miller mauro celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2024, as a trusted provider of creative services for Delaware's leading businesses and nonprofits.
Ruthea Miller, president and COO, and Joe Mauro, CEO, established the graphic design and advertising agency in Wilmington in 1984, soon after returning from several years in the San Francisco Bay area, where they had done design work in the technology industry, then in its infancy.
“We worked on the old Apple II computers, with their primitive graphics,” Joe recalls. “Then we came back here and there was little talk of computers.”
Joe bought an early model Texas Instruments computer for $50 as a promotional add-on to a carpeting purchase and quickly developed a facility for computer programming.
Soon after opening their business, Miller and Mauro spent $15,000 on some new desktop publishing products — a pair of Macintosh 512 computers and an Apple LaserWriter printer.
“The Macs really launched us. Businesses sought us out because we were among the first in the area to use computers as a design tool,” Ruthea says.
“Securing contracts for marketing projects for DuPont gave the company an early boost and its success in executing those projects led to other companies reaching out to miller mauro for support with their marketing plans,” Joe says.
“We also tried to be good corporate citizens,” he says, offering advice to other advertising and marketing businesses as they adapted to the computer era.
“While we've been in business, the advertising and marketing world has changed significantly,” Joe says. “We’ve gone from designing for paper on a computer screen to designing on screen for displays on laptops and mobile devices. We used to buy a lot of paper, but we hardly print anything anymore.”
Ruthea Miller and Joe Mauro both graduated from the University of Delaware in 1977 with bachelor’s degrees in advertising and graphic design.
miller mauro's client roster now ranges from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and nonprofits.
miller mauro had its first office at 207 Philadelphia Pike. In 2014, the marketing firm moved to new quarters at Suite 9, The Commons, 3512 Silverside Road, in Wilmington, Delaware.