Swick Media Services parlays advertising success into new business

How can a small town business stand out among its competitors? If you're Swick Plumbing and Heating of Marquette, the answer is advertise, advertise, advertise, with a string of entertaining, memorable commercials that mix a hometown vibe with professional production values.

Swick Plumbing and Heating, a familiar name to area residents, has seen business increase with the advent of these distinctive commercials. The ads combine humor with the message that Swick is available whenever needed, ready to tackle projects large or small.

Those locally produced ads attracted nationwide attention and led to the creation of one of Marquette's newest businesses, Swick Media Services. Swick Media Services offers a library of customized commercials specific to a variety of businesses, including plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical. Swick Media Service's commercials can be seen throughout the United States, from New York to Utah.

Nancy O'Hare, director of operations for Swick Media, is the mastermind behind Swick's ad campaign. The ads, she says, were born of "desperation for the plumbing industry in a rural area." O'Hare was working for Swick Plumbing and Heating, and knew the company needed a way to distinguish itself from its competitors in a small market.

"We belong to Nexstar, an organization owned by its members who own plumbing and heating companies. Companies in different trades but among the same demographics submit their ads in a competition, and one year we won. Then people started asking us who did these."

Nancy received a call from a business owner in New York. He liked the ads and wanted to know who'd made them. "I said we did; they hired us to do commercials for this one company, and it grew." It has grown so much that although Swick Media has produced some ads for local businesses, O'Hare says it will soon have to focus exclusively on its nationwide client list of plumbing, HVAC, and electrical contractors.

When a company hires Swick Media Services, O'Hare and editor Mike McCormick go to the business's locations and decide on shots. After that, the client chooses a theme from Swick's library of commercials. Some of the ads offer alternate endings, and some can be customized.

"When a company partners with Swick Media they send us a box of things we ask for, including their uniforms," O'Hare explains. "I can film a man in my kitchen and it will be in an ad that runs in South Carolina. We are careful to make sure the location scenery matches. We would never shoot a commercial with snow in it; we avoid showing Lake Superior. It will be very vanilla across the board so it can run anywhere in the U.S."

O'Hare has about 10 local men she calls on to appear in the ads. The ads are usually filmed at her home or the home of Tom Swick, the company's owner.

"I have been in several of the commercials," says O'Hare. "You have to be careful, because once someone plays a role, you can't use them for something else. If someone is a plumber (in one ad), they can't be a homeowner in another commercial."

O'Hare and Swick are the creative minds behind the commercials. "Every other week we spend an entire day doing brainstorming. We work on it until we come up with a storyboard and we work out ways it can be adapted with other companies. We feed off each other's creativity. Now that we are no longer affiliated with Swick Plumbing it's just the three of us. That's the biggest challenge, coming up with new ideas."
 
It's a challenge the team at Swick Media Services seems more than capable of meeting.

Deb Pascoe of Marquette is a freelance writer and a peer recovery coach for Child and Family Services of the U.P. A former columnist for The Mining Journal, her book, "Life With a View ," a collection of her past columns, is available in area bookstores.