The Power of Employee Ownership: Reflections from the Ad Age Awards

As I write this from 30k feet, still on a bit of a high following the Ad Age Small Agency Conference and Awards, where Drake Cooper was honored with the Ad Age Small Agency of the Year, Northwest, Silver award, it’s also got me thinking about Employee Ownership. We were the only Employee-Owned agency awarded last night, which is not surprising considering that an estimated 3% of the over 14k ad agencies in the country are employee-owned.

We’re big fans of employee-ownership.

Why?

Ultimately, we believe it benefits our employees (we call them employee-owners or EOs) and our clients.

Before I got into advertising, I spent several years in marketing research, and one of the things we researched was the impact employee satisfaction has on customer satisfaction. The impact was significant. Fast forward to advertising, and I believe that impact is even larger because we are in the services business and a creative services business at that. Creativity requires people, and those people are most creative when they are inspired, supported, and empowered. Our customers are our clients, and our product is our people. If our people aren’t in a fulfilling environment, they aren’t likely to deliver great work for our clients. Even if they still tried, our business is one that requires inspiration. You can’t just will your way to creativity.

Data shows that employee-owned businesses benefit from longer employee tenure and better recruiting efforts. At Drake Cooper, we’re experiencing both. Let’s dissect the impact on our clients for each.

Longer employee tenure: we’re in a relationship business. Clients like working with people who they like. They also want and expect those people to have a deep understanding of their business. With consistent team leads on their business, this strengthens both.

Better recruiting efforts: we’ve grown our headcount by over 50% in the past 2 years. Over 75% of our new recruits mentioned employee ownership as one of the reasons they were interested in working at Drake Cooper. Many of our new employee-owners have come from larger shops, some owned by holding companies, and have expressed their appreciation for our employee-owned model. The impact on our business is one that has significantly increased our diversity and range of past experience. By last count, I counted over 40 prominent brands that our new EOs have experience working with. Especially for an agency rooted in Idaho for decades, the impact this has on our increased diversity has been huge. This only makes all of us, and the work for our clients, better as well.

In addition to having a direct stake in the game, I believe that it fosters an even greater sense of teamwork and collaboration for our employee-owners. We’re truly all in it together and benefit from shared success.

To take it one step further, at a macro level, employee ownership can help drive wealth. I may go so far as to say it could be one small component in making a dent in the massive wealth divide in this country. We are inspired by employee-owned businesses like WinCo, who have employees with over $1M in their ESOP accounts when they retire (and I’m not talking about executives. Front-line workers). We aim to make that kind of impact in the advertising industry.

If you’re interested in chatting more about employee ownership, reach out; we love talking about it!