ABSTRACT
John Arends was planning a company retreat to develop a long-range plan for his advertising agency. As he looked out of his Chicago office onto Lake Michigan, he felt like a small boat on a great lake. He fantasized about the days when his father was in charge of the agency and how much easier it seemed. John's father, Dale, started the Arends Agency in 1950, after coming home from World War II. He had been a technical writer in the service and thought that there was a market for a company that understood technical selling. The agency, which began in a humble, abandoned warehouse, grew to be a strong business-to-business (B to B) agency. John saw that most of the advertising companies were focusing much attention on higher growth areas such as interactive media, media planning and buying, public relations, direct marketing, and customer relations management.
