Pedal to the metal

Paul Caldwell received an urgent call from an auto dealer in Colorado in November 2014. The dealer's advertising agency fell through on a promise to create a television spot that had to run the next day at noon. Caldwell and his business partner, Tom Kerr, called their Southwest Florida production team together into the office at 4 a.m. They produced a TV commercial for the dealer that ran that day at noon.

Work like that, creating, editing and producing a professional TV commercial in just a few hours, is virtually impossible, but it illustrates the entrepreneurial can-do spirit of the agency. “It landed us a million- dollar-a-year client,” says Caldwell, partners with Kerr in Cape Coral-based Caldwell & Kerr Advertising.

In addition to can-do, the agency follows some classic business advice: Do what you know. So much so that Caldwell & Kerr focuses solely on dealership franchises for the major automakers. It currently has more than 300 dealer groups as customers. The list includes Gulf Coast dealers such as Morgan Auto Group in Tampa and Crown Automotive Group in St. Petersburg.