CLEANSING EFFECT: Putting staff s needs ahead of clients powers a marketing agency's strategic growth.

• Author: Mildenberg, David

As she helped select Raleigh-based Clean in 2014 as the agency to refresh her company's brand, Builders Mutual Insurance Co. Senior Marketing Director Jodi Vedelli noticed its "unlimited vacation" policy on the corporate website.

"I thought, 'Whoa, how does that work? We don't have that at Builders Mutual,'" she says.

Since then, Vedelli has made friends with agency employees who have taken time off for breaks, including maternity leave, without a set return date. "The Clean people have so much passion for what they do that they are excited to come back to work. And in the meantime, they made sure our account was well-covered."

A focus on clients and staff has turned Clean into one of the state's fastest-growing marketing companies. The agency has added 26 clients this year and has expanded its office three times in three years. That success prompted judges to pick Clean as a finalist for Business North Carolina's Small Business of the Year.

"We actually listen to our clients and listen to their real needs," President Jeremy Holden says. "Because we have a policy of making folks happy, they tend to stay around."

In addition to longer term clients such as computing giant Lenovo and forklift maker Hyster Co., Clean has added Cone Health, Credit Suisse, the Raleigh Convention Center and other accounts since 2017. Many involve tourism-related assignments, including the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau in Virginia, which hired the agency after the August 2017 riot sparked by a white-supremacist group's march.

Clean was pitching the bureau before the weekend riot, so on the following Monday, CEO Natalie Perkins sent a note pledging the agency's assistance. "Two months later, they called to say, 'You guys are hired; please come up because we need your help.'"

The ensuing "Joined in Strength" campaign of print and broadcast ads, media outreach and other efforts led to 500 million internet impressions, restoring Charlottesville's image.

"It was illustrative of the way we create a brand experience that is moving in real time," Holden says. "It's more like a newsroom than a traditional agency."

Shifting from designing ads to more strategic marketing has been Perkins' undertaking since joining Clean Design in 2007 as CEO. ("Design" has been dropped.) She had been chief marketing officer at Pittsburgh-based Blattner Brunner and, previously, president of Greensboro-based Trone Advertising. At Trone she met Holden, her future...