by sheila neisler
[bizprofile]
manifesto: Another word for creativity? Courage.
at birdsong gregory, specialization drives success pple’s iconic “1984” commercial: A woman, dressed in an orange and white runner’s uniform, hurls a sledgehammer at a screen in a dismally lit theater filled with a gray-looking audience. The screen explodes into a bright light giving the connotation she has saved all of humanity from conformity and sameness. That’s the mental imagery that comes to mind when you see the work and meet the team at Birdsong Gregory. If you remember hearing about, reading about—or even smelling—the grilled steak scent wafting from a ShopBloom billboard, if you’ve wandered into a Bloom Grocery Store and thought, “Wow, this is different,” if you’ve attended a car show and heard auto enthusiasts wax on and on about their car care, you’ve experienced the impact of Birdsong Gregory. Different thinking yields different results. In only 10 years, the twoperson startup has gone from a spare bedroom to a burgeoning office with nine employees and over $3 million in annual billings. Revenues “We realized, like last year were up 90 percent from the prior year and, through August many small businesses, we 2011, revenue has exceeded that pinnacle by some $500,000. were spending more time working Clearly Birdsong Gregory is doing many things right: ‘in’ the business versus working ‘on’ Entrenching in a niche market with laser focus on the consumer. the business. We decided a smart move Approaching clients as partners. And developing a forwardwould be to specialize in one niche in which looking talented infrastructure.
we had been very successful—Shopper Marketing—and become the regional market leader in that niche.”
Looking Through a Different Lens Leslie Birdsong Kraemer and Jim Gregory Cusson meld their business and life experiences and take a yin/yang approach to run~Leslie Birdsong Kraemer ning their company. Creative Director/Partner Kraemer’s early interest in fine arts at Davidson College sent her along a path of an internship at Creative Loafing with stints on both sides of the advertising world, agency and corporate. Cusson’s education at Rutgers in New Jersey led him to his first job crawling through grocery stores to stock Keebler cookies, on to various stints in the corporate financial world, and eventually on to Charlotte with ad agency experiences. After working together and making money for other people, the duo decided to team up and hang their own shingle. Naturally, these diverse backgrounds manifest themselves in how the agency operates: Cusson handles the account management and relationship side of the business while Kraemer brings out the best in their collaborating design team. And this is a ‘marriage’ of business talents only, the answer to a question they get asked often. “We named the company using both our middle names, thinking ‘Birdsong Gregory’ had a more memorable ring to it than Cusson Kraemer,” notes Kraemer, “and when you stylize the lower cases of our initials b and g, the design takes on the appearance of glasses. In reality, that’s who we are. We look at our clients’ business through a different lens.” It was a different lens that became the catalyst for their exponential growth. In the early years of their business, sales were steadily rising and they hired one employee and then another, as business came through the door. However, the team ➤ began to heed the advice of a business coach who provided them with an outside perspective.
c o n s t r u c t i ve c a t a ly s t fo r c re a t i ve c o n s c i o u s n e s s
september 2011
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