By JOHN THOMPSON
jthompson@thecitizennews.com

It's a place that Alice would love, but impressive enough to entertain clients from some of the biggest media buyers.

The bright colors and bleached woods of McRae Communications are just part of the story of majority partner Joe Snowden's rise to a shining star in the marketing and public relations world. The decade-old company has recently been chosen to represent the Atlanta area in a worldwide consortium of communications firms.

As Snowden walks through the chic offices of the former Offers department store across the street from the Fayette County Courthouse, he speaks with a gentle and confident voice as he talks about how he created a media giant in Fayetteville.

After graduating from Fayette County High School, Snowden studied advertising at Florida State University. He was graduated in 1989, moved back home and decided to start his own communications company, choosing his middle name, McRae, as the company name.

He started pounding the pavement to find clients. Most of his clients when he started were in middle Georgia and north Florida, so Snowden spent many nights on the road trying to build his business.

“I didn't have enough money to pay for hotel rooms, so I slept on a lot of friends' floors,” he said.

Snowden would take any type of communications job he could find to help build the business.

Then an idea struck him that became the backbone of his company.

“I suddenly thought, `Why do firms do only one kind of work, such as only advertising or only public relations?'” he said.

Snowden eventually started offering a full service shop that does everything communications related, including web page design.

His web experience started in 1995, when he was doing some internal sales support work for MCI. The company told him that it was going to shift much of its work inside and was getting interested in getting a presence on the Internet.

“We had to learn web development in 90 days. That necessity led us to an epiphany of integrating all these mediums,” he said.

McRae was one of the first companies to focus on combining everything under one roof.

“We were so small that nobody cared what we did,” he said.

But clients started noticing the variety of services that McRae offered, and his staff started to grow.

Today, the company employs 20 communications professionals hired from throughout the region and offers one-stop shopping for everything communication related.

McRae does work for a variety of companies including Pathway Communities, Fayette Community Hospital and American Express. Although he declines to release his billings, Snowden said that his is a medium sized firm in relation to his downtown Atlanta competitors.

And what about the perception that you have to have an Atlanta address to be successful in the business?

“People from New York and San Francisco are not phased about our location. They actually like it, because it's convenient to the airport,” he said.

But when he does work for Atlanta clients, Snowden still detects a whiff of condescension from people who believe all the creative juices exist north of Interstate 20.

“They often ask if we've got computers down here.”

The company has purchased the building next door and is slowly working on integrating that 2,000-sq. ft. space into its existing 5,000 square feet. By the end of 2001, Snowden expects to be at 30 employees.

He loves bright colors and believes it's a way to enhance the creativity of his staff.

“I took a Disney brochure into a paint store and said, `This is what I want,'” he said.

What he got is definitely on the cutting edge. The conference room sits under a huge skylight that was a part of the old department store. The round, blond wood table is surrounded by armless chairs, covered with royal blue fabric. It almost seems the knights from “The Sword and the Stone” are ready to walk through the door, but Snowden said environment is a key part of having happy employees.

Walking through the funky office, Snowden and minority partner Mary Chris Douglas' dream appears to have come true. Instead of dialing Atlanta, clients just have to walk down the street to find one of the most comprehensive communication companies in the region.

The Worldcom Public Relations Group, the largest international network of independent public relations firms, recently selected McRae Communications for membership in its organization. McRae will represent the Atlanta area in the organization's Americas Region.

The Worldcom network comprises 91 partner firms and 114 offices in 34 countries on six continents.

Traditionally, the organization chooses one market leader in each major city to serve as a “partner” in the organization. Partners are, and remain, independently owned and operated organizations.

“Worldcom agencies have partnered to create some of the very best promotional campaigns, from dot com rollouts to the recent relaunch of the California Raisins campaign,” said Snowden.

“We're proud to be included among the world's most respected communications companies,” said Snowden.

His interior may be Disney-esque, but when it comes to communications material, he's no Goofy.

Rather, he's the Cheshire Cat who knows what he's got and plays to its strength.

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