25th Anniversary Shirt

After celebrating the official 25th anniversary of The Simon Group on March 17, 2011, the Groupies celebrated TSG-style last weekend at the Fab Fall BBQ, complete with custom shirts!

We announced an honorary Groupie, presented Marty & Karen with a cake and gifts, indulged in homemade 25th anniversary chocolate lollipops, chatted with friends and of course rocked away the afternoon!

A sincere thank you to everyone who came out for the event as well as those who have supported us throughout the years. Clients, editors, reps, Groupies, freelancers, vendors, friends, family and everyone in between. The Simon Group wouldn’t be the same without any of you.

Check out pictures and song performance videos on our social media sites. If you have any pictures from the BBQ, send us an email.

We’re looking forward to another 25 years and another great Fabulous Fall BBQ next year!

What could be better than The Simon Group's founder making everyone burgers!?

Mark your calendars now… The Simon Group’s 25th anniversary Fabulous Fall BBQ will be held at the farmhouse on Saturday, October 1, 2011!

Get ready for a fun-filled day of food, friends, family, music and plenty of opportunities for a good YouTube video! Invitations to follow via email, regular mail and Facebook as the date gets closer.

We can’t wait to celebrate 25 amazing years of The Simon Group with you all!

The Simon Group has recently been chosen by IEE as its agency of record for a new marketing communications campaign intended to establish the company’s human-system interface solutions in military, industrial and commercial markets.

Steve Motter, vice president, business development, stated, “We wanted to work with a company that could position our products effectively in the OEM and end-user marketplace with a well-rounded campaign. When a colleague suggested The Simon Group to us for their expertise in our target markets and excellence in integrated marcom plans, we knew they could deliver the results we need to grow our business.”

Read the full press release

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By Marty Simon, CEO and Rhythm Guitarist

Wow! Twenty five years??!! Could somebody please tell me where that time went…and how it went by so fast!?

OK, so I’m thinking back to March 17, 1986…yes, St. Patrick’s Day. Karen, my partner and administrative assistant for four years at our previous agency,  and I laughed that first day and said…”well, this is a fine time to start a new marketing communications agency!” I guess we were right. The fates were with us…the fates and a couple of great clients who chose to come with us when we started this crazy business.

In the beginning, it was exciting and fun (and, believe it or not, it still is!!)…and maybe just a little scary although neither Karen nor I remember being scared…I guess we didn’t know any better. We started in my basement…just the two of us, a phone, a beat-up 1982 Compaq “transportable” computer and dot matrix printer. Oh, yeah, and a bunch of my amplifiers and guitars…for stress relief, of course.

Business was strong and we had virtually no overhead. And no art department, no writers, not much of anything. But between Karen’s administrative skills — and her ability to keep me reasonably focused on client and agency matters, and to make me put the guitar down — and the help of a few carefully selected free-lancers, we managed to take care of business quite nicely.

Within a year,  we were able to leave the basement and move into our first “real” office in a nifty little office building overlooking a pond and woods in nearby Springhouse, PA.  Hey…now we had room to hire some help! Our first objective was to establish an art department. That would mean we’d need an Art Director. So we ran and ad in the local papers (remember them??) and were overwhelmed by the response. Wow! So much talent out there.

The first candidate we brought in could have been the last…he knocked us out…he had it all, could do it all…but I thought to myself, I can’t hire the first guy that comes in. So I saw twenty other candidates, very talented men and women…and then I hired candidate number one! And I am very proud to say this amazing man, Dennis Brennan, is still with us, now as Vice President and Senior Art Director. Sometimes you just get lucky…I sure did with Karen and Dennis!!!

One of the great joys of having your own business is that you get to hand pick your teammates. I have some of the very best…and most of them have been with me for a long time….not quite as long as Karen and Dennis, but well into their second decade with The Simon Group.

From Basements to Penthouse

So our little business continued to grow…we moved from the ground floor of the office building to the penthouse (third floor), tripled our office space and added a few more employees…and a few more clients! That’s the other great joy of this business…the clients. Sure, they sometimes ask for changes that you don’t think are right, sometimes they don’t respond immediately to your questions, sometimes they even cut the marcom budget. But, bless ‘em…they are why we are here.

I am fortunate to count many of my clients as lifelong friends…I go back more than 25 years with many of them. Same for the media folks…the reps, publishers and editors…I go back even farther with some of them. Great guys and women…great people…we grew up in the business together (to the extent that I ever grew up, that is!). I still meet a bunch of them for lunch and dinner…and it’s still fun But we used to be the kids, now we’re the old-timers…when did that happen???!!!

Our Escape to the Country

By 1991, five years after we started, we were running out of space again…and we had this crazy idea that we didn’t have to be confined to an office building. So we started looking for a country retreat and found a charming 1770s Pennsylvania fieldstone farmhouse out in the wilderness of West Rockhill, PA…a charmingly rural yet accessible township in Upper Bucks County, PA.

We reckoned that with phone, fax and Fed Ex (no email yet…), we could stay in touch with our clients no matter where we were.  We kept the farmhouse, which had been a residence until we purchased it, virtually unchanged to preserve its historic country charm. The adjacent outbuilding, which housed a garage and a large children’s playroom, became the art department…Dennis had his own digs!! Before long, we had to expand that building to accommodate our rapidly growing PR and art departments!

Four New Simon Group Stars Start to Shine

As the millennium changed, so did we. The Simon Group hit the jackpot in and around 2000 with four key hires who are still star players on The Simon Group team:

Mary Kaye Yerkes, our office manager, media coordinator, primary cookie baker and tender of so many of our needs.

Beth Smith, whom I had professionally courted for years, hoping to lure her to The Simon Group PR department, who now serves as our Vice President and Executive Director of Public Relations.

Christina Sanchez, who keeps our amazing PR machine well oiled, finely tuned and always ahead of  our clients’ PR needs.

Dave Lesser, our President, and the only one to ever transition from Simon Group client to Simon Group employee (let alone President!!). What a find, these four. Like I said…lucky me!

Others have come and gone; some stayed for many years, others not quite that long. It’s very satisfying to have a team that has both veteran, highly experienced people who know the business, the clients, the media…and to continually have new, young folks joining, bringing their fresh ideas and enthusiastic attitudes into the mix. The alchemy is amazing.

With Thanks and Gratitude…

Rather than reminisce too long about the good old days and the good new days and what has happened to fundamentally change our business (in a word, the Internet!), I’d rather ackowledge the people. Nothing as wonderful as The Simon Group happens without a ton of inspired help from a lot of people. I want to take this opportunity to formally thank just some of the people that helped make it happen:

From my first agency:

Ted Jones and Harding Lindhult…who taught me the basics of running an agency and how to service an account with dedication and integrity

Jim Virden and Russ Risko…my creative team at Lindhult & Jones; and, of course, Carol Tollins

Charley Birkhead…whom I hired at L&J and then again at The Simon Group…great writer and musician

Karen Burke…what can I say…without her, there simply would be no Simon Group…29 years together and never a fight (except the day we both quit smoking!)!!!

My clients…past and present:

This one is tricky…if I left you out, it’s just bad memory, not that I don’t still love you: Stacy Adams, Harold Powell, Ernie Schilling; Larry Gallone; Tom Malek; Ed Farley; Mike Cantor, John Dwight; Terry Parris; Peg Houck; Pete Yeatman, Doug Patterson, Joel Silverman, Duncan Young, Tom Hall;  Tom Cleary; Bud Lifson; Doug Juanarena, Steve Yakshe; Denise Topping; Bill Sinclair, Frank Folmsbee; George Ross; Andrew Foss; E.L. Fox, Lisa Sanchez, David Smith; Martin Cross; Terry Tuerk; Gillis Mellen; Valerie Andrew;’ Barbara Schmitz; Nissen Isakov; Klaas Vogel

My media friends:

Again, this is not a complete list by any means…just some of those whose names stay with me!

Neil Kelly, Bob Olmsted, Judy Miller, Bonnie Devine, Bill Lindsey, David Lieberman, John McHale, Nick Hamersley, Al Rosenblatt, David Geltman, Chris Ciufo, Ken Nealon, Tom Madorna, The Milroy clan; Jim Lees, Glenn Sundin., Art Niedosik, Ron Taylor, John Murray

Great Groupies from the past

Almost all Simon Group employees (lovingly referred to as Groupies) made a contribution to our success. Those who had a major impact on our good fortunes include Marianne Vogel, K Pura, Teena Auerbach, Jeanne Collins, Cindy Brandt, Charley Birkhead, Carrie Smith, Patt Bossert and Frank Komykoski

Extra credit:

Pete Antoniewicz and Dan Kinter for tremendous creative support; Steve Burger and Sonny Mitchell for keeping The Simon Group farmhouse and grounds always looking so good; and Frank Ferro for enabling the seamless transition from Lindhult & Jones to The Simon Group

The Band:

Imagine, our own rock and roll band! Here’s to The Rhythm Eggs who have come together annually for two decades  to make our Fabulous Fall BBQ the rocking success it always is: Steve Galanter, Stan Sheckman, Glenn Kaucher, Mike Schilder, Bonnie Charleston-Stevens…and, most recently, Jacob Hunsberger. And thanks to the hundreds of you who got up and sang and played with us!! You all rock!! And what fun we’ve had!

And…of course:

To my beautiful, brilliant wife, Dr. Vera Cole and my beautiful, brilliant daughters – Rebecca, Gabrielle and Stephanie – all three of whom were Groupies for a while! Imagine that!

It wouldn’t have happened without all of you…I thank you all! The Simon Group thanks you all!  Oh…and there is still much more to come from The Simon Group. We’re just getting warmed up for the next 25…stay tuned!!

Andrea Itnyre, category development associate for the electronic containment division of Woodstream, noted, “We looked for a company that not only shared our vision of growth, but also was able to help us rapidly gain the market share needed to achieve our goals.  Having worked with The Simon Group in the past, I knew they would deliver an all-inclusive, well-run program with the lofty results we are looking for.”

Read the full press release

Frank, a native of Minersville, PA graduated from Penn State University in 1957 with a BS in Accounting. He served for many years as an auditor for the Federal Government. Upon retiring, he had several free-lance accounting jobs and was a regular at The Simon Group from 1986 through 2006. His optimism, professional talents and wonderful personality are sorely missed here at The Simon Group. We were lucky to have him for as long as we did.

Frank…having you here was, in every respect, very nice, very nice!!!

The campaign will focus on total brand management as well as strategic market analysis and planning for the company and its products. Tactics used to educate the semiconductor market and related industries on the complete solutions provided by AES and its Semi-Gas product line will include both print and online advertising as well as public relations and direct marketing. This combination will ensure that AES gains widespread company awareness in relevant industries as well as targeted reach to key influencers.

Read the full press release

“When we decided to look for an agency to coordinate our PR campaign, my first thought was The Simon Group,” said Klaas Vogel, Sales Manager of Elsys Instruments. “Having successfully worked with them while with a different company, I knew The Simon Group would deliver a comprehensive, well-managed program with consistently high results. The proven PR methods at The Simon Group are sure to get our company where we want, and need, to be.”

Download the Full Press Release (Word.doc 158k)

Now you can also follow us on Twitter @TheSimonGroup86.

And don’t forget to check back after The Simon Group’s 24th Anniversary party on March 17th for more photos and updates!