Cottingham & Butler is Marketing Agency of the Year
Adherence to simple philosophy keeps agency ahead of the competition
When we first introduced Cottingham & Butler to our readers in February 2007, we found ourselves taken aback by the size and scope of this agency. And apparently, we were not alone. The other agencies that had been recognized as Marketing Agencies of the Month stormed to the polls to vote for Cottingham & Butler to be elected the Rough Notes 2007 Marketing Agency of the Year.
When we featured Cottingham & Butler last year, the agency had 340 employees and revenues of more than $49 million, all written out of an office in the city of Dubuque, Iowa—population of about 60,000 people. And last year, the agency closed its books with $52.7 million in revenue and some 370 people, making it the 54th largest agency in the country.
“We’re continuing to move up in the rankings,” notes President and Chief Operating Officer David O. Becker, who accepted the Agency of the Year award on behalf of the agency at the dinner and reception honoring the Agency of the Year. Also representing the agency was Dean Fair, senior vice president of risk management.
Held in Indianapolis in March, the event also recognized the winner of The Rough Notes Company’s Community Service Award. In addition to the honorees, also attending were representatives from agencies that have been recognized as Rough Notes Marketing Agencies of the Month, as well as representatives from The Rough Notes Company. Rough Notes Magazine Editor-in-Chief Tom McCoy presented the Agency of the Year award.
A simple philosophy
Founded in 1887 by current Chairman John Butler’s great grandfather, Dixon Cottingham, the agency spent its first 70 years as a small mom-and-pop organization that served its community and environs, primarily writing personal lines. When John Butler joined the agency in 1957, his job “was to watch my father’s secretary and learn the business. I had just come out of the service and had an MBA in insurance from Wharton.”
John soon was joined at the agency by his brother Peter and they created a niche in the poultry business, as well as bringing in other commercial lines accounts. The agency grew to become the largest poultry underwriter in the country. About 15 years later, their visions diverged and Peter left with the poultry business, while John took over the rest of the business.
From that point on, the growth was exponential as John watched the agency grow more than a hundredfold from the three employees when he started to some 370 today. “I’m enormously proud of the team of people who have helped us reach this level,” he says. “They’ve been great fun to work with and watch develop. And it’s all been built on a very simple philosophy—we always try to get behind the desk solving problems with our clients rather than on the other side of the desk selling policies.”
Of course, this simple philosophy does not mean that the solutions are simple. In fact, the passion to solve clients’ problems has led Cottingham & Butler to offer a plethora of risk transfer and risk mitigation services, each of which was designed to answer the needs of a particular client or group of clients.
These include captive management, loss control, safety consulting, claims management, an employee benefits TPA, a managed care facility and, most recently, a health and wellness product that has generated a lot of interest from current employee benefits clients (that segment represents about 35% of the agency’s total revenue) as well as prospective clients, Dave Becker points out. “Our pipeline is really good right now,” he adds.
Reducing the cost of risk
Being on the same side of the desk as the client means focusing on “reducing the overall cost of risk for each of our clients,” Dave points out. And that was a driving force that led the agency into the alternative risk transfer market in 1993.
“One of our largest niches is the transportation industry,” says Chris Patrick, senior vice president and transportation practice leader. “And that industry has been buffeted by insurance market fluctuations that made it very difficult to budget. These clients wanted better control over their costs so we set up three trucking captives, as well as a heterogeneous captive for our non-trucking clients.” All are based in the Cayman Islands.
Chris goes on to note that “captives are not the solution for all our clients. But they have provided us with another tool that we can bring to the clients’ side of the table when we help them decide on the proper risk management technique for their risk profile.”
Just getting started
Probably the most exciting part of the Cottingham & Butler story is that it is just beginning. The agency now is looking at expanding geographically by opening new offices “where there is a strategic opportunity to build our business,” Dave says.
He points out that the newest office in Orlando was started to take advantage of the “opportunity to hire a very experienced guy who focuses on the trucking industry. It certainly helps to be closer to the customer and it saves fuel costs.” (The agency has two planes that are constantly in the air taking Cottingham & Butler to clients across the country.) “We’re looking to do more of this as opportunities present themselves. It makes it easier to recruit people sometimes if we’re flexible as to location,” Dave continues.
One of the initiatives that Cottingham & Butler has been working on involves bringing college students on board and putting them through an intensive two-year training program that familiarizes them with all aspects of the agency. At the meeting of the Rough Notes editorial board that followed on the morning after the recognition dinner, Dean Fair discussed the program, noting that “it has been very successful. We’ve been able to add some homegrown talent to our staff.”
Dave agreed with Dean’s assessment and praised Dean for his ability to train young people. “He recruits and trains the young talent and then we steal it,” he said, with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Dave concludes by saying that the response from being Agency of the Month as well as Agency of the Year has “been terrific. Our employees get an enormous amount of satisfaction seeing the agency recognized by magazines like Rough Notes. This validates their hard work and commitment to clients. And it provides more energy to help us take it to the next level.
“Our people really have been the key to our success. And, as we try to expand and bring in more of the best and the brightest, recognition by Rough Notes helps to explain who we are and why it makes sense to become part of our team.” *