By Peter Sanders

The tidy office of Redondo Beach's Campaigners Inc. resembles a bustling political operation with vintage political campaign posters adorning the front hall.

But this campaign company sells and markets products, not politicians, to the masses.

What Melissa Orr started in 1997 as a spare-bedroom business in her Manhattan Beach home is now a company with more than 3,000 employees nationwide.

Using sales presentations, product-based training and promotional events, the 6-year-old company has ascended in the competitive world of outsourced product marketing, where giant corporations often turn to independent marketing companies to do the grunt work.

Last January's Super Bowl in San Diego allowed Campaigners to flex some creative muscle in a "street-team" promotion for the newly debuted lemon-lime soft drink Sierra Mist (a Pepsi product).

Tooling around town in a Hummer stretch limousine painted with the Sierra Mist logo, Campaigners staff members plucked people off the street and piled them into the limo where they were given promotional products and, of course, bottles of soda.

Campaigners recently trained employees at stores including Best Buy and Costco on the new Samsung cell phone and have staged promotional events for product launches including digital cameras for Fujifilm and Spyro the Dragon, a character from a Vivendi Universal video game. They arrange store displays and promote software titles from Corel and will launch a pilot program for Microsoft's new "Microsoft Experience Center."

As in all Campaigners events, the staff, known within the company as "delegates," will be dressed in Microsoft garb and will help consumers with the software giant's latest products. Jacuzzi Inc. is another company taking advantage of Campaigners staff members, who pitch the warm, bubbly fun machines at home improvement stores and other locations during peak shopping hours.

A native of Kansas City, Kan., Orr, 37, came to California after college to pursue a career in the technology industry. She began her career in the marketing department at Hewlett-Packard in Fullerton, and for the next few years she worked in numerous executive-level jobs at high-tech companies.

After co-founding her first company in 1993, she waited four years before striking out on her own. Orr was fortunate to start out with two large clients, including Network Associates, a leader in the cyber security field. By early 1998, business was good enough to expand to an office near Sepulveda Boulevard in Manhattan Beach.

Orr attributes much of her success to rocky moments that first year.

When a major company went bankrupt shortly after signing a contract with Campaigners, Orr said her fledgling company was exposed. Since Campaigners pays its delegates directly, Orr was forced to pay her employees, although the client failed to pay her.

"Having a such a big hardship early on was important," Orr said. "Every difficulty since has paled in comparison."

By October 2002, the company outgrew its offices and moved to a nondescript office park in Redondo Beach. There, 32 employees work at a corporate headquarters that has doubled in personnel in the past year.

Campaigners also has satellite offices in San Jose; Ottawa, Canada; and near Miami, Fla. The 3,000 delegates consist of independent contractors and company employees, but all are based out of their homes.

Orr has a roster of about 13 active clients, some of which retain Campaigners for short-term street-team or field marketing campaigns, while others, such as Samsung and LG Electronics, have signed long-term contracts that allow Campaigners to closely work with the companiesy as they roll out new items.

As Orr watches her company grow, she points to innovations that distinguish her operation from hundreds vying for a piece of the lucrative business. One innovation is a proprietary software program that allows her clients to check real-time updates on their marketing and field-sales projects nationwide.

"Clients can get nearly instant results of our work and their investment over the Web any time they want," Orr said.

Variety and specifics also are crucial to Campaigners' mission. Each project is tailored to the company and product, not simply meshed into a formula, Orr said.

"We try to make this a really fun and creative place to work. We work hard, but we also play hard," she said. "Sometimes, our best brainstorming ideas come out after a martini."

Asked if the political posters in the office are a prelude to her next step, Orr is enthusiastic. "We have talked about getting into political campaigning," she said. "The idea is the same as selling a product: It's the drive for the cause, and that's really exciting."

The Details

Name: Campaigners Inc.

Location: Redondo Beach

Founded: 1997

Owner: Melissa Orr, president/CEO

Services/products: sales and marketing agency that provides product training and promotional and sales events nationwide

3,000 staff nationwide

Key customers: major corporations

Information: 310-643-7500; www.campaigners.com

Publish Date:October 6, 2003