Biersma Creative Brings on Marcom Vet Michael Semer to Bolster Growing Marketing Practice
Chicago, Illinois – October 20, 2009 — For many advertising and creative services agencies, the word “bloodbath” is scarcely too strong to describe the succession of layoffs, cutbacks and consolidations that have struck the industry. The bright spots? Small to mid-sized agencies like Chicago shop Biersma Creative, which has brought on industry veteran Michael Semer as Director of Marketing, as they gear up to service a burgeoning marketing strategy and communications practice.
“Mike offers the kind of conceptual strength and experience in integrating multiple disciplines that our clients are asking for,” said agency president Mike Biersma. “Their priority is close client service, nimbleness, innovation and truly great creative…and more and more clients are seeing they can obtain that from agencies like ours.”
Semer, a 25-year creative veteran of agencies like Tracy-Locke, FCB Impact, Frankel, EuroRSCG and, most recently, Momentum Worldwide, will be charged with expanding the marketing strategy and communications planning capabilities of the agency, honed most recently over the last two years on Kraftfood’s Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) process for major brands like Ritz, Wheat Thins, Mac ‘n Cheese and many others. But he’ll also put his award-winning creative talents to work, skills that have delivered innovative programs to clients such as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Frito-Lay, among others, across a broad spectrum of marketing services – from medical and technology marketing to sales support, experiential/event marketing, Web and social media, in-store, direct, sales promotion, shopper marketing and more.
“He’s got the kind of broad expertise we want to have on board to help us touch all the bases,” said Biersma, whose namesake agency is celebrating 12 years of steady growth, servicing a list of business-to-business and technology clients.
“Mike and his team have succeeded by staying tight and smart, keeping focused on the clients’ real needs, keeping focused on just doing terrific work without compromise,” Semer explained. “There’s a real love of smart solutions, of craft and creativity and esprit de corps here that I’ve missed at bigger places.
“I had zero interest in a ‘big’ agency job for my next step,” he said. “I’ve seen that the scale that supposedly ‘integrated’ agencies sell in to clients also creates a lot of barriers to real innovation or depth of exploration. It’s solutions-by-Cuisinart, because ideas have to pass too many internal checkpoints before the client ever lays eyes on the work. A lot of clients realize they’re not seeing true economies from using those shops, and the quality of deliverable doesn’t justify what you’re paying for the marquee value of having a ‘major’ agency on call.”
In a new era where a galaxy of different vendors and specializations are available on a just-in-time basis, thanks to the Web and the proliferation of small, focused providers – many spun off by the disintegration of large shops — he sees a telling parallel between big agency troubles and the travails of the domestic auto industry.
“The vertically-integrated model doesn’t serve when flexibility and response time matter,” said Semer. “The Silicon Valley model now holds for manufacturing, and it’s proving itself for putting together effective marketing programs: an agency like ours can network smart, nimble, independent – and cost-effective — practice providers into virtual meta-shops that can still supply executions just as ‘integrated’ as the biggest single-umbrella shops. That model might not be the agency that GM hires – yet – but it’ll be the model its successors employ.”
