Wpromote challenges every client to think like a challenger—even century-old Whirlpool, which the agency is helping accelerate as a direct-to-consumer business. Wpromote has built that mindset through the development of its talent, investing in every employee to turn them into subject matter experts through training and mentorship.

Chief relationship officer Mike Stone says Wpromote prides itself on giving employees clear career growth. They, in turn, recruit more talent, which results in Wpromote building teams that clients like Avail, Spanx and Transunion love. And all that leads to 1,550% growth over the past three years. The agency is growing rapidly, with nearly 700 current employees, and it projects to grow to 800 by the end of 2021 and hit about 1,000 during 2022.

“We’re able to bring in a lot of high achievers, and we can give them a path for growth within our business,” says Stone.

Wpromote’s success with talent, he says, goes hand in hand with tech. Its Polaris tool fuels the agency’s nimbleness, helping automate tasks like monitoring the pacing and planning of media budgets and how well creative is performing across platforms.

Ultimately, that leads employees to think more about the strategy and less about work that could burn them out. “[Polaris] leads to more strategic conversations with the client to get to a better growth outcome,” Stone says. —Jameson Fleming

RingoFire isn’t shy about letting its clients know the founders started the shop without ever working for an ad agency. In fact, they gave themselves the moniker “unagency” as a nod to their paths through brand marketing and corporate offices to the creation of the Greenville, S.C.-based agency.

“I managed many agencies when I was at the corporate level, so I knew what I liked and didn’t like about them,” says founder Brian Stearns, who is a partner alongside brothers Richard and Marco Carrizales. “I decided to kind of build something that was more like a support system consultancy with agency-type people.”

Stearns says RingoFire, which quickly outgrew its office and has moved into a four-building campus at an old weaving mill, has been doubling its revenue every year since it was founded, while tripling revenue growth in the past year due to its clients’ successes during the pandemic—the agency works heavily with home improvement and consumer goods brands. In total, its three-year growth amounted to a staggering 746%.

RingoFire, which bills itself as a full-service agency with a full production studio, works with Lowe’s, specifically on some of its house brands like Cobalt and Project Source, and it recently launched its first national TV spot on Discovery for Apex Tool Group. —J.F.

We Are Rosie was founded by Stephanie Nadi Olson in 2018 with a mission of supporting its people while providing a workplace that treats everyone with dignity and access to opportunity. It is a flexible talent platform that pairs Fortune 500 brands and their agencies with independent marketing talent, who can be hired for numerous projects.

“I determined I wanted to dedicate my life to supporting people who are marginalized by the rigid systems of work,” Olson, one of Adweek’s Women Trailblazers, told Adweek earlier this year.

The fully remote agency noted that it saw thousands of highly skilled marketers opt out of the traditional way of working—most of them from marginalized, underrepresented or underserved groups. So, it created a viable way for them to work on terms that work for them, and for brands to access that trove of talent efficiently.

We Are Rosie is now a thriving community of over 9,000 diverse and highly skilled independent marketers, helping companies like Bumble, Facebook and IBM maximize their agility, resilience, inclusion and creativity. New major enterprise client wins for We Are Rosie include Microsoft, Facebook, Diageo and IHG. —K.O.

To cut its customer acquisition costs on Facebook, Colgate-Palmolive turned to Amasa to drive down costs for its Hum IoT-enabled toothbrush. Within a few weeks, Amasa had cut that cost in half, says CEO Alex Brown. That success led to working on more services like CRM and media buying across Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok.

“We pride ourselves on being, in addition to a performance marketing agency, a very full-funnel agency,” Brown says, adding the agency dives into its clients’ entire business. “We just really want to understand the entire user experience and the entire customer journey from end to end.”

According to Brown, the agency, which has grown revenue 541% over the past three years, works with clients that spend at least $50,000 on media each year, but also has an incubator program for fledgling ecommerce businesses that can’t hit that threshold. Brown says the program, a 12-week boot camp that provides deliverables including a comprehensive analysis of the client’s business and recommendations on media buying, helps distinguish Amasa from its competitors.

Currently, the San Diego-based agency has about 30 employees, but Brown hopes to reach 50 in 2022 to support the shop’s exponential growth. —J.F.

Adesiem, formerly called Tenshi, set out to solve its clients’ challenges and help them build and execute large-scale advertising and marketing campaigns. In recent years, the agency has become more data-driven, leaning heavily on analyses and data science to produce results that exceed industry benchmarks in terms of returns on ad spend and revenue and business growth.

“Since 2018, we have seen an exponential growth in revenue, which has continued beyond 2020,” a company spokesperson says. “We attribute this growth to our proprietary systems, suites, processes and machine-learning AI that have been in development for half a decade.”

According to the agency, it consistently produces an average of 18 times return on ad spend across industries. Its business model is 90% retainer, with all services included, and the agency doesn’t hold its clients to yearly contracts, so the onus is on its teams to perform. Adesiem boasts a 98% client retention rate since its inception over a decade ago.

Adesiem has built a team of data scientists for heavy data analyses and built custom algorithms and systems to understand its clients’ customers at a granular level, to market to them, cut wasted spend and find new avenues of revenue growth. —K.O.

Billion Dollar Boy is a global agency that connects content creators with creative brands to deliver influencer marketing campaigns. The agency has produced over 42,000 pieces of content, activated campaigns across 48 countries and in more than 17 languages and sees influencer marketing as a discipline, not an add-on. The main sources of the agency’s growth have been new business, repeat business and referrals. —Kennyatta Collins

As a firm with an exclusive focus on the industrial sector, including construction, manufacturing, green energy and resources, SitePartners provides expertise and insight into its strategic and creative work. Its specialized approach has allowed it to generate strong brand awareness and helped it win multiple new major industrial clients across Canada, in addition to project expansion. —K.C.

Phiture is a mobile growth consultancy that uses cutting-edge analytics and deep domain expertise to help its clients grow their mobile apps. Aiming to be leaders in mobile growth in particular, the agency provides App Store optimization, retention and CRM, and a host of premium services to help its clients establish competencies they can eventually take on themselves. —K.C.

Tech firm Chicory, a digital shopper marketing platform for CPG and grocery brands, looks to bring efficiency and transparency to grocery shopping. The agency partners with leading CPG brands like Campbell’s and grocery retailers like Wakefern Food Corp. to serve hyper-relevant ads to consumers when they’re planning their grocery purchases. A pioneer of shoppable recipes, Chicory creates digital tools, like contextual, in-recipe ad placements, to harness the power of recipes to get brands in front of millions of shoppers and inspire them to buy. —K.O.

Growthbuster provides a unique blend of marketing that has developed some of the fastest-growing companies in America, and its mission is to help people, brands and products give the great legacy companies a run for their money. Growthbuster relies on referrals and its reputation for growth, and is looking to become the go-to agency for businesses that want to grow their apps’ user bases. —K.C.

During the pandemic, brand agency Born & Bred, which specializes in launching and growing category disruptors, prioritized its growth efforts for industries, like fin tech, cannabis, b-to-b software and DTC, that were less impacted by the pandemic than others. The consultancy touts its value for venture-backed, category-building challenger brands—like Lumanu and Eaze—and has built its business supporting them, which has led to high retention rates. —K.C.

With a commitment to developing digital marketing, Trends Paris utilizes data to provide PR results for its clients. The agency consistently anticipates new markets, and it has landed over 30 new clients between 2020 and 2021 as a result. For Trends Paris, “it’s never about what the market can give, but how it can be driven forward.” —K.C.

Thinkingbox is a global creative collective shaping the future of brands like Adobe, Intuit, Riot Games and Pinterest with a diverse team that blends business with technology and creative storytelling. Even though the pandemic proved to be a fierce challenge, Thinkingbox leaned on its core services, and instead of layoffs, it tripled its staff during 2020 and early 2021. —K.C.

Pattern’s core principle is that design is “the most powerful differentiator,” and the agency uses that to craft digital experiences that help define its clients. Pattern uses its expertise to guide founders, disruptors and creators through the experience economy. With over 30 awards to its credit, Pattern is “willing to live and die on the quality of work” and attributes its growth to word-of-mouth and reputation. —K.C.

SourceCode Communications brings humanity to the forefront of all things PR and communications. Its programs have earned over 30 award nominations and wins in just three years. And a testament to the SourceCode experience is that its primary source of growth has been referrals, even as it continues to hold firm in representing its first client, PCI Pal. —K.C.

Leaving no industry underserved is a hallmark of this burgeoning agency. Looney serves clients across categories including automotive, beauty, packaged goods and retail. Since its inception, the agency has maintained a media-agnostic strategy that commits to the right solution over being forced into a specific direction of expertise, and it pivots quickly to meet client needs. —K.C.

Boasting 55 offices on six continents, Cheil embodies the global agency model with precision and versatility. The agency boasts its speed to market and adjusting to market changes. Its primary growth has come from fostering and enhancing a long-standing partnership with Samsung, with a recent focus on the U.S. market. —K.C.

According to Marketing Doctor, the agency is “less about the jingles and more about the metrics,” and a commitment to continuous education, ambition and responsiveness fuels its success. Marketing Doctor’s all-hands-on-deck approach and responsiveness keep it agile and adaptable, and it fosters strong relationships with diverse agencies that complement its services. —K.C.

Power Digital helps brands—including new clients Houseplant (Seth Rogen’s cannabis brand) and Black-owned hair care brand Mielle Organics—scale revenue sustainably and increase profits by using data and analytics to guide strategy. Its proprietary, machine-learning platform SPRnova analyzes business growth opportunities and provides a corresponding road map of how to execute and track progress across marketing channels. —K.C.

Oliver’s “inside-out” focus for its clients has fueled growth since its 2004 founding. Having created more than 300 built-for-purpose agencies, Oliver’s priority is a “shared roof” perspective, which enables it to operate with speed and nimbleness. Completely devoted to designing, building and operating bespoke in-house agencies for brands, Oliver has thrived on the strength of its focused offering. —K.C.

Hylink is one of the largest independent advertising agencies in the world and has been for the past 10 years. Very rarely using outside contracting, Hylink benefits from being fully integrated, with multiple practices, all of which are in-house. Hylink successfully emulates pure performance models from Asia to increase the quality of its output. —K.C.

Whalar is driven by tech to leverage influencers and data. As Covid-19 transformed the market’s focus, Whalar pushed new ways of production and took advantage of growth generators like TikTok. The agency leans into connectivity over promotions and has won two Cannes Lions. —K.C.

Cashmere is an award-winning lifestyle marketing agency that utilizes social media, creative strategy, experiential, influencer marketing and public relations strategies to provide full-service support for campaigns and brands, and it excels at connecting through community and culture. With its proprietary Dope Data Systems, Cashmere has the capability of identifying trends and quantifying its efforts for its clients. —K.C.

Arts & Letters is a relatively new company, but one with a collective entrepreneurial spirit and an empowered and open way of working that its clients have come to value. The agency can quickly pivot to make the work better for its partners and the work environment better for its employees. “We are a group of realistic optimists whose philosophy is summed up not by any proprietary process but by an attitude of ‘we’ll figure it out’—a phrase we inscribed on the wall when we first opened our doors,” founder and ecd Charles Hodges tells Adweek. —K.O.

Influencer marketing agency Viral Nation is a group of entrepreneurs, former global agency leaders and talent agents focused on making decisions at the “speed of culture” to create viral and ROI-focused media influencer campaigns. The agency has experienced exponential growth driven by onboarding new clients into influencer marketing and organically growing current clients by offering paid media and content production. — Alexandra Carter

Founded in 2015, Atlanta agency Dagger focuses on making brands culturally relevant in a consumer-driven marketplace. It lives by the adage that brands must behave more like media companies and create and distribute content across all forms of media to prosper. Dagger started its own media brand, @Butter.ATL, equipped with in-house content production capabilities and offered free work to world-class brands during the pandemic as an investment in its relationships. —A.C.

Since 2007, 829 Studios has crafted integrated marketing solutions with a focus on collaboration and innovation. After years of continued growth, mainly fueled by word-of-mouth and referrals, 829 Studios added new service offerings in the past year, including PR and account-based marketing, that have propelled 829 Studios even further. —A.C.

Media.Monks offers digital advertising and marketing services in 31 countries. Its strategy revolves around creating digital marketing solutions that embrace data, content and digital media. Like many companies, the primary sources of Media.Monks’ growth in 2021 came from helping brands quickly adapt to a digital-first world when at-home audiences suddenly became an urgent priority. —A.C.

ThreeSixtyEight is a full-service creative agency that operates Big Fish Presentations, a service line that creates professional presentations and speaker training. The division has been instrumental in the agency’s growth, and it boasts clients including Century Link, Rakuten, Louisiana Economic Development and the Louisiana Department of Health. —A.C.

When Growth Marketing Systems launched, it only offered Facebook advertising services. The agency has since grown to include a wide array of social media advertising. A pivot in 2020 to a specialization in digital brands has been instrumental in GMS’ growth. The agency has also continued to expand its existing portfolios and has introduced strategic partnerships with complementary agencies and suppliers. —A.C.

This Dallas agency believes that cultivating greatness at the individual level is one of the primary drivers of its rapid growth. Alpha focuses deeply in specific verticals—health care, education, transportation and nonprofits—and the agency was intentionally built with diverse talent, so it has insight into all audience segments. —K.O.

Several acquisitions in 2019 spearheaded growth at Bounteous, a digital experience consultancy that started in 2003. Despite the fiscal challenges of 2020, Bounteous continued its 20% compound annual growth rate, with over $100 million in revenue, and the firm won several multiyear, co-innovation accounts, exceeding its business development goals. The agency also recently acquired Lister Digital. —A.C.

Drive focuses most of its efforts on driving trackable ROI for its partners. The agency has developed a proprietary tracking platform called Marketing Milk that allows clients to log in remotely to view real-time reports on the ROI and RoAS of their social media campaigns. This focused approach is helping accelerate the company’s growth. —A.C.

Constellation is a hybrid marketing/SaaS company offering tech-enabled digital marketing and creative services. Constellation’s client roster includes major OEMs such as BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volkswagen. The agency has earned several distinctions for its rapid growth and has doubled the size of its workforce in the past year alone. —A.C.

Hathway is a digital growth company that offers omnichannel loyalty strategy capabilities via three solution areas: CX consulting, digital product development and growth marketing. The pandemic accelerated the need for Hathway’s services as customer needs evolved rapidly, and as a result, the company has experienced significant growth over the past year. —A.C.

When the pandemic hit and ecommerce became the top priority overnight, ecommerce growth agency Blue Wheel was uniquely equipped to tackle the shift and help clients navigate the journey. The agency had been planning a shift to ecommerce for years; it just came sooner than anticipated. Blue Wheel doubled in size over the past year thanks to its explosive growth and foresight. —A.C.

Nimbus Inc.—a strategic marketing and communications agency owned by a Black husband and wife team—captures, communicates and connects brands with diverse consumers who have been historically ignored. “Nimbus’ growth is tied to our ability to provide value that’s rooted in who we are as individuals and by bringing those diverse, individual backgrounds into the work, authentically,” says a company spokesperson. —A.C.

Bellwood Labs helps businesses of all sizes build and scale software products. As the market for custom software explodes, the agency attributes its growth to three primary avenues: reputation, referrals and web directories and reviews. “A fast-growing agency cannot exist without a ‘service-market fit’—the industry must authentically need the services, in a big way that is not being well-served,” according to a company spokesperson. —A.C.

Tech-driven digital reputation management company Five Blocks analyzes brands’ internet presences to map out more accurate, intentional and strategic online reputations for its clients. While some of Five Blocks’ growth is from referrals, its primary growth driver is the quality of the relationships it builds, which it calls its “secret sauce.” —A.C.

Journey Further is a performance marketing agency specializing in paid media, organic search, conversion optimization and creative. Key clients include Sky, Sports Direct, Virgin Money, Liberty London, WorldFirst and Majestic Wine. Journey Further cites effective marketing and sales engines and a powerful culture to attract and retain the best talent as factors that propelled its growth. —A.C.

William Thomas Digital is an omnichannel digital messaging and CRM agency that creates relationships through deeply personalized experiences. Clients include Lindt, Shopify, Salesforce and Rogers. A large part of William Thomas Digital’s growth has been driven by referrals and clients seeking out the team’s specialized services. —A.C.

Fingerpaint is biopharma’s analytics-enabled commercialization partner for integrated solutions. The health and wellness marketing firm is known for its innovative, data-driven approach to providing integrated marketing solutions to a growing roster of health care clients. In 2020, Fingerpaint gained 24 new clients—a 41% growth rate, and growth from existing clients grew 59%. —A.C.

The Variable is a business growth company that combines innovation and advertising. The Variable attributes its rapid growth to strong AOR relationships with clients like P&G, Nestlé, Electrolux, Miracle-Gro and Char-Broil. Another factor contributing to its growth has been offering additional services, like innovation strategy, to its clients. —A.C.

Humanaut is an independent project-based agency and production studio that develops creative brand platforms, advertising campaigns and video content for emerging brands. Humanaut harnesses low costs of production to house the entire lifecycle of all projects on its reel, from strategy, creative and scripts to development, production and editing. —Cat Weaver

Since its inception in 2016, digitalfarm has grown a 120-plus portfolio of accounts, ranging from small businesses to global brands and government entities. This is thanks to a strategy of pairing affordability and social awareness with scalable packages, investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR), and a small and medium enterprise (SME) wing focused on supporting small businesses in the region. —C.W.

PMG is a global independent digital agency with a roster of clients including Apple, Athleta, Beats by Dre, Glossier, McDonald’s, Old Navy, TikTok and Sephora. The company, which was named Adweek’s Breakthrough Media Agency of the Year for 2021, racks up top industry kudos every year, with accolades from Cannes Lions, Deloitte Inc. and Entrepreneur, and has a more than 90% client retention rate. —C.W.

Marketing agency Glow creates and produces campaigns for media companies including WarnerMedia, Showtime, Spotify, Nickelodeon, YouTube and Hulu. Over the past year, its portfolio increased by 10%, with the addition of the NBA and the launch of Glow’s health and wellness group. Glow expects to see a 65% growth in revenue over the next two years. —C.W.

Creative platform and incubator Flock Creative Network (FCN) dubs itself a “one-stop communications team,” offering a broad suite of creative services. The agency credits its speedy ascent to a reputation for nimble response and a willingness to build out capabilities to suit individual client requests. FCN even responded to one client’s request for video production by creating its own in-house production studio. —C.W.

Imre offers an integrated suite of marketing and communications services ranging from creative to PR and analytics. Those at the company say they are “turning consumers into brand believers” and are proud to “orchestrate” that belief for a diverse and growing portfolio, including Airstream, AstraZeneca, Dickies, John Deere, GSK, the NFL, Pfizer, Stihl and Infiniti. —C.W.

Boasting scalability and innovative bespoke pricing contracts, Good Apple accommodates clients of all sizes. Launched in 2007, the boutique media agency has since managed over $200 million worth of media for startups like Birchbox and Bonobos, luxury retailer Moda Operandi and various Fortune 500 companies. The agency also does pro bono work for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. —C.W.

Marketing agency SmartBug Media provides a full suite of services—mostly digital—to health care, technology, manufacturing, senior living and professional services companies. The shop attributes its swift growth to being its “own best case study”—SmartBug Media uses the same strategies for its own marketing as it does for its clients. —C.W.

Coegi provides managed digital advertising, strategy and analytics services for agency partners and in-house brand marketing teams. The agency has experienced double-digit year-over-year growth since its 2014 founding, a feat it attributes in part to agency partnerships and brand-direct relationships, but mainly to its proprietary technology products that bolster brand safety and programmatic performance. —C.W.

Digital Hyve is a full-service digital marketing agency. Featured in the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America four years in a row, the company was acquired in 2021 by Butler/Till. The combined agencies now comprise one of the largest independent marketing and media agencies in the country. —C.W.

Digital marketing agency Dept began in 2015 with a goal to expand to 10 countries and reach $ 117.4 million (100 million euros) in revenue within three years—it achieved it in two. Since then, it has grown into a 13-country global enterprise with a client roster that includes Samsung, Patagonia, Google, Netflix, Tesla, Philips and Bose. —C.W.

Pavone creates consumer and business-to-business marketing campaigns for clients in financial services, health care, government, entertainment and retail. With offices in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, the agency, which uses acquisitions to bolster service line offerings, covers traditional and digital advertising and marketing, branding, social media, public relations, media planning, research and product innovation strategy. —C.W.

Full-service agency The Basement started as an interactive studio in 2008 with a focus on animation, gaming and website builds. These days, the company guides clients through brand strategy, UX/UI design, media planning, analytics and more. In the past few years, The Basement has grown by diversifying into the education and health care industries. —C.W.

Hybrid Marketing Co bills itself as the largest cannabis-focused agency in North America, providing branding, marketing and a broad range of creative services to the entire cannabis industry including dispensaries, cultivators, ancillary businesses, b-to-b and b-to-c. The agency likes to “work backwards,” starting with the client’s business goals and reverse-engineering marketing strategies that fit them. —C.W.

Digital marketing agency The SEO Works takes pride in its own strong visibility and invests in proactive business development to help it grow. It is a certified Google Partner for SEO and PPC (Google Ads) as well as part of the exclusive Google elevator program, which focuses on helping SMEs. —C.W.

Strategic digital consulting agency January Digital racked up key accounts in 2021 with Canidae, Rhone, Tailored, Marolina and Sol de Janeiro. Other recent wins include Vince Camuto, The Sak, Juvenescence and Jenny Craig. Its growth comes from its consulting practice, which it expects to grow more than 100% year over year, while its agency partnerships also continue to thrive. —C.W.

United Media Services is a full-service media agency in Bucharest, Romania, covering the Central and Eastern European region. In 2020 and 2021 the nascent company won the accounts of OPPO, Allianz Vivre and Secom. The agency’s omnichannel expertise allows it to cover a range of services, from one-channel strategy to through-the-line communication campaigns.—C.W.

In 2019, following Elite SEM’s 2017 acquisition of OrionCKB, and its acquisitions of CPC Strategy and Email Aptitude the following year, newly rebranded Tinuiti became the largest independent performance marketing firm in the U.S. across Google, Facebook and Amazon. With expertise in search, social, mobile apps, CRM and email marketing, Tinuiti wields a proprietary suite of marketing intelligence and media activation technology called Mobius. —C.W.

Fortnight Collective is a brand marketing accelerator that promises to help brands “be better faster” through its BrandHacks. In the past year, the young company has seen a 40% increase in its number of projects as new client revenue increased from 22% to 35% with the addition of CrossFit, Vrbo, Peet’s Coffee and Noodles & Company. —C.W.

P3 Media is a full-service, data-first marketing agency that accelerates growth for high-volume businesses and Fortune 500 companies. The agency utilizes channel partnerships with Shopify and BigCommerce. As more brands have prioritized digital transformation over the past two years, P3 Media has seen funnel expansion driven primarily by increased demand from replatforming and first-time-online businesses. —C.W.

Fig is a fully integrated media and creative agency that covers brand-building, engagement-driving and performance media planning, buying and trafficking—all in-house, allowing for some swift pivots during the pandemic. FIG’s recent account wins include premium pet food brand Stella & Chewy’s, CPG brand Simple Mills, online ticketing platform SeatGeek, MoMA and Major League Baseball. —C.W.

New Engen is a digital marketing agency that tags its effort as “the business of breakthroughs.” The agency attributes its swift growth to referrals, with 88% of new clientele coming from the word-of-mouth and first-person testimonials of satisfied clients who have themselves achieved massive growth as a result of their partnerships with New Engen. —C.W.

FlyteVu is a full-service entertainment marketing agency that “connects brands to consumers via the power of pop culture and purpose.” Its clients include the American Red Cross, Barefoot Wine, Carter’s, Clean Cause, Cracker Barrel, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Jack Daniel’s, Looped and Norwegian Cruise Line. FlyteVu’s campaigns have earned three gold and two bronze Clio Awards, an Emmy and a Grammy. —C.W.

Walker Sands is a full-service b-to-b marketing company. The firm’s integrated approach to marketing drives awareness, credibility and conversions for 100-plus clients around the world. An eight-time Inc. 5000 honoree, Walker Sands is one of the fastest-growing b-to-b marketing agencies, with offices in Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. —C.W.

CMI Media Group is a media agency that aims to elevate health conversations. Although the agency’s roster is confidential, it reports that 2020 brought in clients leading in biotechnology, biosciences and pharmaceuticals, plus partnerships with major technology innovators. It attributes its growth to its Own the Audience partnership program and PROACT, a marketing automation program. —C.W.

In 2012, the founders of Reach set out to create a new kind of agency that focused on creating brand stories that people were compelled to watch, share, and engage with. Since then, the agency and its client roster have more than doubled in size. Reach Agency’s client list includes Clorox, Google, Nestlé and Marriott. —A.C.

Brunet-García is a national social impact marketing communications firm focused on improving health and safety, benefiting the arts and increasing cross-cultural education and outreach. In recent years, the company has seen a 413% increase in revenue. The agency achieved growth by aligning its business goals with national priorities. —A.C.

The quarantine TikTok boom of 2020 made every brand realize they needed to get on the platform. And while many have improved their ability to candidly connect with TikTok consumers, cringe-worthy dance challenges with outdated viral sounds still run rampant.  

However, from its inception, Movers+Shakers has produced TikTok messages that feel more like organic entertainment than ads. An early example is its 2019 creation of the song #EyeLipsFace for beauty brand e.l.f, a disguised jingle that became the most viral campaign in the platform’s history, racking up to 7 billion views and 5 million user-generated videos. This year, the agency has garnered 250 billion total views on all social campaigns for its clients, which include Nerf, Neutrogena and Netflix.  

As an early adopter of TikTok, its shift into creating BeReal strategies for brands comes as no surprise. The agency has a way of taking uncool, unsexy brands and helping them find their footing on social media and in culture, according to a spokesperson.  

Movers+Shakers has also always put diversity and inclusion at its forefront. The agency was founded by two members of the LGBTQ+ community, is made up of 60% women, and 40% of employees are from ethnically diverse backgrounds. In the past year, all the agency’s campaigns have racked up more than 10 billion media impressions, scoring appearances on Stephen Colbert and Drew Barrymore’s talk shows. —Emmy Liederman 

Alto founder Hannes Ciatti looks at the agency’s story a bit like a “phoenix rising from the ashes” after he split with JohnXHannes co-founder John McKelvey to form his own agency in 2019. Ciatti and his team have found quick success, first with clients from their JohnXHannes days, but also winning business like Ketel One and Upwork, the latter of which the agency retained following a CMO transition.  

“There’s just this virtuous cycle that we’re creating at the moment,” Ciatti said, “where we do great work, we get great talent, and we also attract new, great clients that want to do the same work. That’s how we grew to the size that we are.” 

Being independent has allowed Ciatti’s team to be selective about who the shop works for; Alto values clients that are “good for the planet or people” and those that let the agency connect with key decision-makers. In 2021, Alto created the “I Want to Live” campaign, which included a platform to guide people to sign up as living donors for organ transplants. The campaign has led to more than 1,000 people beginning the journey to becoming living donors. 

“At the partner level, we all love actually still doing the work ourselves,” said Ed Rogers, managing partner at Alto. “The clients that are attracted to that are also still really passionate about being part of the process in some way, no matter how busy they are.” —Jameson Fleming 

The Stable was on an acquisition streak of its own when holding group Accenture Song acquired it earlier this year. The Minneapolis-based commerce agency is focused on helping consumer brands build and operate their own digital commerce channels, and Accenture Song got an agency that is helping build the future of connected commerce. 

The agency has grown by helping clients throughout their brand journeys, especially on the ecommerce front, “from developing a brand identity, getting a product on the shelf at a major retailer, building a DTC website from scratch or learning from our advanced analytics capabilities,” Chad Hetherington, founder and CEO of The Stable, told Adweek, which he attributed to being nimble enough to invest heavily in his team and adding new capabilities to drive value for clients. 

“Now, as part of Accenture Song, we look forward to accelerating this growth and commerce transformation for clients even more,” said Hetherington.  

The Stable serves as an omnichannel partner for emerging, mid-market and enterprise retailers, growing and optimizing brands across all channels of commerce, including WD-40, emerging oral care company Quip, plant-based food company Califia Farms and active apparel brand NoBull. —Kyle O’Brien 

Los Angeles-based MRN Agency has a commitment to three C’s with each of its campaigns: creativity, competitiveness, compelling. Founded by Rebecca Nuñez, who also serves as CEO, The MRN Agency specializes in campaigns that are designed to be as representative and diverse as possible, with a special expertise in U.S. Hispanic and LATAM audiences. “At our core, we are cultural intelligence experts, anchored by the fact that our agency, as a collective, is a representation of the faces, skin tones, languages, ethnicities, backgrounds and identities that our clients are aiming to reach,” Nuñez said. 

The MRN Agency is female- and minority-owned and has a 75% diversity and inclusion rate. It has worked with clients such as AT&T, HP and Nutanix. Some notable campaigns and activations include an “autonomous store” for UST Global where customers could walk in with their IDs, shop and leave without checking out; a grassroots marketing campaign with AT&T Mx to support small-business owners across Mexico by providing PPE during the pandemic and other essentials; and a slate of more than 600 fully integrated virtual experiences and events for a variety of clients.  

“We believe in replacing random acts of marketing with data-driven decision-making. As a result, we’ve been able to strategically use our creative superpowers to bring to life award-winning campaigns for domestic and international clients, who have entrusted us to be dreamers and calculated risk-takers,” Nuñez said. —Chloé Harper Gold 

Headlight is a growth marketing agency for challenger brands across mobile, digital commerce and consumer technology. The agency attributes its rapid growth to addressing what it sees as an underserved part of the industry: high growth, internet-native consumer brands. Headlight’s longtime clients include Calm and Tidal, and since 2021 the agency has added telehealth company Ro, ADT, Uber, online art marketplace Artsy, car insurance provider Metromile and IAC, among others.  

“Dynamic companies that are trying to scale new markets or disrupt legacy ones can’t just ‘outsource’ their paid media,” Grant Harbin, CEO at Headlight, said. “They need deep product, business model integration and a highly collaborative relationship with whoever is in the driver’s seat on media.” 

Harbin said that Headlight has grown exclusively through word-of-mouth and referrals since it started by doing rigorous, strategically focused growth marketing. 

Staying at the forefront of performance marketing requires conscious effort and a culture focused on learning and discovery. “Delivering those learnings at scale to clients requires a highly collaborative and long-term-oriented service model,” Harbin said. —K.O.

When a client increases its investment with performance marketing agency Socium Media, its agency account team gets a cut. Socium’s profit-sharing model bases a portion of employees’ pay on client fees, keeping talent invested in the business’ growth and attuned to clients’ media performance. For Socium founders Sam Sherman and Owen Loft, running a successful agency is all about performance.  

“As long as people are advertising on Google or on Facebook, which is really where the lion’s share of the funds go, we want to be the ones that manage it for the long term for our clients,” Loft said. 

The duo grew Socium from seven employees in March 2020 to 44 as of August 2022 in its New York office. Sherman and Loft attributed the swift uptick to Socium’s healthy working environment, a claim backed by recent survey results showing all its employees find the agency “a great place to work.” 

Retaining passionate employees is key to getting great results for clients, according to Sherman, and those results make Socium popular with its brand-side partners. Loft said he can trace up to 40% of Socium’s client base back to relationships he made while visiting a single client’s office one day each week. When employees left Socium’s existing client and joined other businesses, they brought the agency along with them. 

The founders partly attribute their agency’s stark 775% revenue growth it experienced from 2019 to 2021 to the digital marketing wave catalyzed by the pandemic. It lost 30% of its revenue following March 2020, when many nonessential businesses operations came to a halt and slashed their marketing budgets. Socium’s business turned around quickly when marketers started to prioritize digital media investments to push Covid-wary online shoppers toward purchases. “Our accounts that did stick around were spending more than they ever thought possible and getting the best results,” Sherman said. —O.M.

In 2022, it’s nearly impossible to grow your business without digital marketing, but given the constantly changing landscape, it can be difficult to stay on top of current trends and guidelines. The Snow Agency specializes in digital marketing, especially within the ecommerce sector. The agency boasts comprehensive services, free consultations and effective, data-driven strategies.  

Co-founded by brothers Daniel and Jonathan Snow, the agency prioritizes growth, transparency, innovation and teamwork. Across its roster of more than 70 clients, it has generated more than $250 million in revenue and has certifications and partnerships with Facebook, Google, Forbes and more.  

In addition to traditional digital ads and email campaigns, The Snow Agency offers influencer and TikTok marketing, media buying, and web design and development. One of the agency’s success stories is how it helped temporary tattoo brand Simply Inked grow its business by analyzing and adjusting its website, increasing the conversion rate and average order value by 15% and 18%, respectively. The Snow Agency also helped the brand expand by taking part in a beta test for TikTok’s value-based optimization to find high-value consumers. 

Beyond providing customized marketing services for its clients, The Snow Agency supports veterans and is a five-star National Corporate Partner with the charitable organization Toys for Tots. —CHG

Refinery89 operates under the motto #ForPublishersByPublishers to provide the best possible ad-tech solutions for publishers. The agency developed what it calls a single tag programmatic solution that simplifies a publisher’s tech stack because Refinery89’s tag is just one line of code instead of hundreds, like a typical solution. 

The results are two-fold. Publishers aren’t burdened by a bulky ad-tech solution that takes months to implement, and Refinery89’s tech allows publishers to maximize their inventory and increase their revenue from display, native and video advertising. 

The solution has been so effective that the agency won an IAB award for the best innovation in programmatic tech and measurement. Following the introduction of the tag, Refinery89 has seen significant growth, with revenue soaring 488% over the past three years. The agency, which has offices in Amsterdam, Milan, Madrid and Paris, counts Microsoft, Sony, Netflix and PlayStation as some of the biggest brands it works with. Refinery89 also partners with some 600-plus publishers to improve their inventories. —J.F.

Founders Josy Amann and Taji Zaminasli attribute Media Matters Worldwide’s growth to 2021’s converging industry trends. Performance media returns had slowed, financially strapped marketers demanded pliable scopes and more work went in-house. To contend with the circumstances, pandemic-era clients craved an agency with a unique set of skills: flexible, analytics-focused and collaborative. 

“It was like a fast-forward,” Amann said, with “really quick growth because of all those things coming together.”  

Some brands went all-in on performance media investments in 2020, such as campaigns designed to drive immediate sales. But those brands hit a metaphorical wall by 2021 that resulted in “diminished returns,” according to Amann and Zaminasli. 

“If you’re in such a performance mindset, it’s really hard to get out of it and figure out [how to reach new consumers],” Zaminasli said. 

For answers, brands turned to analytics-savvy MMWW, which monitors a campaign’s metrics while it’s “in flight” so buyers can adjust future activation strategies. To do this, the agency built its own tool that analyzes budget and performance scenarios, helping buyers determine which media investments will be most effective. The tool makes it possible for MMWW to alter media plans as frequently as every week to improve results. 

The agency landed notable clients including grocery delivery service Shipt in 2020 and soon garnered more RFPs from brands including Proactiv, financial services company Chime, Glassdoor and software companies Alteryx and Nutanix. Its analytics specialty was its boon, but MMWW’s independent status also meant it offered a simpler alternative for clients that usually partnered with holding companies.  

The agency has a flexible model, according to its founders, with “plug and play” options, meaning it would take on a performance or brand-specific purview, project-based work or a traditional AOR relationship.  

To that end, it’s not exclusively after AOR relationships. MMWW’s “time to shine” is when it joins forces with other agencies or clients’ in-house teams to knock down the silos to craft integrated campaigns, Amann said. For instance, it manages its DTC food delivery client’s brand planning and measurement, but partners with the client’s in-house performance media team and runs analytics across both disciplines. This way, MMWW draws insights that both teams can base strategic decisions on, such as what kind of brand campaigns contribute to performance growth. —Olivia Morley 

Peter Bray is not afraid to turn down client work. As the founder and executive creative director of Bray & Co., he built the independent agency to help companies launch or relaunch their products and services, which might look like a rebrand or an early campaign to establish a client’s brand identity. This has included creative and strategic transformations for brands including Tide and evaporative cooler company Portacool. According to Bray, holding a specialization while maintaining full-service options for clients allows his agency to “exceed expectations.”  

“When it comes to 98% of the work out there, we’re not the right agency,” he said.  

Bray and his team are also pioneering mental health action and awareness through its “Dear Mark” campaign, an in-house grassroots initiative that is pressuring Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to label filtered photos across Facebook and Instagram. It was inspired by a 2021 survey from ParentsTogether, which found that 61% of young adults ages 13-21 believe that filters on social media contribute to negative thoughts about their appearance. 

The team is differentiating itself from other shops when it comes to client relationships; Bray & Co. does not subscribe to hourly rates and has a zero-day notice period policy, which doesn’t trap clients in a working relationship. The agency takes a creative-first approach to its work, which Bray said is a rarity in an industry that is presently fixated on performance marketing and analytics. The agency, which uses a fully remote business model and combines six full-time staff and about 15 freelancers, flexes the effectiveness of its small team, though Bray worries too much employee expansion will dampen the shop’s intimate relationship with clients.  

“Bigger can be better, but it also creates more layers,” Bray said. “With too much growth, we create more complications and lose being personal.” —E.L.

From two agency founders and $1 million in business when it began to a team now spread across two states with $60 million in billing, hunterblu media’s startup approach has conditioned it for growth. During the pandemic, the agency positioned itself as a partner to larger agencies to improve its agility and expose hunterblu media to mid-sized companies, including Meineke Car Care, Friendly’s and Do Good Chicken. —Kennyatta Collins

Elumynt homes in on a scientific approach to ecommerce advertising by optimizing campaigns around profits instead of arbitrarily calculated KPIs and vanity metrics. It’s the agency’s commitment to applying innovative growth tactics that has allowed it to help 13 clients, including kids’ toy Power Pony, scale faster and be acquired—one for a whopping $800 million. —K.C. 

Prioritizing partnerships, Eyeful Media uses its collaborative strengths to drive growth for medium–market businesses such as jarred food processor Mezzetta, software company Kyriba and skin care umbrella company Deciem. A disruptive approach to client and agency relationships can also be seen in its decision to remove the account manager role in favor of having no middlemen between the working team and the clients. —K.C.

Committed to being the partner for its clients’ internal teams, Supply is an independent, full-service agency that provides comprehensive in-house solutions, from media planning to digital execution. With its persuasive planning, data analytics and commerce strategy, the agency has moved past vanity metrics measurements and instead focuses on business impact to demonstrate success. —K.C. 

Founded in 2017 by New York Times bestselling author Neil Patel, NP Digital uses its proprietary technology Ubersuggest to drive innovation and efficiencies for small- to medium-sized businesses, including crypto exchange FTX, tech company Cisco, LinkedIn and Claire’s. Harnessing the power of in-depth data analysis, research and digital PR, NP Digital endeavors to provide target solutions. —K.C. 

Specializing in growth marketing, product marketing and executive visibility management, fully remote SalientMG stands as a b-to-b partner for clients, such as sporting goods retailer SquadLocker, software company Apptopia and social entertainment app portfolio The Meet Group, that are seeking to establish industry leadership and effectiveness. Primarily working on annual retainers, this gives SMG the runway to elevate internal marketing organizations into growth engines that service long-term brand visions. —K.C. 

Using orchestrated experiences to its clients’ advantage, this agency focuses on the relationship between people and the brands they consume in order to drive brand loyalty across touch points. Boasting a true white glove experience, X-FCTR even manages show flows, sight lines and shipping plans to ensure proper executions for clients that include Nascar, Sunday Night Football and the Kentucky Derby. —K.C. 

Through segmented sales research and outbound campaigns that have been orchestrated across many channels, Cience offers a blend of managed services and software to deliver results across 200 b-to-b industries for companies such as Siemens, UPS and Hearst Media. Its global footprint includes states within the U.S. and locations in Europe, Asia and South America. —K.C.