Dallas Business Journal – Monday January 15, 2007 – Jeff Bounds

Building business: Creativity and experience helped them sell ideas.

David Wilgus, Diane Seimetz and Michael Boone each had lots of experience with big advertising agencies when they spun out their new firm, dubbed Launch, from Temerlin-McClain in 2003. But they had only one client — Park Place Dealerships in Dallas.

Starting a small business is never easy. It’s even tougher when your shop is vying with big, established names for business. But that’s exactly what the three principals of Launch intended to do. They pulled it off through a combination of experience and creativity.

For one thing, each of the principals had more than 20 years of working with big agencies under their belts, handling accounts such as American Airlines, Subaru and Frito-Lay.

“I don’t think there are a lot of boutique-type shops (locally) grounded in big-agency experience like we are,” Wilgus says. “It allows to compete against larger agencies and win accounts like (Plano-based) Rent-A-Center.”

And having been around the business side of advertising, “We knew what we were walking into,” Wilgus says. “The three of us wear many different hats.”

But Launch’s ability to think outside the box has proven just as important, if not more so. Both Wilgus and Seimetz are creative directors at the firm, while Boone is director of account services.

To help launch the Paris Las Vegas hotel, Launch dreamed up a television campaign that showed men clad in white “stealing” Paris — including the Eiffel Tower — and bringing it over to these shores.

But it’s not just Launch’s ads that are clever. The company also is skilled at thinking up ways to brand clients that go beyond traditional advertising media like TV and newspapers.

For instance, Launch is working with Rent-a-Center to transform its fleet of 9,000 to 10,000 trucks into “moving billboards,” Wilgus says.

Seeking referrals
The experience of the three principals helped in another way in the early days, landing them a bunch of business through referrals, without having to go prospecting for it. Still, Wilgus concedes that growth is a challenge to this day.

“We spend a lot of time on our clients’ businesses, which keeps us from chasing new business as much as we probably should,” he says.

Still, Launch is growing. After starting out with six employees, it now has 18. And last year, it moved from its original 3,000-square-foot digs into a space in Carrollton that’s about twice as large. The business does about $2 million in annual revenue.

“Anytime you’re in a service business like (advertising), it’s a networking and referral business,” says Dr. Joseph C. Picken, executive director of the Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship in the School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas.

He says the track records of people running small shops can overcome the problems of the companies being new. And they can promise to focus more intently on a given client than a larger rival might.

“Sometimes,” he says, “that will win the day.”

Business: Advertising agency
Address: 4100 Midway Road, Ste. 2110, Carrollton 75007
Top executives: David Wilgus, principal/creative director; Diane Seimetz, principal/creative director; Michael Boone, principal/director of account services
Ownership: Private
Employees: 18
Revenue: $2 million
Other locations: None
Phone: 972-818-4100
Web: www.launchagency.com