Chris McMillen Has Left GWL Digital, Gary Lay Says

Chris McMillen

Marketing executive Chris McMillen has left the leadership team of GWL Digital in Little Rock less than five months after his own digital marketing firm was acquired as an arm of GWL Advertising, led by Gary W. Lay.

Lay said on Friday that McMillen, who founded Mass Enthusiasm as a website development and promotion firm in 2003 and became managing partner of the rechristened GWL Digital in February, “wanted to go in a different direction, do his own thing.” 

McMillen didn’t immediately respond to an email and phone message seeking comment.

GWL Digital Account Manager Chris Ho will remain with the company, and Lay called him “the top guy from the digital aspect.” Ho had been McMillen’s account management director at Mass Enthusiasm.

The other 12 to 15 employees absorbed into GWL from Mass Enthusiasm will keep their jobs under Ho, with the exception of two workers who left for reasons unrelated to the changes, Lay said.

McMillen’s departure didn’t involve any financial arrangement beyond February’s acquisition agreement, Lay said. Privately held GWL has not made those financial details public. “All the financial was done at the time that we purchased the company,” Lay said.

At the same time Lay acquired Mass Enthusiasm, a finalist for 2017 Arkansas Business of the Year, he also absorbed Audio Recording Corporation of Arkansas, a widely known name in central Arkansas commercial production for four decades. ARCA became a part of GWL’s See Spot Run Productions, and longtime ARCA owners Dick Marendt and Clyde Snider headed into retirement.

Both acquisitions are succeeding, Lay said. 

“Mass Enthusiasm completed our agency, giving us the digital arm we needed heading into the future,” he said. “We acquired Mass Enthusiasm for the people and for their clients, and that has worked out well.”

GWL made space for the former Mass Enthusiasm team, as well as a couple of ARCA employees, at GWL’s headquarters at 11501 Huron Road in Little Rock. Lay owns the building.

“We have about 32 or 33 employees in total now,” Lay told Arkansas Business, “and we’re hiring. We have a new producer starting soon, and we’re looking to fill two other positions. I have about 50 resumes to look over.”