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April
26, 2005 - Callahan Marketing & Advertising, Inc.
forms a Strategic Alliance with Franklin, TN based Mad
Dancer Media. Callahan and Mad Dancer will combine efforts
in designing and maintaining current and new potential
client websites.
Mad Dancer Media has an extensive and
impressive resume, including site designs for Tennessee
Commerce Bank www.tncommercebank.com, Rebecca St. James
www.rsjames.com, FFH www.ffh.net, Art of Being www.artofbeingbook.com,
Mansfiled Group www.mansfieldgroup.com, and WAY-FM www.wayfm.com.
"Joining forces with MDM allows us to offer a quality
of design previously unavailable in this area,"
said Joey Jones, President of Callahan Marketing &
Advertising, Inc. "We have spent months establishing
a relationship with MDM. Our intensive interview process
allowed us to find a company [MDM] whose initiatives
coincide with our own."
Both Callahan and Mad Dancer have been aiming for controlled
growth. Rather than scaling up in staff and then trying
to find the business to support payroll, CMA and MDM
instead only bring on additional staff when the need
dictates. Like an accordion, they expand and contract
according to the needs of individual projects by using
outsourced and temporary programming talent who are
paid by the project rather than being on staff. The
new alliance allows the marketing minds of the Callahan
team to interact with Mad Dancer's design experts. By
being wise in growth, CMA and MDM have been able to
weather storms in a marketplace where many others have
failed. Getting too big too fast, with too few clients,
is often the downfall of businesses in this field.
"Forming a strategic alliance with Callahan is
a step in the right direction," said Kari Scott,
Partner at MDM. "Their presence in Eastern NC now
becomes ours as well. I feel like we now have an office
in the great state of North Carolina." Mad Dancer
Media Business Partners Kari Scott and Michael Wilson
both come from a background in the entertainment industry.
Michael Wilson spent 15 years in radio broadcasting
in markets such as Houston, TX, Nashville, TN, and nationwide
via syndication. Kari Scott's background was in the
record business, having spent a number of years in A&R
marketing capacities with Christian music labels Benson
Records and later in music distribution at Provident
Music.
One of the biggest challenges Callahan and Mad Dancer
have had to overcome is the stigma of Internet companies
being branded as the used-car-salesman of the new millennium.
It's very common to hear stories of smarmy "web
guys" who promise the moon, take a deposit check
and then disappear. CMA and MDM have been able to overcome
the baggage that comes with being quaint. "We are
not small," Jones said. "We just view success
a little differently than most." An important lesson
principals at CMA and MDM have learned is that it's
OK to say "no". Regardless of how much a project
might pay, if it's not a win-win situation for them
and the client, they feel it's perfectly fine to politely
refer the work elsewhere. Avoiding getting in "over
their heads", either technically or where manpower
is concerned, is one of the ways this tandem has earned,
and will continue to maintain a reputation for delivering
on their promises.
Jones, Scott, and Wilson all admitted there is always
going to be some kid who has taken a design class or
a cousin of "your best friend" that once built
his own personal web page who is going to quote a job
cheaper, but what CMA and MDM have been able to prove
to new potential clients is that three months from now
when they can't find their cottage-business web guy,
CMA and MDM will still be here. Time and a solidly built
reputation where they actually deliver on promises have
allowed these companies to overcome this stigma.
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