Colleen Sundlie, president, Park East Inc.

Tell me about your company.
We’ve been around for a little over two years. We are a full-service branding and identity agency. We’re an advertising agency, essentially, but we do a lot more strategy for our clients that involves really focusing on their brand and identity and following that through in all of the design that we do for them. We have a full-time employee, a part-time employee and three interns, besides me.

Has the role of technology in branding changed?
Advertising has so much to do with just printed material, newspaper ads, that type of thing, and then expands into radio and television, (but) right now, research shows that online technology, including new media like Flash presentations, even really high-tech Power Point presentations, multimedia – those things are kind of exploding and taking over a lot of the forms of traditional advertisement. With branding, of course, it’s essential to keep company image exactly the same throughout all of those pieces, so technology is playing a large role right now.

Is that true locally as well, or is it slower to catch on in this market?
I certainly would say it’s more of a traditional market here, but I think generally, everyone has a Web site now. But I think people are a little bit slower to grasp the concept of new media – advertising online, Flash presentations, that type of thing. But Springfield, I would guess, would probably be a little bit ahead of its time for the size of the city.

What types of businesses does Park East focus on?
We kind of run the full gamut. We have an event company in New York that we work with, and we do a lot of new media for them, Web site and such, so that’s a
little more cutting edge. And then we do
a lot more traditional advertising for
the Springfield Symphony, bus boards and outdoor boards and print ads and their programs.

How did you reach your out-of-state clients?
I moved here after I worked at an agency in Kansas City and then got recruited to go out and work with the supplier for the (winter) Olympics in Salt Lake City. So I have a lot of existing contacts from there. And then, we seem to get a lot of referrals from those people, and so we do a little bit of work and get referrals, and that’s kind of expanding our reach. With the technology, it’s so easy to work from a distance now, even with limited travel, so it’s great. In fact, we’ve done a Web site for at least one client in Arizona that we’ve never met in person.

What goals do you have for your business in 2005 and beyond?
We’re looking to add a couple more employees, because our workload really has gotten much bigger. We have the capabilities to do a lot more creatively, so I would really like to be able to find some clients that are ready to take on some of the newest technology out there for branding and identity. A lot of the larger companies right now are doing streaming videos online to show their products. We love doing filming. We do a lot of filming and editing, and a lot of that is just for online use.

Tell us about your family and spare-time interests.
I was born and raised in Springfield. I’m married to Ryan Sundlie. He teaches at the English Learning Institute and is a graduate student at Southwest Missouri State University. He’s finishing his graduate degree in May. My interests are traveling. I love to spend time with family and friends.

What books are you reading right now?
I just finished “Revisiting Patagonia” by Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux and “The Snows of Kilamanjaro and Other Stories” by Ernest Hemingway.
[[In-content Ad]]