RISDALL MARKETING GROUP
RISDALL ADVERTISING AGENCY
As Minnesota’s leading new media agency, Risdall Marketing Group helps clients connect the dots in an ever-expanding universe of websites, blogs, social networks and more. We harness social and traditional media, strategic thinking and award-winning creativity to help our clients stay relevant, make meaningful connections and build profitable relationships. Big ideas work everywhere!
When it comes right down to it, Minnesota companies
are looking for just three things: Survival, Growth and Profit.
And, as legendary marketing guru Peter Drucker said long ago,
there are only two ways to get there: Innovation and Marketing.
Which is where we come in. If you’re looking for a dedicated marketing partner
to help you find inventive new ways to reach your audience – and your marketing
goals, consider Risdall Advertising.
As a premier marketing resource for you, Risdall
Advertising is among an elite group of the upper 1% of all advertising agencies, web develop-
ers, public relations agencies and integrated marketing agencies in the United States and
Minnesota. For most business-to-business markets, we are the biggest, most experienced
ad agency, and bring the widest toolbox of marketing strategies, solutions, and tactics to solve and
maximize marketing opportunities. Our unique structure positions us as the ultimate ally in
helping you innovate and market. Risdall Advertising is a Minnesota, national and international ad
agency. We work with 27 of the top 100 public companies in Minnesota. Yet three of our top six accounts are in
Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas. We also have clients in 15 countries and market internationally. We belong
to the Intermarket Agency Network, one of the world’s strongest and most complete agency networks.
Consider 36 Years of Success by the Numbers: Risdall Advertising is the #1 Web Developer in Minnesota and #46 in the US (as ranked by Adweek Magazine.) • Risdall Advertising is the #1 B-to-B Agency in Minnesota and #4 in the US (as ranked by BtoB Magazine.) • Risdall Advertising is the 7th largest Minnesota Advertising Agency (as ranked by Minnesota Business Journal Magazine.) • Risdall Advertising is the 82nd Largest US Advertising Agency (as ranked by Advertising Age; May 5, 2008 issue) • Risdall McKinney Public Relations is Minnesota’s 5th Largest Public Relations Agency and the 110th Largest PR Agency in the US (as ranked by 2008 Twin Cities Business Information Guide) • Risdall Search Marketing is the Largest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Agency in Minnesota • Risdall Advertising is Minnesota’s Largest Independent Advertising Agency and the 23rd Largest Independent Advertising Agency in America (as ranked by Advertising Age; May 5, 2008 issue)
Put Minnesota’s Home Grown Branding Heroes to Work for You
Risdall Marketing Group. We're Minnesota's Number One Interactive Agency. We're branding wizards. SEO shamans and SEM magicians. Rainmakers who unleash a veritable deluge of results for our clients.
We're the largest independent advertising agency in Minnesota (the seventh largest overall) and seventh oldest (out of 700) Minnesota advertising and branding agency. Not to mention the largest Minnesota B-to-B agency and the seventh largest Minnesota PR agency. We're award-winning strategic thinkers with $163MM in billings for 2007. We're loved by clients. A lot (see deluge of results). We're locally accessible. Nationally known, ranked and respected and waiting to put our prodigious talents to work for you. We're Minnesota's own home-grown home-run hitters. We're Risdall Marketing Group.
A Constant Craving to Serve You Better
It's been thirty-six-some-odd years since Risdall Advertising Agency was brought forth on the streets of New Brighton, Minnesota. And while a lot has changed since 1972, one thing has always remained constant; our desire – and ability – to serve the needs of our customers with a full range of full service capabilities including, Integrated marketing services, advertising services, corporate collateral and identity, public relations, web site development, Internet marketing, Internet search engine optimization, branding and much more.
But here's the really cool part – when our clients succeed, we succeed. Which inspires us to try even harder for our clients. And so it goes...
November 2008
Dear Friends,
The year 2008 marks our 36th anniversary. In an industry where longevity is often measured in months, we are well into our fourth decade of providing clients with incredible results in building their businesses. We are now Minnesota’s 7th oldest advertising agency out of over 700. The 2008 Business Information Guide ranked us the 7th largest Minnesota advertising agency, the #1 Web Developer and the 5th largest PR firm in January 2008. Our annual capitalized billings have exceeded $100 million for the last 7 years. We have created an insanely large body of great work for our clients, helping them create, build and benefit from their brands.
We finish 2008 with a structure and platform that offers our clients the widest variety of integrated services they need in a more streamlined way. The two most important things remain intact. Our ability to generate brilliant marketing ideas and our ability to deliver those ideas to our clients’ customers and prospects in the most relevant and economical way. After a three year search, we have hired Cindy Lord to be President of Risdall Strategic Consultation and head of account planning for RAA. She had prior stints at Martin Williams, JWT, Olgilvy and Euro. Here are a few of our other recent accomplishments:
- Our leadership in the e-commerce area remains unchallenged. Other agencies are now trying to copy our vision and strategic partnerships. President Ted Risdall, Director of Interactive Planning Frank Grubbs and CTO Joel Koenigs lead this effort. Adweek magazine IQ ranks us the #1 web developer in the state. In the 2008 Web Marketing Association Awards, we won 29 awards and came in first in the world.
- Rose McKinney has been a world class leader of our public relations team, aided by lieutenants Joel Swanson and Eva Keiser delivering Results That Matter™ to over 90 clients. We are ranked the 5th largest PR firm in Minnesota.
- The addition of Tom Wilson as President of Risdall Marketing Group really strengthens our entire account services team. His background includes stints at Fallon, Martin Williams, Campbell Mithun, Gage and Russell & Herder.
- VP/Account Supervisors Kevin Deshler, Patrick Bettenburg, Glenna Dibrell and Tim Dillon increased our leadership in the business-to-business and industrial categories.
- Our role in the service/consumer and medical sectors also grew, thanks to VP/Account Supervisor Terri Lee assisted by Account Executive Tia Wilkins. We now work with 10 of the top 50 Minnesota medical product manufacturers, plus several others nationally – more than 40 clients total.
- We have long served a substantial number of sporting goods clients. Agency Chairman John Risdall is recognized as a leader coast-to-coast and is assisted Account Executive Dianna Schmidt.
- As Minnesota's most wired agency, we've provided leadership to the high tech category. Ted Risdall, Tim Dillon, Jennifer Risdall (CEO of Risdall Online Marketing Group) and Josh Dahmes (President of Risdall Online Marketing) head our activities. Our fastest growing group is President Jared Roy heading the Risdall Integration Group, adding social media and web 3.0 to turbo charge everyone's marketing.
- Our Arts & Entertainment Division led by Dianna Schmidt now has more than 40 clients like The Ivey Awards, Million Dollar Idea TV Show and the 35 restaurants of Twin Cities Originals.
- Our fundraising and development group led by Jerry Seppala continues to deliver amazing re s u l t s !
- Kevin Deshler is also the President of Risdall Marketing Institute, interfacing with Minnesota academia.
- The financial services sector is well served by VP/Account Supervisors Jennifer Risdall and Laura Martenson who lead the sector with more than 30 accounts, capped by recent national awards for Honeywell Federal Credit Union which was recently rebranded as Endura.
- Risdall Sandstrom Media Works - Jim Sandstrom is doing wizardly things both online and in traditional media for our clients. He is the Dean of Twin City Media Directors.
Nationally, the May 5, 2008 Advertising Age ranks us the 82nd largest agency out of more than 27,000 and the 4th largest business-to-business agency. Ad Week Magazine ranks us the 48th largest interactive agency in the nation – the only Minnesota firm in the top 50. A c c o rding to Twin Cities Business Monthly we are the largest web developer. In short, we are in an elite group of the top 1% of agencies in the world. While we are about a $100 million business-to-business agency, we are also a $50+ million consumer agency. But most importantly, we are proud of the work we do and the positive impact it has on our clients’ sales and profits. They enjoy the unfair business advantage of focused, creative advertising. We would like to show you some profitable ideas we think might help your company in 2008 and beyond.
Sincerely,
John Risdall
Chairman/CEO
Ted Risdall
President
Kevin O’Callaghan
President-Creative
The Number One Interactive Agency in Minnesota. ‘Nuff said. (Ranked by Ad Week)
So You Need An Internet Marketing System?
You're talking to the right guys if you want to succeed online. Risdall's award-winning web sites feature a rare combination of creative vision, bullseye branding, buckets of "bugs" for the search engine spiders to find, and an almost uncanny knack for being able to get your visitors to where they want to go in a hurry – without making the journey feel like a New York cab ride at rush hour. How can we help you create a site to see with web site development and search engine optimization? The answer is just a click away at Risdall.net
Tapping into some of the biggest brains in academia.
The Risdall Marketing Institute is a shared learning resource amongst Twin Cities academic and consulting resources. The goal of the RMI is to have a two-way relationship with the local academic community, and to provide access to the most current resources and techniques applied to the field of marketing and business development. To date, we have established relationships with over 80 professors (out of over 185 professors of advertising, marketing and public relations at the 22 Minnesota colleges and universities that have such a professor), been in contact with thousands of students and collaborated on dozens of projects with various professors and clients. Flagship programs for the Risdall Marketing Institute include, Intern for a Day program, the Student Agency and guest lecturing.
Helping to Brand You as a Winner
You say you want to be the Best Dang Bar-None Brand out there? Well you’ve come to the right place, pardner. At Risdall, we eat, sleep, think and breathe branding for our clients (which happen to include 27 of the top 100 public companies here in Minnesota.) Using our exclusive, patent-pending Arrowhead Brand Audit and Brand Development Process, we go through a carefully orchestrated sequence of Discovery, Definition, Development, Design and finally Deployment processes to turn Brand X into Brand A#1. To learn how we can make your brand the hottest thing going, give Ted Risdall a call at: 651-631-1098.
Tried-and-true and new strategies combined in ways other PR shops may never have even thought of.
You have a brand to grow and a reputation to protect. You have to increase visibility and awareness, to generate buzz and fanfare. Whether you’re targeting Alpha Moms or NASCAR Dads, our illuminating and integrated combination of leading-edge and tried-and-true PR strategies allows us to create programs that reach the right people, with the right message, and prompt the desired action. We spend our days painstakingly crafting messages that resonate with the advocates that advance your brand. And we do it all for the love of delivering results that actually matter. As Minnesota’s 5th Largest Public Relations Agency and the 110th Largest PR Agency in the US, Risdall McKinney Public Relations serves consumer, business-to-business and non-profit clients locally, nationally and internationally.
To learn how we can help you achieve the results that matter most to you, give Rose McKinney a call at: 651-286-6767.
We work locally, nationally and in Hollywood to promote our clients in movies and TV — we have thousands of client product placements. We have worked with many TV shows and movies like The Million Dollar Idea and Mental Engineering.
Have your people get a hold of our people. We'll do lunch. We work locally, and coast-to-coast from Hollywood to New York to promote our clients in movies, TV, comic books and video games. In other words, anything that will lead to the crème de la crème called social acceptance. REG has thousands of client product placements and we have worked with numerous TV shows and movies like The Million Dollar Idea and Mental Engineering. Our Arts & Entertainment Division led by Julie Dianna Schmidt now has more than 40 clients like Theatre de la Jeune Leune, Million Dollar Idea TV Show and the 35 restaurants of Twin Cities Originals. If you need exposure, expose yourself to the power of Risdall Entertainment Group.
Risdall Marketing Group — The Big Easy
OK, New Orleans already has the name, but working with Risdall Advertising will make taking care of your advertising and marketing needs easier (and more profitable) than you ever thought possible. For one thing, our integrated, one-stop-shop capabilities mean you never have to fill out a half dozen purchase orders for the services of a half dozen different agencies. With Risdall Advertising, you get exactly what you need – when you need it, with just one click to any one of the following starting points:
Risdall Advertising
Top notch, full service advertising that’s locally accessible and nationally recognized and respected.
Risdall Interactive
The Number One Interactive Agency in Minnesota. ‘Nuff said.
Risdall McKinney Public Relations
Tried-and-true and new strategies combined in ways other PR shops may never have even thought of.
Risdall Fundraising
We’ve already raised millions for our clients. How much do you need?
Risdall Marketing Institute
Tapping into some of the biggest brains in academia.
Risdall Search Engine Optimization
Making sure you’re seen in all the right places.
Risdall Online Advertising
Profit from what we know about making the Internet pay.
Risdall Branding and Naming
Helping you define, name and profit from your strongest asset.
Risdall Strategic Consultation
Finding you the best route to a more profitable future.
I’d Like to Thank the Academy
Don’t misunderstand us. We like awards as much as the next guy. But the recognition that really matters most to us are the accolades and, more importantly, the trust awarded us from clients who have seen real success increasing their sales due to our creative efforts.
So while we’ll gladly take the acknowledgement of our peers, it’s the thanks of our customers that makes us the most proud.
The Right Tools to Get the Job Done for Our Clients
You know that guy with the basement full of every tool you can think of and about 250 you’ve never even heard of? That’s us. Over the years, we’ve turned innovative thinking into proven SEO, brand development and web development processes, web content, e-commerce, analytics, web marketing and other tools and big ideas that have helped hundreds of companies turbo-charge their business.
So give us a holler - we’d love the chance to do the same for you. Now hand me that ¾” socket, will ya...
“Search engine success can be done without dancing baloney!”
— John Risdall