When he graduated R.A. Long High School in the early 1990s, Nate Yanez said most of peers were focused on which factory would hire them.
“Your biggest goal coming out of high school was to either go to work at Reynolds, Fibre, Weyerhaeuser or Norpac,” said Yanez, 42.
Since then, Reynolds Metals Co. shuttered, paper mills have shrunk and the town hasn’t quite recovered economically. Yanez and business partner Russ Meder (also an R.A. Long alum) both hope to be part of the effort to pump more economic activity into the region through their marketing company, M-Y Agency.
“How to do we bring an exciting advertising medium and build a business to help the community that thrives economically?” Yanez asked. “How do we create projects for customers that raise the bar of what they’re used to dealing with and bring in fresh revenue? And that’s what we’re doing here.”
Although both now live out of the city, (Meder lives in Vancouver and Yanez is in Napavine) they chose Longview as the home of their marketing company because they’re familiar with the community and its people. They also want to use their marketing know-how to help small and medium size businesses in area grow.
M-Y Agency has been in business for two years without an office, working from home and meeting customers in restaurants. This summer Yanez and Meder finally moved into a new physical location at 1324 Vandercook Way, next door to ASAP Business Solutions, a staffing agency. (Yanez also owns ASAP Business Solutions.)
M-Y Agency agency offers full-service advertising services, including online videos, web design and social media as well as more traditional forms of marketing such as print media, signs, logo design, television commercials and radio. While most of M-Y Agency’s clients are clustered in the Northwest, the company has clients scattered throughout the country.
The sleek gray and metallic decor of the office fits with the modern, urban-style service M-Y Agency delivers. The two business owners say they want to provide local customers with the quality of product they may be accustomed to seeing at a big city marketing agency.
With 18 years of running his own marketing business, Meder, 46, said he has has worked with big-name brands, such as Revlon and Nike Golf. But he prefers a mom-and-pop shop to a corporate board room.
“Those global brands really aren’t that fun to work with. … They have a really set, stringent idea of what they’re going to do. They know it before you work with them,” Meder said.
“With us, we actually get to work with those mom-and-pop and medium-sized businesses that really just want us to massage them into something bigger than they are. That’s where we really get excited,” he said.
M-Y Agency can be reached at (360) 353-3799 or online at www.m-y-agency.com.
