godwinas the digital arm of GodwinGroup for 12 Southwestern andSoutheastern states, stretching form Oklahoma to the Carolinas andsouth to Florida.

The partnership gave GodwinGroup a way to keep pace with theboom in digital accounts. “We estimated we needed 50 people on thedigital side,” Shirley said, adding the firm found it could not hire that

many digital professionals from the Jackson area fast enough tomeet demand.

The digital crews build “highly functional” websites, performsearch engine marketing, search engine optimization, onlineadvertising, social media, among other services, Shirley said.

John McKie, executive VP and managing partner, oversees thedigital work. GodwinGroup recruited McKie, a former marketingexec with McRae’s Department Stores, to do direct marketing.“But I pretty quickly started working with the digital people,”McKie said.

He called the job a non-stop learning experience, one in which“you have to devote some amount of time every week to trying tostay current.”

McKie does not see the growth slowing any time soon, thoughhe emphasized the firm must keep working hard to stay atop theMississippi market. “That’s going to be hard to do because thereare a lot of fine agencies to compete with.”

Meanwhile, the regional footprint is solidly in place, he said. “Wethink our offerings and culture work well within this region. I see uscontinuing to try to be at the forefront of digital and other emergingforms of digital.”

Like many other business sectors, advertising took a hard hit at

STEPHEN McDILL / The Mississippi Business Journal

GodwinGroup CEO Philip Shirley said a brand has to be based in reality even if it’s also aspirational. "Consumers are smart. We're verysavvy shoppers. We ask around and get advice. You can't fool the consumer very much."

STEPHEN McDILL / The Mississippi Business Journal

As managing partner and executive vice-president, JohnMcKie has in recent years encouraged clients to embracethe potentials of digital marketing including the Internet,search engines and social media.

See GODWIN, Page 14

See SERVICES, Page 14

Visit msbusiness.com/video to learn moreabout GodwinGroup’s digital marketing strategies and seean interview with CEO Philip Shirley.

when they needed to communicate amessage, create a brand, promote a prod-uct or idea or – until recently – a politi-cal candidate.

A decade ago, the state’seconomic developmentofficials called on the full-service firm to presentMississippi’s attributes in apresentation to Nissanahead of the automaker’sselection of Canton for anew plant. In 2005, in thewake of hurricane Katrina,Godwin handled crisis management forMississippi Power, Hancock Bank,Trustmark, BellSouth, CelluarSouth, theMississippi Department of Education, andothers.

More recently, the Gulf RegionalTourism Partnership signed up the 56-employee GodwinGroup to create its des-tination advertising. That followed BPAmerica’s selection of Godwin as one ofthe first public relations firms to helpenhance communications after theDeepwater Horizon oil spill.

Recently retired Godwin chairmanDanny Mitchell said awareness of theirstanding as the state’s go-to firm has ledpartners and rank-and-file alike to takeextra pains with each bit of work. “We havehad the confidence of Mississippi’s leaders,”said Mitchell, the only advertising profes-sional to be inducted into the MississippiBusiness Hall of Fame, an honor that camein 2007.

Further, the confidence of state govern-ment, business and civic leaders hasbrought the firm a steady flow of referralsfrom outside Mississippi, said Mitchell,who joined Godwin in 1983 and became itspresident four years later and went on toserve as chairman/senior partner. Today, hecarries the title senior counsel.

“We were always appreciative of thereferrals and never wanted to let any of theleaders down.”

The foundation for the sustained success,Mitchell said, “Is that we always knew thatany great creative had to be found in greathomework and research and marketingresearch. We never created for creative sake.”

The company’s view is that had Godwinnot become the destination for Mississippientities in need of communicating a mes-sage or establishing a brand, the agency mostlikely would not have survived its founder,George Godwin Sr., who started what wasthen the Dixie Advertising Agency in 1937.The senior Godwin died in 1967, approxi-mately 10 years after the company hadadopted the name GodwinGroup.

Philip Shirley, Mitchell’s successor aschairman, said agencies typically have a 10-to 20-year lifespan. They rarely survivemuch beyond either the retirement ordeath of the founder, he said.

The reason: relationships.“Longevity becomes difficult because

relationships leave with the founder,”Shirley said, and attributed GodwinGroup’slengthy life to Godwin Sr.’s emphasis onforging relationships with key governmentand business leaders across the state.

The biggest banks, power and gas com-panies and insurance firms and the like dis-covered “they didn’t need to got to NewYork, Chicago or Atlanta, “ Shirley said.“George Sr. had the vision to create anational resource right here in Mississippi.”

Homework Comes FirstOver the years Mississippians have wit-

nessed the end product of Godwin’s worksuch as Trustmark’s slogan “People YouTrust. Advice That Works!” and BaptistHealth System’s ubiquitous logo. But theprocess that leads to the catchy slogans andrecognizable logos starts at a root level withresearch that identifies the audience or cus-tomer, the benefits to be gained from theproduct or service and the best way todeliver the message, said Shirley, whomMitchell lured away from Luckie & Co.advertising agency in Birmingham in thelate 1990s.

The reason for the deep digging doesn’tchange, Shirley said, but “how we identifythat benefit, how we identify the audience,how we speak to the audience – that’s newevery day.”

Time was, Shirley said, an ad agencycould produce and place a television com-mercial on the local station that had thethree most popular entertainment pro-grams in the market. It came down to thebelief that if you put enough informationout there enough people would see it.

“Now, we have to talk to the individualseparately,” he added. “So we have to do alot more contextual advertising.”

You do that by talking to consumers and

listening to their responses.“We had better be having that dia-

logue,” he said. “They can tell us how wewant you to deliver the new product, howmuch I am willing to pay, here’s how con-venient I want it….”

It’s a long journey from the product andaudience research to the “war room,” wherethe creative work begins, said Shirley, wholikens the process to a duck on the water.The observer sees a duck seeming to floateffortless on the surface while below theduck is paddling furiously.

“Below, we’re paddling as fast as we can tobundle together the whole package of com-munication – the exact right person withexactly the right message.”

GodwinGroup, the chairman said, is“very specific process-oriented. There isnothing random about how we work.”

Clients’ perspectivesGinger Cocke and Will McKee have more

than careers in the medical field in common.Both are marketing executives who rely onGodwinGroup to help frame how the publicviews their companies, Baptist HealthSystems in Cocke’s case and MedjetAssist(medical evacuation) in McKee’s.

Birmingham-based Medjet choseGodwin in 2006 after reviewing a full slateof agencies, including ones in Birmingham.“Godwin had the best presentation and themost creative ideas,” said McKee, Medjet’smarketing manager, in an email.

In the years since, the firm’s ideas andservices have kept Medjet’s marketingstrategies “above the curve,” going “far

beyond what most traditional agencieseven think about,” he said.

“Their New Media and Web 2.0 team isan invaluable resource to me as a marketingmanager,” McKee said. “The creativity andintelligence of the team makes for a uniquecombination that is hard to find.”

On the relationship side, “the entireteam that works on our account feels likefamily,” he added.

Baptist Health Systems’ Cocke hasworked with Godwin for 17 of the hospitalcompany’s 30 years with the ad agency.“They certainly have been creative all ofthis time,” said Cocke, marketing director.

The creative work reflects significantpreparation and homework, Cocke said. “Ithink they do a lot of research. For me, theydo a lot of focus groups. They test the mes-sages and see which ones work… how muchthe consumer understands.”

At 100-years-old, Baptist HealthSystems has had only three logos. Godwindesigned two of those, the last one in 1997,Cocke said.

“They did a great deal of work on it,” sheadded. To settle on a design, “we wentthrough the whole gamut. I will tell you thisone has stood the test of time.”

The same could be said of Godwin.

STEPHEN McDILL / The Mississippi Business Journal

Todd White with Godwin subsidiary NEON Marketing works on a commercial in the video editing suite.GodwinGroup produces TV spots for clients ranging from Baptist Health Systems to Mississippi Valley Gas.

GODWIN Continued from Page 13

14 ■ Mississippi Business Journal ■ April 23, 2012 ADVERTISING & PRINTING

the onset of the Great Recession in early2008. Godwin certainly felt the blow, CEOShirley said. “We fell of a cliff in May of 2008.

“The second quarter of ’08 is when adbudgets got cut all over the country. A lot ofour accounts were in a position to spend onlya half or a third of what they normally spent.”

The firm cut close to 20 positions, thoughnot all of the positions had people in them.

Work volume rose as revenues dropped. “That’s why 2008 and 2009 were so painful

to us,” Shirley said. “The work went way upand the money went down.”

Everything had to work right to deliver valuefor the dollar, the CEO said. “We had toredouble our efforts…. We had to make sure theclients survived and they came out of it strong.”

The effort paid off, Shirley said. “They haveappreciated it. The ones who are now turningit around remember that.

“That’s why the last two years have beenoutstanding for us.”

The privately held GodwinGroup reportedsales of $14.5 million in 2011, according tothe Mississippi Business Journal’s 2012“Book of Lists.”

The rebound led the company last year torenovate and refurnish its suite of offices thattake up the entire eighth floor of One JacksonPlace in downtown Jackson.

As the recession receded, one lessonbecame clear:

An economic slump is the worst time to quitadvertising, Shirley said.

“The companies that continue theiraggressive advertising come out of it quickerand gain enormous market share when it doesturn around.”

And the recession’s lesson for Godwin?“Be a good partner,” he said.

— Ted Carter

SERVICES Continued from Page 13

Mitchell