Trust leads. Competence builds. Creativity delivers.
It started like this. A call came into our near West side Houston office on a Tuesday afternoon. It was the retired, former president of Dresser Industries’ Oilfield Product Group. He was now EVP for a small, regional drilling fluids company called Newpark Drilling Fluids. “Joe, we need your help with an ad. But we don’t have any money”. So I agreed to take on the project with a very modest budget. Then I gave creative direction to our graphics design team based upon my conversation with the client. A week later we have a dozen comp layouts that were really good.
From there we got an approval for the design that we not only liked but was also to be the most impactful, portraying the company as innovators who could meet challenges. We place the ad in the two top trade publications. And sales grew. At the end of the year, Newpark asked that we research and plan the entire next year’s strategy, budget and media schedule.
Funny thing happened. Two years later with the company growing crazily, they hired a new Director of Marketing. He was an industry veteran with fluid systems sales background and also a writer. The president told him he needed to get rid of The Slade Group. Six months later the new DoM admitted that “he couldn’t do without us”. And the relationship prospered.
Fast forward seven years and what was once a small, $22M annual sales company now had burgeoned into a $560M category leader in 3rd place in industry sales, just behind Schlumberger and Halliburton. Along the way, we had trained and mentored the entire executive staff and had developed a strong relationship with the VP of Sales. The VP of Research loved and respected us because we used their strengths in correctly positioning the company, its brand and offerings. Today they rely upon a New York agency for their marketing services. The new CEO had friends there and that’s how it goes sometimes.
Would you like this caliber of sustained success for your company?
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