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Hale Marketing began in 1998, when Pauline Hale left her marketing position at Hewlett-Packard and started her own marcom agency. The initial idea was to provide product launch services to technology companies, and this still remains our main focus today.
As a marketer in a large technology-driven organization, Pauline had experienced the limitations of an in-house marketing team. The need for marketing effort is not linear in any organization, it ramps up as new products are launched or new initiatives are begun, thus overtaxing in-house resources. Similarly, the skill sets necessary to take advantage of a new opportunity may not be filled by in-house staff. What seemed to be needed was an “instant on” experienced marketing resource that marketers could turn to in order to help launch new products, gain new customers, and take advantage of new market opportunities. This is the premise on which Hale! Marketing is based.
Hale! Marketing has been through two different operating modes. Originally our intent was to grow the agency to what we considered a “minimum viable size” (ie as large as possible) at which time the ebb and flow of work would be smoothed out by its sheer volume. We now realize that was not our best idea. The larger we became, the less opportunity we had to get involved directly with our clients and their marketing success. And we found that being a larger organization wasn’t necessarily more enjoyable, more profitable, or more valuable for our clients.
Now our model is entirely different. We’ve down-sized our office space, reduced our “headcount”, and re-connected personally with our clients. The key supporting tasks (production, coding, etc) are still performed by the same people, but now we (the principals) are directly involved in all aspects of our clients’ marketing. We write, design, strategize, research, coordinate, and do all the myriad tasks that you’d expect a marketer to do. This means we can add more value – our clients benefit from our expertise in all of the tasks we perform – while doing the things that we are good at and enjoy.
To accommodate the variation in work volume or the need for different skill sets, we work with a variety of people that choose to be independent contractors, and sometimes we work with other companies if their specialization is different from ours. All of these relationships are tested, and to our clients we are a single team.
We still have the same focus of serving a small client base very well over an extended engagement period, but we’re more able to pick and choose which clients are suitable for us. And our lower burn rate means we have less need to take on an inappropriate job simply for the income.
All of this means that our clients receive “maximum marketing value”. It’s a long way from minimum viable size, but we think it’s a better focus. And it works well.
Hale! Marketing Communications Inc. was formed in 1998 and is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
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