Steve McKee started out just as another University of New Mexico college graduate would: looking for a job and trying to figure out his next move.
His first job came when he began working for a Pizza Hut account in southern California at an ad agency. From then on he took on multiple jobs until he opened his own firm nineteen years ago.
The name McKee might sound familiar to locals. It is part of McKee Wallwark & Company, a nationally recognized ad agency located in Albuquerque. Steve Mckee is the co-founder and president of the agency, an author of two books - "When Growth Stalls" and "Power Branding" - and co-founder of a Bay Area tech startup.
McKee has worked on numerous projects, but one that New Mexicans might be familiar with is Dion’s. McKee’s company helped re-design the look of the iconic restaurant and provided a new style of advertising and packaging for it.
“It was incredibly fun and rewarding," he said. “Everybody loves Dion’s, but when you think about it, it’s not easy to articulate why.”
However, when it comes to advertising, one has to separate themselves from the competition. It would have been just as easy for other ad agencies to do the same thing McKee Wallwark & Company did for Dion’s, but McKee's agency stood out with a unique model.
“We have developed a niche all our own serving 'stalled, stuck and stale' brands, which identified four destructive internal dynamics that often subtly plague struggling companies,” McKee said.
This “niche” is what separates McKee's agency as it addresses the dynamics that infect struggling companies and works to get them back on the growth curve.
Not only does McKee’s work help businesses, it also helps the New Mexico community by creating good paying jobs for families, bringing money into the state and by helping clients creating new jobs.
McKee said that the New Mexico community is extremely important to him, and that is why he strives to help and serve the community as much as he can.
“Our state could be so much more than it is,” he said. “We could have so many more jobs, so much more health, so much less poverty and sickness if we’d just get out of our own way.”
He has an admirable love for the state of New Mexico; McKee doesn’t seem like he wants to be anywhere else than the Land of Enchantment. He said that there is no place like it, admiring the culture, the beauty, the cuisine. Nothing tops it, he says.
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McKee himself has appeared on numerous radio and television stations, including ESPN2.
“Most of those came as a result of ADBOWL, our Super Bowl commercial rating site. We were the first to rate the commercials in real time and have been doing it for 16 years now,” McKee said.
He remembers one year conducting 25 interviews back-to-back after the Super Bowl and traveling from station to station across the country all in a matter of hours. He said he and his firm are always willing to provide information on current business events, and that it also helps the firm’s credibility.
An average day for McKee is decidedly not an average day. Because his firm serves multiple clients in a wide array of industries, each and every day offers a new experience.
“I lead strategy development meetings, write, sell, review creative concepts, pitch them to clients, oversee budgets, solve problems—you name it," he said.
With a workload like that, it can be hard to manage business with family. But McKee said he doesn't let the former interfere with the latter. He knows that he cannot make everyone happy and that someone is bound to be disappointed, but the decision he had to make was who - his colleagues and clients or his family.
He said that the demands of the job are never-ending and that deadlines can sometimes be relentless, but his priority in life is his family. About that he has no doubts.
His devotion to God motivates him to keep going and leads to him being a provider for his family.
“On a practical level, that very clearly plays out in providing for my wife and, for a few more years, my kids,” he said. "And then, after that, doing what I can to provide a safe, thriving, moral environment in which my kids can raise their kids.”
McKee is also able to instill his own values and beliefs into his firm by using what they call the Origins and Rights & Responsibilities documents.
“They serve as sort of a Declaration of Independence and Constitution for us,” McKee said.
When McKee has some free time he likes to read and also work out, in a way that shows he fully commits to all areas of life and not just his company.
“I am a voracious reader. I also like to run and swim," he said. "Until a few years ago all of my free time was devoted to my kids’ activities, which I wouldn’t change for the world.”
Now that his children are grown and he and his wife spend most of their time together, McKee and his family are traveling more and participating in running and swimming events.
He has participated in the Alcatraz dua-thlon, which involves running and swimming, and he has taken part in the Loch Ness.
He keeps a lighthearted attitude in those competitions as well. McKee also said he may or may not have seen "Nessie" when competing in that individual event.
McKee said, ultimately, what their goal is at McKee Wallwark & Company and that is to be a blessing .
“Our goal is to be a blessing to each other as we do our work each day, to do work that is a blessing to our clients, and to enable our clients to be a blessing to their customers,” he said.
Bryce Owens is a student in the Communications and Journalist Department.
