CNP, Headquartered in Polk County, Offers Innovative Services and Expanded to Higher Ed Through Echo Delta

Having served clients for over three decades, what was a boutique graphic design firm has evolved to meet changing market needs and trends. Expanding services, growing impact and building talent.

Today, CNP continues its work with Polk County clients old and new while growing Echo Delta, a spinoff that focuses on higher education recruitment for clients across the nation.

“Serving our clients in Polk County has connected me with incredibly talented people across a range of industries from agriculture to tech to education,” said Jarrett Smith, CNP’s Senior Vice President for Strategy who became a partner in 2017. “There’s a lot of talent here, but also a lot of folks who really care about moving our county forward. It’s been a privilege to see that up close over the years.” 

CNP employs about 20 people, hiring freelance talent as needed. About half of its employees live in Polk County, contributing to the economic development of the county. 

“We’re in a unique place — so many of our clients are out of the market,” he said. “We’re bringing in revenue, outside money, to Polk County. We employ people who live and work here. So that outside money has an impact here. It allows us to sponsor local events.” 

Smith, a Lakeland native, moved away in his 20s but came back to Polk County to raise his family. He joined CNP 11 years ago. 

“CNP is a special place. Before I joined, I had a lot of respect for the work the agency had done over the years, but it wasn’t until I got introduced to the people and culture at the agency that I really got hooked. Over the years, different folks have come and gone, but at our core we’ve stayed focused on being a welcoming place where very smart and creative people can use their talents to solve interesting problems.” 

CNP’s History

In the late 1990s, CNP moved toward integrated marketing and worked with agencies like Visit Central Florida. Then, in 2003, it brought on a web development team, which was an early adopter of using WordPress for blogs. Its work caught on and before long its clients included Sony Play, Logitech and Yahoo, among others. “Work was coming through a PR firm in the Silicon Valley. In 2008, they looked at the web team and wanted to buy it.” 

Alex Nikdel had left the firm to get an engineering degree at the University of Florida, then go to work at Disney World. In 2009, he returned as web development director to “reboot our web team,” he said. “That was my core role for a while. I got into digital marketing, then added on SEO (search engine optimization) and digital media buying. I looked at clients as holistic marketing and led the transition into more of an integrated marketing shop.” 

One of the most satisfying projects he worked on was recruiting Florida Polytechnic University’s first class of students. “I did the enrollment campaign to recruit. The campus was under construction; it had no faculty, staff, students, accreditation or access to financial aid. We had to recruit 500 students with just a vision. We brought in 550 that first year. It was a huge win. We had worked with higher education, but Florida Poly was the first true enrollment-focused job.” 

Moving Into Education

The Florida Poly job was noticed by Saint Leo University in Tampa, then a school in Arkansas. Word was spreading.  “If we do our jobs right and make our clients look good, they get promoted or take a better job at another school,” Nikdel said, spreading the word further. 

Around 2018, he realized CNP needed to specialize in a particular area. “We looked at options and landed on it — the most satisfying work we had done was in higher education.  

It’s recurring work from a business standpoint,” he said. “If we do our job and hit the numbers we need to hit, they retain us for the next enrollment cycle. From a sustainability standpoint, it’s why we landed on that.” 

They envisioned Echo Delta, which accounts for about 80% of CNP’s business, he said. The name is drawn from the NATO phonetic alphabet to signify clarity and communication. 

“Echo is to amplify our client message. Delta means we were brought in when they’re at certain periods of change,” Nikdel said. “We’ve gotten good at helping them manage that change. If enrollment is declining and they want to turn it around or they’re looking for a new website experience, they hire us.” 

Three employees work on the enrollment consulting team: 

• One works on strategic enrollment planning. 
• One is a national expert on the campus-visit experience and on-campus events. 
• The last is involved in sales training for admissions counselors.  

Continuing to Expand

The team could grow in the next five years or so because of the huge change higher education is going through, Nikdel said.  

“There will be a big enrollment cliff between now and 2030 because of the 2008 recession, when people had fewer babies. The pool of prospective students is declining. Colleges are fighting and the good ones who see this coming are doubling down on identification — for us, that presents an opportunity,” he said. “Our sweet spot is our smaller to midsize private schools and mid-sized public schools. And they’re all in a fight.” 

He’d like to have a stable base of recurring clients who like working with CNP. Then, he’d like to move more into work with community colleges and workforce development agencies, where there’s “a lot of potential for growth.”  

They already do some work in that space, he said, but “growing in that area is going to be a big focus for us in the next several years.”  

The agency will add more service areas when warranted, which keeps people like Smith engaged.  

“I think what keeps me going is a deep curiosity for how things work, whether that’s an industry, a new piece of technology, some aspect of human psychology, or our own business,” he said. “More often than not, I get to end my week having learned something new that makes me see the world a little differently, and that keeps me coming back. It’s certainly helped me see the county I grew up in differently.

“Serving our clients in Polk County has connected me with incredibly talented people across a range of industries from agriculture to tech to education. There’s a lot of talent here, but also a lot of folks who really care about moving our county forward. It’s been a privilege to see that up close over the years.”  

Giving Back

A long-term supporter of Polk State Foundation, CNP supports one of its chief fundraisers, Night of Legacy. Nikdel also serves on or has served on multiple boards, including the Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce and Polk Vision.  

He believes in economic development and is an investor in the Central Florida Development Council and the Lakeland and Winter Haven economic development councils. 

Nikdel said a secondary vertical for CNP has been economic development, marketing and website support. It built the websites for the CFDC and Winter Haven EDC, as well as Enterprise Florida when it existed. “At one point, we developed the websites for our city, county and state.” 

That work is very tangential to higher education, he said. “Just about every school does some sort of economic development study. When everything is humming along, they are contributing to their local economies.”