A Sporting Chance

By DAVID KAPLAN

EARLY in his career, when Adam Nisenson was an art director at a local T-shirt company, business began to slump. As a favor to the owner, he offered to work part time and freelance on the side.

To Nisenson's surprise, his boss said, "Why don't we make this your last day?"

"Why don't we make this my last moment?" said Nisenson as he walked out the door.

He did have some freelance experience, but his sudden independence made him nervous.

"I remember telling my dad that I couldn't believe what happened," Nisenson said. " `What should I do?' " he asked him.

Keep freelancing, his father said.

It was good advice. Active Imagination, the design and video production firm he owns with his wife, Beryt Nisenson, has steadily grown, and it has landed some plum accounts.

His father's advice was valuable in that it allowed him to learn what it was like to go it alone and take chances. It gave him the courage to compete with the big guys when going after major clients. His lesson is one every small entrepreneur could use: If you've got something worth selling, size doesn't matter.

One of his newest clients is the Houston Texans. He also has designed for the Houston Astros, Rockets and Comets, the Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Tigers and the host committee of the 2004 Houston Super Bowl.

It is vital to be patient when dealing with potential clients such as professional sports teams, Nisenson said. In many instances an organization may first give you the brushoff, but months or even years later it may come around if you work it gently.

When he first approached the Texans two years ago, he was told flat-out that the team had an ad agency and did not need more help.

Nisenson, 35, had a gut feeling that when the inaugural season drew close, "they would need me. I knew we were the right match."

He kept in touch, placing calls each month to the office of Jamey Rootes, the Texans' senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer. He mailed samples of his work, including the monthly Astros magazine, which he designs, and managed to get separate meetings with Rootes and director of marketing, Kim Babiak.

Early this year Nisenson got a call from the Texans letting him know that the team's ad agency would be outsourcing some work and he was invited to compete for it with several other agencies. The winning firm would help create the look and feel of the team's inaugural season by designing the season tickets, pocket schedules, brochures, stadium banners and more. The Texans' bull logo had already been created.

It would be the first time Nisenson ever made a formal presentation, and he would be up against some big-time agencies.

He personalized his pitch. During his presentation, he told of his lifelong love of football and how as a child he sat in bitterly cold weather during St. Louis Cardinals football games.

He showed slides of football trading cards from his childhood collection and photos of himself as a boy in football pads.

An enthusiastic Nisenson told the Texans staff he would bring the same passion to his work.

And he showed samples of his work for the Rockets, Astros, Comets, Seahawks and Tigers, along with letters of recommendation from the teams.

Recalling the presentation, the Texans' Rootes said Nisenson was able to play on the strengths of being a small agency by convincing the team he would "give us his full and complete attention. He used his company's small size to his advantage."

For a sports fanatic like Nisenson, getting such work is the ultimate.

Along with persistence and a willingness to wait in the wings, Nisenson said doing his homework helped him get a better understanding of what the client wanted - and get the jobs.

He said the relationships one establishes with potential clients are key.

"When you build a relationship, there's an openness and trust," he said. "A lot of our clients have become our friends."

Their midtown studio is certainly friendly. It has an air hockey table and is decorated with bobble-head dolls, old lunch boxes, stadium seats and a few tricycles (the company logo is a flying tricycle).

When he started his agency 11 years ago, Nisenson worked out of his bedroom. He kept getting more clients, so he had to move to a bigger space: the living room.

He next shared a garage apartment with another person and then moved into a 350-square-foot office. His current space in Midtown is much larger.

Nisenson studied graphic communications at the University of Houston.

Beryt Nisenson, a University of Texas graduate, runs the video production end of the business, specializing in corporate and broadcast television video production.

Her production of medical and weather specials for KHOU-TV won her three Emmy Awards.

She joined the firm in 1998 after doing corporate video production at communication agencies.

At Active Imagination she has done work for Shell Oil Co., St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, BMC Software and Moody Gardens.

On the agency's diverse client list are sports-related businesses. He got his first sports team assignment six years ago after seeing an article in the Chronicle Sports section about Rockets owner Les Alexander forming an arena football team. The article gave a phone number for season tickets.

He called and asked for the marketing director, hoping he could design the team's logo. It was the first cold call he had ever made.

He got a meeting with the Rockets and was told that an agency the team used would create the logo, but they asked if he would be willing to design the invitations for the Rockets' first Tux `N' Tennies Gala fund-raiser - pro bono.

Seeing it as a way to get his foot in the door, he said yes. He designed an accordion-fold invitation. "5," "4," "3," "2," "1." "Blastoff."

The Rockets then gave him a paid assignment: Design several images for season tickets, with each image featuring a different player. The originals of Nisenson's mixed-media designs were signed by players and auctioned at the gala.

Nisenson was then hired to do graphic design for the Rockets' media guide, pocket schedule and posters. It was "a boyhood dream come true," he said.

They also hired him to design for the Comets.

Working for those teams gave him instant credibility, he said, and he was soon doing work for Rockets sponsors Miller Brewing and Pepsi.

Three years ago, he contacted the Astros and heard the same story: the team had someone in-house doing the graphics work.

Eventually, he got to do the logo for the division championship and did a variety of design work for the team's 2001 season, including season tickets, magazine covers and posters.

"A lot of it is persistence," said Tom Carnegie, a consultant with the University of Houston Small Business Development Center.

But there is always a fine line, Carnegie said, between staying in touch with a potential client and being annoying.

If you developed relationships with clients and they initiate contact now and then, you have more freedom to call regularly, he said.

For small-business agencies seeking clients, their target market is generally other small companies that don't have the budget for a big agency, Carnegie said.

Beryt Nisenson said she believes it is important to make a memorable first impression on a potential client.

"People are tired of getting pitches on their voice mail," she said, "even if it's the nicest person in the world" delivering it.

She said she knows from experience when vendors call on her. The people she remembers are the creative ones.

When doing her own soliciting of prospective clients, she will send out an introductory press kit that is more than just a resume, clips and demo tape. It is a package that "exhibits my personality."

It has been effective, she said. She would not describe the exact nature of her package because she does not want to be copied.

"People need to come up with their own ideas," she said, and offered this basic piece of advice: "You have to set yourself apart."