As nice as it sounds, there's no real secret to success. Companies at every stage of growth face challenges that don't always have a simple solution. Whether it's brainstorming a new campaign, recapturing a customer's attention or diving into an entire rebrand, new decisions are never easy.
Luckily, companies don't have to face these decisions alone. One of the most effective solutions to these types of challenges is developing an advertising strategy that strengthens relationships with new and existing customers. This is where advertising agencies come in. Agencies, along with their teams of creatives, strategists, media experts and additional professionals, discover the most authentic and resonant facets of any brand and use their expertise to help them tell captivating brand stories.
Advertising agencies exist on a global playing field but these 12 agencies in Minneapolis are creating a massive impact right now.
Ad Agencies in Minneapolis to Know
- Periscope
- Colle McVoy
- Broadhead
- SixSpeed
- Martin Williams Advertising
- JT Mega
- Fallon
Founded: 2009
What they do: SixSpeed is an integrated brand agency with a purpose for helping brands and people connect in more meaningful ways. The agency’s services begin with identity and campaign development, resulting in exceptional live experiences, content, and digital activation, bridged by a strong focus on strategic development and user experience to ensure brands communicate clearly and effectively.
Clients include: Dunlop, Target, Ford, Red Bull and Cannondale.
Founded: 1994
What they do: Periscope is an independent agency with a focus on creativity, helping engage brands to build audiences and move business forward. Services from the agency include traditional and nontraditional advertising, design, packaging creation, experiential marketing and integrated production, backed by robust strategizing and analytics reporting.
Clients include: Target, Google, Publix, Intuit Quickbooks and Walgreens.
Founded: 1935
What they do: Colle McVoy is all about driving brands to their next great destination, helping them discover the most prominent parts of their identity and using that to build connections with audiences. Whether it's brand strategy, integrated campaign development, content production, experience design or public relations, Colle McVoy facilitates meaningful interaction between brands and consumers.
Clients include: Target, Caribou Coffee, Invisalign, Land O’ Lakes and Indian Motorcycle.
Founded: 2001
What they do: Broadhead helps brands discover their greater purpose and true identity, offering a series of business transformation, experience and brand activation services that meld ideas, data and technology. Completely independent and employee-owned, Broadhead helps take brands through processes like brand positioning, segmentation, package design, website development, advertising and experiential marketing.
Clients include: 3M, Target, California Almonds, Best Buy and Mosaic.
Founded: 1947
What they do: Martin Williams Advertising brings insight-fueled ideas to life to meet client needs and adapt to modern consumer demands. The agency’s team is well-versed in a variety of capabilities to unlock the perfect solution to any client challenge at a moment’s notice, resulting in campaigns that blend traditional and nontraditional advertising executions.
Clients include: Gushers, Cheerios, Nature Valley, Syngenta and Kubota.
Founded: 1976
What they do: JT Mega remains firmly focused on the food industry when developing advertising solutions that make consumers’ mouths water. An expansive set of capabilities that stretch across research, culinary, brand management, digital activation, production, experiential and creative expertise allow JT Mega to keep its clients’ best interests in mind, leading to more effective ways to communicate the profound stories food has the power to tell.
Clients include: Hormel Foods, Buffalo Wild Wings, Pearson’s, Di Lusso and Applegate.
Founded: 1961
What they do: Padilla works hard not only to ensure brands launch effectively but also remain protected as they continually evolve. The agency accomplishes this by remaining as heavily involved in ongoing public relations, investor relations and overall brand strategy as it is during the initial campaign development stages, leading to an entirely holistic solution to approaching brand challenges as they arise.
Clients include: Coppertone, Barnes & Noble College, Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU, Cargill and Hennepin Healthcare.
Founded: 1981
What they do: Fallon is dedicated to using the most powerful means necessary to produce compelling brand activations that reach consumers across platforms. The agency is skilled at generating newsworthy campaigns that live on mediums like top television networks and millions of social media feeds, allowing Fallon to provide clients with maximum value for their brand.
Clients include: Arby’s, Hotels.com, H&R Block, Massage Envy and Walmart.
Founded: 2000
What they do: Space 150 exists to help brands modernize the ways they work with technology to better communicate with modern audiences. Along with brand strategy, media strategy and multi-channel campaign development capabilities, Space 150 specializes in video storytelling, product/platform design, website/application design and creating unique digital complements to physical marketing activation.
Clients include: Nike, Kona Brewing Co., Medtronic, Coca-Cola and Inspire Medical.
Founded: 2001
What they do: Street Factory Media facilitates larger-than-life moments for brands across industries, combining creativity and dedication to create fresh brand activations. The agency collaborates with brands to determine effective, attention-grabbing solutions for bringing their biggest ideas to life, beginning with experiential design and working through the fabrication, activation, content and creative media processes to ensure brand activations speak as loudly as the minds that created them.
Clients include: Wendy’s, Impossible, Coca-Cola, Popeye’s and the Minnesota Twins.
Founded: 1991
What they do: Riley is dedicated to utilizing simple human insights to form exceptional customer journeys for their clients, leading to more engaged audiences and more products sold. The agency’s best work comes when working with ambitious clients ready to make huge impacts on their ROI, combining big ideas with a flexible set of capabilities so clients can thrive within their industry.
Clients include: GAP and Insight Brewing.
Founded: 1994
What they do: DKY is a brand marketing, creative, advertising and PR agency that partners with organizations to boost their internal capabilities and ensure all messaging is communicated as clearly as possible. The agency works across branding, broadcast, digital, print and video mediums to provide clients with cross-platform functionality for reaching their audience and bolstering ROI.
Clients include: General Mills, ADM, Winnebago, the Minnesota Twins and AmericInn.