Impact Advertising offers one-stop shopping experience
Trending
Matt Gartner always had a business sense and eye for design, but it wasn't until his senior year of college that he discovered the path that would lead him to found Impact Advertising, 4642 Route 220 South, Linden, 36 years ago.
"I started to notice my senior year that I was often paying more attention to ads than actual programming. When I would watch television or listen to things on the radio, I always found it to be fascinating how companies tried to communicate and get the attention of their customers," said Gartner, who holds business and graphic arts degrees from Lycoming College.
"I thought maybe this is a good industry for me to use my educational background and desire to to continue to experience and work in that field," he said.
Gartner describes Impact Advertising as a "full-service advertising and marketing firm."
The company includes their own in-house photography and videography.
"We are fully immersed in any and all methods and modes of marketing, anything that a client needs to help get their message out," Gartner said.
"We handle everything from manufacturing to retail accounts. We're very heavily involved in multi-location retail, but we also have a real strong niche in the political arena," Gartner said, adding the business has handled nearly 40 political campaigns since its inception.
"If there's been a political campaign of any kind in this town in the last 25 years, we're typically involved in at least one in every electoral season, so we have a lot of experience in that and in educating and informing a target audience, whether that's a voter, potential voter, or a consumer of goods," he added.
Gartner said that Impact is able to provide as much or as little guidance as their clients need.
"Some of these political campaigns have paid campaign managers. In other areas, somebody might come to us and say, "hey, I'm starting a business and I need a whole corporate identity. I need the logo. I need my business cards. I need my website. I need my digital marketing. I might want to look at a billboard or some radio, direct mail,' any of those things," he said.
Gartner said having so many services provided by one company has been one of the biggest pluses for their clients.
"They like the fact that they have one or two points of contact with us, depending on the size of the account, and that they have accountability with a monthly, quarterly or yearly budget that we set up with them," he said.
"We have a fiduciary and an ethical responsibility to our clients to do the right thing because ultimately their success leads to a continued relationship and other accounts as well," Gartner said.
Being in business for almost 40 years, Gartner has seen many advances in the industry.
"When I started the company, the term they used was desktop publishing, and everybody was migrating from a wax machine and Linotronic output stat machines to this electronic publishing, and I was really very strongly advocating to publishers that they accept electronic files from us instead of having to have film and negatives and plates made for publishing," he said, noting that shipping costs to television and radio stations were extraordinary.
"Now we just upload them with a computer, so the integration of electronics and computers into the market was a big deal and it happened right when I started the company," he said.
"I embraced the technology early, and we continue to see it evolve as there's so much to be done with digital marketing, social media platforms, and streaming video," Gartner said.
The evolution of Gartner's business in ways mirrored the technological one.
"When I started the business, my office was so small that if you opened the door, it would bang into my desk. And my first phone system was a hole that I drilled in the wall, and my secretary or I would unplug the phone and feed the wire through the wall. I would plug it into my phone to be able to take a phone call," he said with a laugh.
Gartner said the key to Impact Advertising's success is the great care they take to deliver exactly what their clients are looking for.
"The process of starting with somebody is a discovery process of learning what their needs are, how they go about their business, and then trying to address those needs in a way that is financially responsible and creative, unique and ultimately successful for them," he said.
"That discovery period sometimes involves multiple interviews, sometimes it involves a plant tour, to get down into the nuts and bolts of their business, so that we can offer the best services possible in an informed way," Gartner said.
"There's a lot of different factors: geographic, psychographic, demographic, financial and the budgeting aspects of it," he said.
Gartner also stressed that his team is essential to Impact's continued success.
"No business is successful with just one person. We've got a great team and I've got some really good partners at the agency, a lot of hardworking people, dedicated people," he said.
"They all have their unique strengths and qualities, and it's served us well over the years," Gartner said.
"When you're in business as long as I've been, you see and meet a lot of people, and I include them as part of our success," he said, adding that includes their clients.
"They're the most important aspect and are critical to us, so I really appreciate the folks that have put their trust, their advertising, their business in our hands over the years," Gartner said.
"It's been a pretty amazing journey," he said.
For more information on Impact Advertising, check them out across social media, at their website www.impact-ad.com or by phone at 570-323-7741.