It was John Risdall, who founded the agency thirty four years ago. "I just decided that I could do it better than where I was at. It was that simple,? he says. In 1984, he hired a partner, Neil Linniham away from the Suburban Area Chamber of Commerce. In 1993, Linniham became the agency partner and president.
Being a good expert in environmental advertising and servicing over twenty environmental accounts around the U.S., Linniham made the Risdall agency a leader in this field. "Neil is known coast to coast as an environmental products specialist," Risdall says.
Risdall agency has grown dramatically since its establishment. Employing six people and reporting three point six million dollars in billings in 1985, the company doubled its size to eleven employees and seven point four million dollars in billings within the following two years. In 1990, there were seventeen employees and in 1996, the number increased to twenty eight. The billings reached forty million dollars.
In the early 90?s, the Risdall Agency started moving into Internet and became one of the tenth agencies in the USA to have a home page.
"What this business is all about is a focus. Focusing on our clients and what they need, which is what got us into the Internet. We were there, when there was nobody there. Any client that we put up that year was the first company in their industry on the Internet," Risdall says.Establishing itself as a leader in designing and implementing web pages, the Risdall advertising agency soon added a great number of clients to its clients list. Having come for the RAA's Internet capabilities at first, the majority of those clients stayed for the total package of the agency's services. "We are sort of like a normal ad agency in some ways and in a lot of ways we are not," Risdall says, "What sets us apart from those agencies is that we do the whole thing, and it really improves our credibility in that we can say, 'yeah, you can do that,' or 'no you cannot.'?
The Risdall advertising agency interactive has built a perfect reputation in the Internet and was chosen as as one of the first partners in the AT&T's Creative Alliance Program. AT&T wanted to be a major link to the Internet and together with the RAA and some other partners to provide its customers with advanced capabilities to conduct business on the web.
Another field the Risdall agency operating in was the medical area. In the 90?s, the company served eight of the top fifty medical manufactures in the state. The
other important fields are industrial and high- tech industries. Being the top full-service agency, Risdall advertising also has a growing list of clients in the computer related products and accessories area. "A lot of people find us from work we have done with current clients. If the ad is good, it speaks for itself."In February, 2006, the Risdall agency
expanded with seven new hires: Lara Wyckoff as an executive vice president and a group creative director; Josh Dahmes as a vice president and a director of online marketing; Dan Ashby as a producer/designer/Web developer; Crystal Sanders as a public relations specialist and an account executive; Carolyn Ashlstrom as an assistant account executive; Shannon Brown as a web designer; and Rachel Woods as a copy writer.