Riger acquires Vestal firm focused on nonprofit-fundraising clients

BINGHAMTON — Riger Marketing Communications — a downtown Binghamton–based advertising, marketing, and PR firm — recently acquired the assets, including several clients, of Vestal–based Cull Martin & Associates.

Riger’s ownership partners Steve Johnson and Jamie Jacobs executed an asset purchase agreement with Jeffrey Cull, CEO and owner of Cull Martin & Associates (CMA) in early October.

A full-service agency founded in 1950, Riger specializes in working with clients in the business-to-business, business-to-consumer, education, financial services, fundraising, health care, and nonprofit sectors.

CMA was a marketing agency focused on helping primarily faith-based nonprofit agencies to raise funds to support their organizations. Jeff Cull, and his wife Marilyn, founded the business in 1986.

The transition to Riger includes a five-month, part-time consulting agreement with Jeff Cull, who has more than 50 years of experience working with nonprofit fundraising clients. Riger also hired three experienced CMA employees: Andrew Crossett, writer; Joseph Benarick, account executive; and Adam Pedrone, graphic designer. In addition, Riger says it hired an experienced production coordinator, Marylouise Doyle, to “round out the team.”

Riger had six employees (all full-time) before the purchase and now has 10 (all full-time), Steve Johnson, managing partner at Riger Marketing Communications, tells CNYBJ in an email.

Riger acquired from CMA three “program clients” — two in Pennsylvania and one in Wisconsin — that have a continuous annual marketing program in place, Johnson says. It also picked up another half dozen or so “project clients” — most based in New York and Pennsylvania, plus one in Michigan — for which the work is more periodic.

The clients are all nonprofits, usually development offices, that raise funds to support their organizations. 

“For the most part they are faith-based, Catholic religious orders and charitable organizations involved with religious life and also with all kinds of cause-based charitable work helping the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized of society. That part of it is very appealing to Jamie [Jacobs] and me,” Johnson says.

Other assets Riger acquired in the deal include about 40 boxes of client records, files, and artwork. “We also purchased the employees’ computers and a server,” Johnson notes.

Riger Marketing Communications didn’t disclose the dollar amount of the asset purchase agreement, but Johnson says it was “part cash and part earn-out.” For the earn-out portion, Riger collects income from former CMA clients, and CMA’s ownership receives a percentage of it up to a mutually agreed upon, fixed total. The consulting agreement is a separate contract between Riger and Cull, Johnson adds. 

Riger’s advisers on the acquisition included the Binghamton–based law firm of Hinman, Howard & Kattell, LLP and the accounting firm of Davidson, Fox & Company, also based in downtown Binghamton.

“New niche”

The CMA fundraising work with nonprofits is a “new niche for Riger, but it is based on work we know how to do and have done in one form or another for different clients for 70 years,” Johnson says. “You could say it’s an example of what’s new is old. We are helping faith-based nonprofits raise funds for their organizations … The work involves direct mail to donors and prospective donors, supplemented with web, social and digital media, email and other forms of marketing communications.”

Before the deal, about 20 percent of Riger’s business was with nonprofits. “We’ll see how it shakes out going forward, but it could be more on the order of 30-40 percent in the years ahead,” Johnson says.

How the deal came about

Though Riger Marketing Communications and Cull Martin & Associates did not compete during CMA’s 34-year history, Johnson says he and Cull had “some familiarity with each other and their agencies, having both participated in Genesis creative award competitions in the 1990s and 2000s.” 

The two held had a meeting about four years ago and chatted about their agencies and experiences in advertising and direct marketing. Four years later, in August 2020, Cull called Johnson to say he had a proposal to make. Johnson, Jacobs, and Cull met at Riger’s office, and Cull “shared that he was looking to close his shop and wanted to find an organization that would be a good fit to carry on the Cull Martin legacy,” Johnson explains.

Cull researched other marketing agencies, but chose Riger because of its “commitment to client satisfaction and staying power,” Johnson contends. “He also felt the clients would appreciate that we are a marketing communications company, not a print shop or database firm that tends to see only part of the larger marketing picture.”

Johnson says he and Jacobs decided to be proactive amid a changing business landscape during the COVID-19 crisis. Riger participated in the Paycheck Protection Program, the SBA’s forgivable loan program for small businesses, and committed to “make whatever changes we needed to make, and stay open to new opportunities,” Johnson explains.

Cull’s call “was clearly the sound of opportunity knocking. So, with all that in mind we moved forward with due diligence and spent the balance of the summer and early fall working closely together to hammer out an asset purchase agreement and consulting agreement, signed on October 2,” he says.