Agency exceeds Noble ambitions

Noble & Associates has grown more than founder Bob Noble ever envisioned.

Noble, president and chief executive officer of the food-marketing and advertising agency, founded the company in 1969 in a small art studio on Olive Street.

Today, the company has evolved into the leading food marketing and advertising company in North America, but it continues to maintain its headquarters in Springfield. Now located at 2155 W. Chesterfield Blvd., Noble & Associates has 160 employees in Springfield and 30 employees at a satellite office in Chicago.

The agency handles 28 food brands that Noble refers to as leaders in the private-label industry, and it was recently named the agency of record for Ohio-based Hickory Farms and the food service division of C.H. Guenther & Son. Add to that such familiar names as Gerber, Frito Lay, Kellogg's, Pepsi, Willow Brook Foods and Sara Lee, and the Noble & Associates client list reads like a Who's Who of food and beverage.

Noble said his company handles some non-food clients, but food is its focus. That focus, he said, was born of necessity.

In 1972, then-President Richard Nixon effected price controls to slow inflation.

"All of the clients I had stopped publishing, stopped advertising and I nearly went broke," Noble said.

At that point, Noble began researching the Springfield market, and what he found, he said, was "that Springfield is a dumping ground for private label products."

The city had two dairies, bakeries and other food companies. Noble organized the companies and created a regional pride campaign called Ozark Mark, designed to help locally made products regain their brand identities and obtain front-shelf placement at local supermarkets.

"It took about two years for this campaign to do its job, but we had five major food companies on this program," Noble said. In 1974, the Ozark Mark campaign was recognized by the New York chapter of the American Marketing Association as the best regional pride campaign in the country.

From that moment on, Noble said, he dedicated himself to the marketing and advertising of food.

Noble & Associates has become a "destination agency" for leading brands, which he attributes to the agency focus on food.

"People travel to Springfield, Missouri, to get that special magic that we have, and what it is, is insight and knowledge of the food industry," he said. "When you focus on an industry and you go deeper into the needs of that industry, you can stack up several clients with the same challenges and needs (and) provide deeper resources than the traditional advertising agency."

Noble & Associates he said, is a marketing partner with its clients, providing promotion, research and brand-building services that "get (clients') brands back in the hunt and in a position of category leadership."

In the last 32 years, the market has changed considerably, Noble said. In 1969, a mass market could easily be reached on any of the television networks, so many consumers could be reached via a single national campaign for broadcast media.

Today, though, the market is much more fractured, and companies' products have to be put before consumers in several different media: radio, television, print and the Internet. But, he said, that works fine for his company, because as a marketing agency it can handle the change.

"... What's working for Noble is that clients today are looking for marketing partners, not advertising partners. Advertising is an expense; marketing is income," he said. "We provide all of the strategic services to help seek out, attract and reach that consumer."

The company's staff, average age 35, includes food writers, art directors, communication specialists, television producers, chefs and food scientists. Noble & Associates has six test kitchens and a large cookbook at the Noble Idea Center, which is located at Division Street and West Bypass.

The company also has a subscriber-only Web site, www.foodchannel.com, which Noble said most people don't realize is a product of Springfield.

"I had no idea we would be as successful as we are today. However, I still believe it could all blow away tomorrow if we don't continue to find ways to ... enhance our services to build our clients' businesses," he said.