Although it was not the area’s first advertising agency, the firm founded by Frederick R. Riger in 1950 became the Southern Tier’s largest and longest-standing marketing communications business.

Now in its 58th year, Riger Advertising Agency provides advertising, public relations, marketing research and planning, graphic design, video production, and online services to clients across upstate New York and northeastern Pennsylvania. In addition, Riger has filled client needs outside our region, in New England, Canada, Michigan, California, Europe, and the Caribbean.

A native Binghamtonian, Fred Riger was a pre-WWII graduate of New York University, with a B.S., majoring in journalism, and minoring in psychology. While in college, he also worked as a retail clerk in Bamberger’s, a Manhattan department store, learning lessons in salesmanship, merchandising, and human nature that would serve him well throughout his business career.

Following graduation from NYU, Fred joined Fred Wittner Public Relations in New York City. Wittner’s firm specialized in industrial marketing. Its clients included Moore Machine Tool of Connecticut, which was heavily involved in production of materiel for the coming war, and for whom Fred helped gain an important editorial spread in the pages of Fortune Magazine.

Like so many other young men of his generation, Fred answered Uncle Sam’s call for service, as our country was plunged into conflict on a worldwide scale. He volunteered for the Army Air Corps and at the time (1943) was the oldest cadet in his Army Aviation School class. Following graduation, he was assigned to a B-26 Marauder fighter/bomber squadron, flying tactical air support in France and Germany in 1944-45. The B-26 did not enjoy a good reputation among Army Air Corps pilots, but Fred always felt the difficulties in handing the aircraft actually helped hone his piloting skills and made him a better aviator.

At the conclusion of the war, Fred Wittner welcomed Fred Riger back to his old job. Returning to civilian life, Fred reclaimed to his old desk in Manhattan in 1946. But it didn’t take. Perhaps as an aftereffect of his war experience, perhaps from wanderlust, Fred told his old boss that he had to set out on his own, and try this “agency thing” for himself. He explained to Wittner that he would be returning to his old hometown of Binghamton, quite distant from Manhattan and the nerve center for the ad business in post-WWII.

Wittner told Riger he could understand and accept the young man’s desire to “do his own thing,” and “return to his roots.” Nonetheless, Wittner admonished his protégé to think long and hard about his decision. He cautioned that even though the remote region of upstate New York, along the Pennsylvania border, had been dubbed “The Valley of Opportunity,” it might not be the most hospitable environment in which to start and nurture an advertising and public relations business. But the former B-26 pilot had faced more than his share of adversity already. Perhaps, he also felt he had “been there and done that” with the Manhattan business scene. In any case, he shrugged off Wittner’s fatherly advice, and headed back to Binghamton.

The door opened at Fred Riger Advertising Agency in the old Press Building on Chenango Street in downtown Binghamton in 1950. Fred worked out of his briefcase from a single-room office that year, landing his first work with Stow Manufacturing Co., an “old-line” Binghamton industry. (It had produced buggy whips in the 19th Century and graduated to the fabrication of flexible shafting.) Ultimately, by the latter 20th century Stow also had become a trusted brand in light construction equipment.

To make ends meet, and because he had never really “left the sales floor” at Bamberger’s, Fred worked part time at a men’s haberdashery, Grube & Smith’s, on Binghamton’s Court St. There he assisted his older brother Sol, the cigar-chomping G&S proprietor. It was in retailing that Fred found the convergence of psychology and commerce. Not only the “closing of the sale,” but the deft touch of “throwing in the tie with the purchase of the suit.”

During a 34-year career as head of his own agency, Fred Riger served many “name” businesses including Endicott Johnson Corporation, Binghamton Savings Bank, Pennwalt Corporation, GMC Truck, Marine Midland Bank, McDonald’s Restaurants, Universal Instruments, Olum’s, and others. During that time, he and his organization set the gold standard for integrity, professionalism and principle.

In 1970, Fred was a key force in the founding of the Public Relations Society of the Southern Tier, a forerunner of the current day Communications Association of the Southern Tier (CAST). Also during the ‘70s, Riger Advertising became the upstate New York affiliate of Ruder Finn, the world’s largest independent public relations firm of that era. The Riger agency assisted RF with work on behalf of clients like Philip Morris, Seagram’s, Conrail, Smith-Corona, etc.

Away from work, Fred was a diehard devotee of general aviation, always its proponent for both business and personal uses. He sat on the Broome County Airport Advisory Council, recommending policy to the county legislature with regard to the community’s airport, now Link Field. He was a perennial promoter of the Broome County Air Show, an annual aviation festival which continues to thrill audiences today. He was a co-pilot on corporate aircraft for Link Aviation and NYSEG. A member of the Quiet Birdmen, a piloting fraternity, he was a flight instructor for Miller Aviation and taught a course at Broome Community College entitled, “So, You Want to Be a Pilot!”

Besides providing instruction to aspiring pilots at BCC, Fred also taught a marketing course there for several years. Very much at home in the classroom, he taught public relations as an adjunct professor at State University of New York at Binghamton, now Binghamton University. Drawing on his background in psychology, Fred maintained a lifelong interest in the topic and often was sought out for counsel in that discipline, both inside and outside of his professional work.

Prior to WWII, while still in New York City, Fred married Martha Bittman, a daughter of a large Binghamton family. They had two sons, Stuart of Tampa, FL, and Michael of Baltimore, MD, and four grandchildren. For many years, Martha worked alongside Fred in the agency, serving as bookkeeper and office manager.

Fred sold the business in 1984 to a group of key staffers, who work hard to carry on the business in the direction its founder originally intended. In 1994, Fred passed away after a long battle with cancer.

Today, Fred is remembered as someone who believed good advertising depended more on salesmanship than on so-called “creativity.” Frequently, he could be heard reminding agency staff members and clients alike that “nothing happens until somebody sells something.” He believed knowledge of subject matter was a key pre-requisite to good writing, and that this, in turn, was the necessary platform on which good advertising was to be built. Perhaps most of all, Fred will be recalled as a leader who insisted on a commitment to “doing things right…..the first time.” And that is a pretty fine legacy for anyone.

In June, 2008, Fred was recognized posthumously for Special Achievement in the Binghamton Media Hall of Fame by the Southern Tier Broadcasters Association. A plaque in his memory — along with others honoring numerous other area broadcasting and advertising practitioners — resides at the Bundy Arts & Victorian Museum, 129 Main St., Binghamton.

RIGER STAFF