The Arkansas Economic Development Commission has named Little Rock advertising agencies CJRW and Team SI, an affiliate of Mangan Holcomb Partners, as “successful bidders” for advertising, marketing and public relations contracts worth up to $2.4 million a year.
The commission, which works to bring businesses to Arkansas and to expand those already here, emphasized that the selections are not yet final, but will be reviewed Tuesday by the Arkansas Legislative Council, which votes on final approval Friday.
The Little Rock firm Stone Ward had been the commission’s advertising agency for the past 21 years. The AEDC decided this year to split a single advertising and marketing contract into three, seeking deeper experience in digital marketing and specific branding, according to the commission’s director of marketing and communications, Jeff Moore.
CJRW, one of the state’s largest and most established ad agencies, was the successful bidder for the branding and multichannel contract as well as the public relations work. The successful bidder for the digital marketing contract is Team SI, which describes itself as a full-service web design and digital marketing firm made up of designers, strategists and marketing specialists.
Each contract is listed as worth $800,000, but AEDC spokesman Scott Hardin described the amount as a “placeholder that will allow us to be flexible in how much we spend on each individual contract.”
“Our marketing and communications advertising budget is $1.6 million,” Hardin said, “but we have also figured in the additional budgets of some of AEDC’s divisions to get to this total budget of $2.4 million.”
The AEDC promotion contract is open for bidding every seven years. The commission posted the bids for the three contracts online on April 27. It received nine bids for digital marketing, five for the branding contract and seven for public relations, Hardin said.
Each of the successful bids was studied, scored and ultimately chosen by a committee in a review that took place May 31 through June 3, when the successful bids were submitted to the Office of State Procurement.
“The quality of the bids was very impressive,” Hardin said in a statement. “We appreciate the work that went into each individual submission. Arkansas is obviously home to a lot of creative and innovative talent. With the approval of the Arkansas Legislative Council, we look forward to working with each of the successful bidders.”
Sign up for Daily E-news
