Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Foreman.
Tom, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
When I got out of high school in Dallas, I went to work for Dallas Plumbing. While I was digging a ditch in August in 110 degrees, I thought to myself: I need to find a job with air conditioning. So I went to Tyler Junior College and randomly picked art as a major.
After 2 years, I enrolled at UNT in Denton. At that point, I needed to choose between fine art and graphic design/advertising. For the next 2 years, I studied to become a graphic designer/art director in advertising. After graduating, I found a job in Dallas and started to learn the role of an art director. I worked at a few agencies and design studios, but I wasn’t learning the advertising business the way I wanted. I interviewed with Stan Richards at The Richards Group and he recommended that I go to New York City to learn the advertising business. I took him up on his suggestion and bought a plane ticket to New York.
I found an apartment on the upper East Side of Manhattan and started looking for a job. After 6 weeks in New York, one of the biggest ad agencies, BBD&O, offered me a job as a junior art director for a whopping $8,000 a year. I continued my education at Pratt Art Institute and School of Visual Arts in New York. I somehow convinced my girl friend from Lewisville to follow me to NY and became my wife, .
I worked for some of the biggest agencies over the next 17 years, including BBD&O, Kenyon & Eckardt, Foote Cone & Belding (FCB), Ogilvy & Mather on accounts like Pepsi, Crayola Crayons, Chrysler, AT&T, Colgate, Mercedes and American Express.
I teamed up with my future partner, Rob Resnick, a copywriter, at Foote Cone. We worked together for years and had a great working relationship. Advertising has never been a business to go into if you are looking for stability. While working with Rob, the agency lost its biggest account and fired half the creative staff, including Rob and I.
We both moved on to other agencies, but we really enjoyed working together, so we would meet for breakfast before we went to our respective agency jobs. Before long we started acquiring our own accounts and Foreman & Resnick Advertising was born. One of our first clients was a men’s clothing store in the suburbs of NYC. They are still a client today—decades later. We continued to develop more clients while working our full-time agency jobs.
After 17 years in NYC, I was offered a job as a senior art director at Tracy-Locke in Dallas. At the time, we had about half a dozen clients while still working our full-time jobs. Rob’s response was “let’s try working long distance.” Rob in NY and me in Dallas. We became one of the first virtual agencies long before it became popular.
The job at Tracy-Locke was not a good match and I left and set up an office in my home in Keller and began working full-time for Foreman & Resnick. Rob and I would call each other and come up with ideas. I would put the ideas together, comps, the old-fashioned way (before computers took over), and FedEx the comps to Rob in NY where he would show them to our clients. Clearly, this was before the internet!
I joined a number of DFW networking groups including The Cowtown Executive Association in Ft. Worth and started developing clients in the metroplex. Over time, we developed a mix of clients in both DFW and NY.
We both work from home today, 2,000 miles apart. Every so often, Rob comes to DFW for networking meetings, where we have an opportunity to meet prospective clients and I travel to NY to visit clients we’ve had for decades. We’ve proven that when you have a great working relationship with a creative partner, living halfway across the country is not an obstacle. Foreman & Resnick has created award winning advertising, digital and direct marketing campaigns for clients large and small across industries of every kind. We continue to leverage our experience and our long-lasting partnership to develop results-driven communications for clients in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the New York metropolitan area and beyond.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Some clients think having a website is sufficient for their advertising. While search engine optimization (SEO) is one way to drive traffic, even that is falling out of favor due to AI. We believe that one way for a business to differentiate itself is by using channels that your competitors may not be using. For example, sending out a mailing to a targeted list with a compelling offer. Creating an impressive leave-behind for your best prospects so your company is represented by something more than just a business card. Some businesses are receptive to our thinking, others are not. However, with today’s media overload, if you only do what everyone else is doing, you’re going to blend in. Our goal is to help you stand out.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
For over 30 years, Foreman & Resnick has been coming up with advertising solutions that get attention and get results for clients ranging from retail to business-to-business to medical. While we’ve won our share of awards, there’s nothing better than generating ideas that deliver results for our clients.
How we work:
• We learn what sets our client’s business apart from the competition
• We come up with creative ways to communicate that key difference
• We identify the appropriate media channel—whether it’s an ad campaign, a direct mail effort, a brochure to hand to potential customers, emails, or anything in between
• We produce the work, taking every project from concept through completion
Unlike some agencies that hand off the work to junior players or feed prompts into AI, Rob and I have always enjoyed coming up with ideas. There’s no reason to give the best part of our job to someone with less experience (or worse yet, some “thing”).
What does success mean to you?
Doing what you love, with people you care about.
Using your imagination to salve problems with creative solutions.
We take the greatest pride in knowing that we’ve created some of the most successful advertising efforts our clients have ever had. One campaign for our client, Family Britches, a high-end men’s clothing store, was selected as the best direct mail piece of the year in the Caples International Awards against the biggest agencies in the world. It also won first prize in the Addy, Effie and Echo awards. More importantly, it remains the store’s most successful advertising effort in its 50-year history.
Pricing:
- We love the challenge of having to prove ourselves every time. That’s why we work with our clients on a project basis. There’s no contract. No obligation. We help our clients outsmart their competition instead of outspend them. We deliver top quality creative solutions without our clients having to pay top dollar.
Contact Info:
- Website: To learn more about us, visit foremanandresnick.com
- Email: j.tomforeman@gmail.com
- Call: 817 300-0200.
