The vision?
The perfect non-traditional agency.
Chicago, USA
Years active
2017-2021
Focus
SMB businesses
Any form of branding & marketing
Clients
100ish
Team
In total:
100ish people
5 departments
Creative dept:
40ish people
When I was asked by my friend/partner/co-conspirator/boss in agency building, Scott Fujii, to come head up a creative team and help him build an agency, I jumped at the opportunity.
I'd struggled with several "norms" of agency life that seemed pretty universally accepted. Things like: Creatives need their hand held/ babysat. Creatives have to have crazy schedules and can't meet deadlines. Creatives are always competing with one another so they're always going to be tension, gossip and backstabbing. It's all about awards for Creatives & Agencies. You can't be honest with Creatives- they'll get their feelings hurt.
It all adds up to this: agency life is usually really really toxic.
I'll be honest- there's a bit of truth in every one of those norms. But for me, I don't LIKE any of them and didn't want to build into that mindset.
So we did something wholly different when we created ES99.
Setting out to create a non-toxic agency meant calling everything into question and ensuring we were building different.
Instead of starting where a lot of agencies start (this is the job: can you do it?), we found people that were talented (vetted by their future peers) and kind (vetted by a broad team) and then asked them what they really wanted to do. We hired the people who wanted to do an amazing job to make THEMSELVES and their clients proud-- and get to share their skills across anything and everything a client needs within their expertise.
Over the first year, we developed a set of core values that drove us-- and formalized them within the brand.
LOVE WHAT YOU DO
RESPECT EACH OTHER
BE TRANSPARENT
ASK GOOD QUESTIONS
SMARTER, NOT HARDER
TOGETHER WE’RE BETTER
Unique Structure, Team, Vision, Clients, Space, Support, Traditions.
It was really important to us as we grew that we bring people in that could grow with us and push the company forward. And fast. That meant sharing the vision of having a healthy agency that was full of talented people who liked and respected each other and did a great job.
And that came down to having ownership and responsibility for your own clients- accountable to them and to your team.
Each team wasn't stacked with layers of people. You wouldn't find 4 different designers and 2 writers on any project. We made 1 of each specialty responsible. And if they needed help, they'd ask for it.
They were responsible for getting the work done, setting the expectations for clients, communicating well and asking for help when they needed it. Micromanaging and stacking layers of people onto meetings is crazy inefficient and frustrating to be in the middle of. You also can't get much done that way.
Financially it didn't make a lot of sense either--which didn't make sense for our business.
So we just didn't do that until we grew enough that we could start to train up others in the way we were working.
Big Beautiful Ideas that Disrupt Industries and Make Us Smile
Our mission statement focused on us. Think big, outside the box and make yourself proud. Any one at the agency could see how bringing their best self (one that would smile at the work they created) would be able to live this out.
If they weren't, we talked about how we could change that.
The biggest questions would be around how to make our team more successful.
At ES99 our client profile wasn't much like a traditional agency. We didn't care if it was B2B, B2C, B2B2C or anything in between. Our client profile aligned with our parent company's-- small to mid-sized businesses. It meant our team worked on EVERYTHING from finance to manufacturing, medical supplies, consumer brands, construction, attorneys, restaurants....
Which demanded the whole team be smart, driven, flexible problem solvers.
And incredible communicators as they brought to life everything from brand position to audience articulation to web design and and marketing campaigns.
Over the 4 years that ES99 was born & grew, there were thousands of ideas that we got to test, processes created & recreated, companies & people I got the pleasure of working with and lessons that I learned.
It's one of the things I'm most proud of making.
I talk a little more about it over in my About page.