Marketing firm aims to help pandemic-stuck companies

Pushing the Envelope, a strategic marketing and branding firm based in Fort Myers, normally counts its clients as long-term partners — measured in years, not months. Samantha Scott, who founded the firm in 2006, says the goal with any client is to help shape that firm’s approach to reaching customers and building a sustainable brand.

The company, with a full-time staff of four and a team of project-based freelancers, has kept up doing some of that work for clients during the pandemic. But Scott, watching the news and talking to other Southwest Florida business owners, saw a gap in the marketing marketplace: uncertainty about how to restart a business. “I saw a lot of business were saying: ‘I want to reopen, but I don’t know how. I’m so overwhelmed,’” says Scott, a past Business Observer 40 under 40 winner. “Marketing [for those businesses] has become secondary. People don’t have the bandwidth to handle it.”