Associated adds Springfield, Mo., office

Associated advertising, which will now be known as Associated Integrated Marketing , is adding a new office in Springfield, Mo.

"This is our first office outside of Wichita in our 65-year history," says public relations director Shawn Steward .

The office will be staffed by three people from the Springfield area that Steward says Associated staff knew through previous business relationships.

"We knew that we wanted to find digital resources to bring in-house," he says.

That includes offerings such as Web development, social media, mobile marketing, interactive applications and coupon services that Steward calls essential to effective marketing.

He says in the past, the agency — like many other agencies — has sometimes hired freelancers to do that work.

"We're at a tipping point, I think, where it makes sense for us to bring this type of specialized, highly skilled resource in house," Steward says.

The Springfield office will have three employees addressing that kind of work:

Jennifer Cole is the new director of digital strategy and account leader. Steward calls her a project manager.

Jeremy Boles is lead developer and digital strategist, and Chad Spencer is lead developer and designer.

"They're sort of the techno-wizards behind the scenes," Steward says.

He expects the integration of the new office to go smoothly.

"We thought with technology that ... we would easily be able to integrate them into our offering, into our agency, without any problems," Steward says.

He even joked via a news release that "traditional technologies, including the automobile, will also be important to team interaction."

"We kind of feel between clients' demands and things we're hearing from new business prospects ... this is the right time to be making this move," Steward says.

It also will allow the agency to serve Missouri clients, he says.

Even if the new office works well, Steward can't say if there will be more satellite Associated offices.

"That remains to be seen."

Historic move

Cohlmia Marketing is moving from one historic building to another.

The marketing-communication firm has been in the Yellow Cab building in Old Town for a decade.

It's moving to the Travel Air Building at 535 W. Douglas in Delano .

"It's a wonderful opportunity to have some Douglas street exposure," says president Carol Skaff .

That's partly why she's moving.

"We're kind of off the beaten path here," she says of her location on Mosley Street between First and Second streets.

That's the same building where Egg Cetera is.

"It really is a wonderful location," Skaff says. "We have really enjoyed Old Town."

When the office opened there, there was no Old Town Square .

"The energy has been building," Skaff says. "It's been really fun to be part of that.

"At this time, the energy of Delano is really starting to, I guess, percolate," she says. "They've just been doing so many interesting developments, and it has an interesting creative vibe, and that was attractive to us."

Her new office will be more than 2,300 square feet, which is larger than her current 1,750 square feet.

"So that was another thing," Skaff says. "We're a little bit running out of space here."

She has four employees.

Skaff expects her new space to be ready in the middle of the year.

Chad Stafford, president of Occidental Management , which owns the Travel Air Building, handled the deal.

Spangenberg Phillips Tice Architecture is the architect for the project, and Sauerwein Construction is the contractor.

In Delano, Skaff says her agency can still be part of downtown.

"We love downtown and knew we needed to be in the city's core."

No more 4 p.m. news

KAKE, Channel 10 , is dropping its 4 p.m. newscast, but marketing director Bryan Frye says that doesn't mean the station is offering any less news.

"We're still doing the same amount of news, just in different time periods," he says.

There is no staffing reduction related to the change.

Frye says that in January, KAKE added a 4:30 a.m. newscast in anticipation of canceling the half-hour 4 p.m. newscast, which debuted in 2007.

"The problem was we never really had a good companion piece at 4:30," Frye says.

He says viewers tuned in for the 4 p.m. newscast but then left at 4:30. The station tried several half-hour shows in that slot, but none was a good lead-in to the 5 p.m. news.

In September, KAKE will run the hour-long "Dr. Oz "at 4 p.m. He's one of the syndicated "You Docs "The Eagle runs every Tuesday.

KAKE is dropping "Ellen "at 3 p.m. and replacing the show with "Anderson Cooper ."

"Now we've taken that 3-to-5 time period to be very news and information programming," Frye says.

Once Oprah Winfrey announced her show would end, Frye says the price for "Ellen" went up.

"She got very expensive," he says. "We said, 'We're not going to play that game.' "

KWCH, Channel 12 , will begin airing "Ellen" in September when "The Oprah Winfrey Show "ends.

Around that time, KWCH staff also will begin doing a half-hour 4 p.m. newscast on sister station KSCW , Channel 33 .

Frye says canceling KAKE's 4 p.m. newscast will allow more resources for things such as "Web and other types of news programming."

"This will actually allow us to do more things."

You don't say

"It's an experiment to see if a casino would succeed in downtown Wichita."

—Morgan Stanley Smith Barney broker and Cards for the Cure creator Spike Anderson , joking in an e-mail about the Friday poker tournament to raise money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure

This story was originally published March 31, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Associated adds Springfield, Mo., office."