Chip Culpepper, a storyteller and longtime creative chief of the Little Rock advertising agency now known as mhp.si, took time this month to tell the firm’s origin story.
The agency spawned many characters and names over 52 years, and it very nearly used Snoopy’s happy childhood home as a namesake.
Here are the highlights:
July 17, 1972
Steve Mangan and Craig Rains open a new ad agency at One Union National Bank Plaza in Little Rock. Both had been at Cranford Johnson Hunt & Associates, where Mangan was an art director for nine years and Rains led the marketing research arm.
That’s where “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles M. Schultz and his beloved Snoopy come in. In the strip, Snoopy had been looking back fondly on his youth at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, a carefree and fun time, Culpepper said.
“Mangan REALLY wanted to call their new firm the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, but he gave in to more practical business considerations,” Culpepper said. “No banker back then was ever going to take the risk to explain to his board why he’d hired a kennel of mutts to run their marketing campaigns.”
So the firm was christened Mangan Rains & Associates, with Yvonne McLaughlin as the original associate. Their first client was Pulaski Federal Savings.
Bob Ginnaven, a creative writer and producer, soon joined as a full partner, and the name shifted to Mangan Rains Ginnaven Associates.
1975
The company joins the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and recruits Steve Holcomb to join as an account executive to help organize operations. Mangan Rains Ginnaven Holcomb becomes known as MRGH through the 1970s and ’80s.
The firm “became one of the state’s largest agencies in the process, approaching 100 employees,” Culpepper said. “The firm specialized in financial services and had offices in three states: Arkansas, Louisiana and Colorado.”
The firm contracts with the decline of the savings and loan industry. Craig Rains departs during the mid-1980s, and Ginnaven leaves in the early 1990s.The agency name changes to Mangan Holcomb Partners.
1988
David Rainwater joins the agency, specializing in account services and media strategy.
1995
Rainwater hires Culpepper, a former colleague, as the firm’s creative director.
Sharon Tallach comes to work, first as a college intern, then full time after college.
April 1999
Rainwater and Culpepper become agency partners as Mangan retires. The firm name shifts to Mangan Holcomb Rainwater Culpepper.
2002
The firm moves to the Riverdale neighborhood along the Arkansas River. It also wins recognition as Arkansas Business of the Year.
2005
Tallach, by this time Sharon Tallach Vogelpohl, becomes a partner.
“The prospect of calling the firm Mangan Holcomb Rainwater Culpepper Tallach Vogelpohl was as impractical as Daisy Hill Puppy Farm had once been, and we looked to the past for inspiration, and Mangan Holcomb Partners — ‘MHP’ — was born,” Culpepper said.
2010
Steve Holcomb decides to retire, and coincidentally, Tim Whitley leaves Nexstar Communications to form his own firm, Social Innovations, working in the new field of social media.
“With Holcomb’s office vacant at precisely that moment, David, Sharon and I invited Tim to informally work together on-site to mutually cooperate on business opportunities for each company’s clientele,” Culpepper said.
“By 2011, a business relationship between the firms is formalized and the four individuals created a partnership that evolved from Social Innovation into Team SI — along with generating a slew of startups and entrepreneurial efforts — that all finally rounded up into MHP/Team SI.”
While other companies downsized during the pandemic, the agency grew, Culpepper said, beefing up a northwest Arkansas office in Rogers.
2022
MHP/Team SI celebrates the 50th anniversary of Mangan’s so-called Puppy Farm.
Lannie Byrd, COO of MHP/Team SI (and the various startups the group formed), becomes a shareholder and soon has a partnership.
2023
The firm moves its Rogers office to the bustling Bentonville Square. Kristen Nicholson, who had led the firm’s public relations department for a decade, joins the leadership as a shareholder.
July 2024
“Today, as David Rainwater continues to transition his role, long-time strategists and client service specialists Julie C. Robbins and Whitney Burgess, both vice presidents already, become the newest shareholders of our newly recast firm, mhp.si,” Culpepper said.
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