KM&A | Karen Morstad & Associates

Greenwich woman finds her creative voice with marketing firm
By Harold Davis, Special Correspondent

Published in the Stamford Advocate (June 6 2007) - Karen Morstad for 14 years was a senior marketing executive with a large financial services firm in New York City, but when she began to feel removed from the creative process, she started her own marketing firm, Karen Morstad & Associates LLC, in Greenwich.

"I felt that I needed to get back to the basics and to build a firm that worked in a sophisticated way to fill a need," said Morstad, the firm's president.

"Our mission is not just producing pretty brochures and attractive Web sites. Our mission is to produce results for our clients," she said.

The company, which recently celebrated its third anniversary, focuses on creating marketing strategies for firms in the retail, consumer services, insurance and technology industries, but its specialty is financial services.

KM&A clients range from investment banking arms of financial services companies to hedge funds and private equity firms.

One of her firm's recent projects was for InvestmentNews, a weekly trade magazine that is part of Crain Communications Inc. KM&A redesigned the Web site to have the look and feel of the printed publication, Morstad said. The firm also worked to make the site more user-friendly and to provide better results for advertisers.

Morstad said that her firm also set up InvestmentNews' first reader participation event, the Retirement Income Summit Conference in New York City, which KM&A promoted via various marketing initiatives.

For the company's bigger clients, often heavyweight financial firms, Morstad looks to augment their public identities with more creative marketing strategies and expertise.

"Not saying you can't do well without marketing, but what are you missing because you haven't done anything?" said Morstad, a Greenwich resident.

Kevin McEvoy, professor of marketing with University of Connecticut in Stamford, agrees with Morstad.

He said he believes a company's success needs to be backed up with good marketing.

"No company can just rely on their name. GE, Coca-Cola and Apple are huge, but they're still out pushing their PR every day," he said.

Morstad hopes to expand the television and commercial production arm of her business. The firm recently added Steven Vaughan, a television and video veteran, to spearhead its new offerings.

"We're providing online video as an extension to a company's overall marketing. It'll have the same look and feel, but with a voice and personality that you can only get in video," she said. "The buzz is two-fold. We call them 'Webmercials.' We'll have 30- and 60-second spots for promotions, and some will be educational, like three- or four-minute versions that have more detail."

McEvoy believes it is important for young marketing agencies to have specialty areas of service.

After establishing its core expertise, a firm can expand into other areas, he said.

"It's good to specialize especially in the early stages. They need to build core competencies so they get known as the 'go-to' company," McEvoy said.

Outside the financial marketing world, KM&A also has some fun on its agenda. The firm serves the public relations agency-of-record for Lake Compounce in Bristol, one of the oldest continuously running theme parks in the United States.

"We designed a PR kit for them, press releases on the rides and case studies. They're looking to get serious penetration in lower Fairfield County," Morstad said.