Mike Sells, CEO of the Sells Agency
Reflecting on a strong 2019 and a meaningful business anniversary last week, Mike Sells cast himself as the Goldilocks of Little Rock’s marketing agency story.
The Sells Agency has found its size, and it is just right.
As Sells mentioned his dad, the late PR executive Bob Sells, a ringing telephone interrupted, and that seemed fitting: Sells’ dad spent a quarter-century working for Southwestern Bell Telephone before going into business for himself.
“It was 25 years ago yesterday that I joined my dad’s firm, Sells & Associates, out at Evergreen and University Avenue,” Sells said over sandwiches at Nexus Coffee & Creative in downtown Little Rock. “When he retired, he started out as a one-person firm, Bob Sells PR. As a side note, my sister Stacy worked for him first and left in 1994 to start her own PR firm, Pittman Portis, which later merged with CJRW.”
A former employer warned Mike Sells he wouldn’t last six months in his own business, but a quarter-century later, its successor firm is thriving at 401 W. Capitol.
“Yes, 2019 was a very good year,” Sells said. “Very exciting; we saw growth in clients, billings and staff. We now have 21 employees.”
On Jan. 22, Sells announced an expansion of his creative team, including the hirings of two recent college graduates and an experienced art director. Harding University alumnus Bronson Crabtree and University of Arkansas graduate Caroline Minor, who both got their diplomas in 2019, also worked as interns for Sells. Crabtree will be a junior videographer, and Minor will be a PR account coordinator.
Erin Green, previously of Arkansas Business Publishing Group, hired on as art director, and the agency promoted Megan Williams to media planner/buyer. Green has a degree in journalism from UA and a master’s in studio art from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Williams is a graduate of Arkansas Tech University in Russellville.
“I like where we are in staffing,” Sells said. “You’ve got your CJRWs and your Stone Wards and to some extent your Mangan Holcomb Partners, and they’re the big agencies with a lot of employees. Then you have small firms with only three or four people, which really lack the specialization needed to serve some clients. But firms like us, and I’d put Eric Rob & Isaac in that category, are big enough to offer expertise in all the areas clients want, but not so big as to make medium-sized clients feel less important. We’re in that happy middle.”
Sells said multi-channel marketing and data analysis drive today’s advertising engine, and that far more detailed information on ad reaction is now available. “You can see what ads lead to clicks, and then bore into what those who clicked did,” Sells said. “Did they even stay on the site? Because some clicks aren’t intentional. Many people just close out of the ad immediately. You can see which ads did better for conversions” — that means getting people to take action — “and which held more interest and engagement for users. Multi-channel marketing is the biggest change in the industry.”
Sells said hiring the two former interns was no fluke. His agency cultivates college interns and gets real work out of them, he said. “We don’t take interns and make them spend a week in this department, then another week in that one, and so on,” he said.
Instead, the agency determines interns’ interests and strengths beforehand, then throws them into jobs where they can immediately start contributing. “It makes more sense to make use of their skills, to put them to work making a difference on the job. Over the last six years, we’ve hired five or six interns, and all of them served clients and campaigns.”
Sells, who conceived a succession plan for his business back in 2016, said that initiative is unfolding as his partners, Drew Finkbeiner and Jon Hodges, build equity in the firm. The plan is for the two to buy Sells out by 2026. “By then, I’ll be 63. If I want to continue to work, I can, and if they want me to, I can,” Sells joked. “If they don’t want me to, I can’t, and if I don’t want to, I won’t!”
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