New Boston Creative Group

In 2008, the theme in our industry was “specialize, specialize, specialize,” meaning savvy marketing and communications agencies should pick an industry to concentrate on. In theory, that made sense from a business perspective — if an agency established a deeper portfolio and expertise in one area, such as pharmaceuticals or tourism or boutique hotels, potential clients would seek it out.

But New Boston Creative Group has always worked with many different companies and organizations. We like working with a variety of industries, having different projects to work on, and building strong, long-lasting client relationships. We also enjoy the fact that if one industry hits a major drag (think automotive!), we won’t go down with the ship.

So, although in theory the advice to specialize was sound, we decided it just didn’t make sense for our firm. So we decided to answer this question: What are we really passionate about? The answer was simple: Kansas.

Everyone in our office was born and raised in Kansas, and we all chose to stay here because we like the lifestyle Kansas provides. We work hard, play hard, and are proud of what we do. When our kids have a school assembly, we’re there. We’re at home nights and weekends to be with our loved ones. Crime is low, housing is affordable, schools are great, and people know our names when we walk down the street. We sleep well at night knowing that most of our colleagues and clients choose to live here for these same reasons.

Nothing gets us more worked up than when people don’t value what we have in Kansas — beautiful landscapes, communities we’re proud to call home, thousands of acres of fertile farmland and international companies that are leaders in their fields.

Kansas is also blessed with a couple million hard-working, humble people who fail miserably at tooting their own horns!

Let’s face it: We Kansans are among the worst in the nation (maybe the world!) at celebrating ourselves. We suffer from a condition New Boston calls the Kansas Inferiority Complex. It can become second nature to see ourselves as less important than the rest of the world (except maybe Missouri…for some reason, Kansans always like to point out that things are better west of the state line). A humble nature is a healthy quality and a bedrock Midwestern value; allowing humility to tarnish your perception of reality is neither healthy nor valuable.

Unfortunately, we’ve also allowed Hollywood and the ill-informed to influence perceptions too much. For instance, to the outside world, Kansas means Dorothy Gale, flying monkeys, wicked witches, tornadoes and ruby slippers. Well, as much as we love the film, it has become clear to us that “The Wizard of Oz” is perhaps the worst thing that ever happened to Kansas. (After all, those monkeys are scary!) For the past 70 years, we have allowed ourselves to be defined by a Hollywood picture that wasn’t even filmed in our state!

Now don’t get us wrong: In some communities, such as in Liberal and Wamego, Kansans have capitalized on this film as a very effective form of economic development — kind of the old “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mantra. Both communities have built major attractions that bring in money from tourists salivating for an Oz experience. And that was very smart for those towns. But why must every bit of national exposure make some sort of allusion to the movie — from KU playing for the national basketball championship, to Capitol Federal Savings being featured nationally as a financial institution that does business right?

So we decided to make it our mission to help Kansas communities and businesses shine proudly alongside their competitors across the state and around the globe — and to do so, whenever possible, without resorting to stereotypes.

New Boston Creative Group is proud to understand Kansas and Kansans. We want to use our talents and expertise to make the rest of the country do a double take. Kansas has a lot to offer. Let us close the deal.