Just after Zimmerman, Laurent & Richardson Inc. moved to a new location in 1998, the advertising agency lost two major clients. That’s when Louie Laurent brought in the guitar from his days as a Drake University student and started playing it on Friday afternoons.

“There wasn’t much to do anyway,” he said, “and I wanted everybody to think, ‘Hey, he’s not worried; things must not be so bad.’ Actually, I was scared to death.”

But the company bounced back after a painful downsizing, and now has entered its next phase. Co-founder Jim Richardson recently retired (the third original owner, Kent Zimmerman, retired a few years ago), and on March 1 the company changed its name to ZLR Ignition.

“We started thinking about a new name in October 2003,” said Laurent, the company’s president. “We had a number of options, but ‘ignition’ gradually came to the surface.”

Along with the name change has come a shift in philosophy, according to Laurent. “It’s an attempt to reinvent ourselves,” he said. “We’re making more of a commitment to understand our clients’ audiences” through focus groups and interviews with both the client and its potential customers.

As an example, Laurent described the revision of strategy for Beam Industries Inc., a Webster City company that makes central vacuum systems for the home. The company’s sales force had been emphasizing the power and convenience of its products. By interviewing homeowners and parents, ZLR tested a theory that potential buyers would be interested in the product’s clean-air health benefits, supported by a university study.

On the strength of those results, ZLR adjusted the Beam sales pitch, and at a December 2004 meeting of Beam dealers, “the dealers reported an average increase in sales of 50 percent,” Laurent said.

“We’ll interview a client company’s president, marketing director and salespeople, and then we’ll interview consumers,” he said. “They all have different perceptions of the product or service. But the brand is what the consumer says it is, so the more we understand the consumer, the more effective our communications will be.”

ZLR Ignition employs 21 people, including the management team of Laurent, creative director Andre Nel, public relations director Bill Brewer, media director Virginia Corbett and vice president of client service Kristi Chambers.

The Central Iowa advertising market has been “a little flat” in the past five years, Laurent said, reflecting the national situation. He estimated that about 750 people worked in advertising in Greater Des Moines at the industry’s high-water mark, and put the current total at about 400.

Laurent was just 33 when he and his partners started the agency. “I was cocky and ambitious,” he said. A Des Moines native, he had worked for four other local advertising companies before that, and had known since he started college that he wanted to open an ad agency.

“It’s been a rewarding and emotional business to be in,” Laurent said. “You can see the results, you compete, you’re using wit and hard work to win. It’s like basketball — it’s elating when you win and deflating when you lose. The highs are what we play for.”