Milestones: Influential Communications LLC.
Business New Haven 12/13/2004
by Karen Singer
Influential Communications LLC. Ransom's Walk 937-4 Stratford Ave. Stratford 06615-6354 Tel: 203-377-8852 Web: www.influentialcom.com Ownership: Christopher Loynd Milestone: 15 years History In the late 1980s, advertising copywriter Chris Loynd occasionally crossed paths with Lou Milo, who owned a graphics design agency called RPM. "We ran into each other on some projects," recalls Loynd, who asked Milo to join him when he decided to open his own shop. The resulting partnership, Influential Communications, began in 1989 in Milford as a small advertising agency Loynd prefers calling "a marketing ideas consultancy." The firm moved to Stratford in 1999. Influential caters to corporate clients, with work ranging from one-time projects to long-term relationships Over the years the company has remained tiny, by design, with Loynd, Milo and a bookkeeper at the core and a few freelance writers and designers as needed. The number of employees, he says, has never topped five. "We've always had a strategy of staying pretty small," says Loynd, Influential's principal and communications director. "I always say instead of having a standing army, we use mercenaries." Achievements & Accomplishments Commitment to "the idea process" underlies the company's longevity, according to Loynd. "To us, the most important thing is putting together ideas that are memorable, having stopping power and are bent to a client's purpose," he says. The approach has attracted some very substantial clients including DuPont, FMC, GTE, Horrmann-La Roche, Prudential, SmithKline, Stauffer and Union Carbide. "It's unusual for an agency our size to work with a lot of big clients," Loynd notes with some understatement. Influential works in a variety of media, ranging from brochures to Web sites. The firm's most extensive project so far, Loynd notes, was an eight-year marketing stint with Milford Bank. Among other projects for B2B clients, the company devised an advertising, direct mail and sales support campaign aimed at helping the Knights of Columbus' insurance sales force boost market share of its members' life insurance policies. Influential also created a series of newspaper ads resulting in improved retail sales for locally grown plants at Glendale Farms during a year when the popular pick-your-own strawberries farm in Milford lost its entire crop of berries. Looking Ahead Loynd concedes business has been "a little bit slow" over the past couple of years because in economic crunch times "advertising and marketing are one of the first things to be cut." But being "small and specialized, we can go out and grab business from a lot of places, and we're less expensive than typical agencies," he says. Future plans include more of the same - always with the primary emphasis on the power of the idea." Article from Business New Haven magazine: http://www.conntact.com/article_page.lasso?id=38495