McMurry isn’t the classic started-in-a-garage business story. It did take blood, sweat and tears, but of a different kind, as McMurry was first a marketing department inside a large corporation. Ironically, McMurry originated as the very same type of entity our company primarily serves today.

In 1984, Preston V. McMurry Jr. created Vim & Vigor magazine as a custom marketing magazine for his health-system employer. Although the magazine didn’t make money, McMurry took a gamble, bought the magazine and started his own company in 1989 with four staff members.
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The firm grew up as a custom publisher at a time when custom publishing was nary a blip on the marketing radar screen. “I ran it like my house,” Preston says. “Everything from establishing standards, to reinforcing principles, to how I managed money. I kept it simple and focused, and that’s why we succeeded.”

A great deal of McMurry’s original vision and creation still exists now, even though the company has expanded since into the nation’s leading custom publisher, the largest marketing communications agency in Arizona and a provider of sundry subscription-type career services to 10,000 corporate marketers.

“Did I think we would become a full-service marketing communications firm with offices in Phoenix, New York, Boston and Palm Springs, workshops in almost every major city and serving customers all over the globe?” he asks. “I’m just happy we’ve been able to help so many people. The final measurement is in how you help others, not what you personally accomplish.”