2019 PBN Business Excellence Awards
EXCELLENCE AT A MIDSIZE COMPANY: (add)ventures
It’s been a good three decades for the Providence-based multidisciplinary brand-culture and communications firm (add)ventures and their clients.
The firm has added 25 full-time jobs, to nearly 70 communications professionals, since 2014, collected several industry awards and earned Inc. magazine’s “Fastest Growing Company” honor a record 11 times, most recently making Inc.’s 2019 list of 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the United States.
“It’s been 30 years of really steady, organic growth,” said Stephen Rosa, founder and CEO.
During that time, Rosa said, (add)ventures has thrived thanks to its multidisciplinary focus on its clients.
“I think it’s just a strong and steady commitment, a strong culture of treating your clients right,” Rosa said.
The firm works with Fortune 500 companies, industry and innovation leaders, leading universities, major nonprofits and governments to create unique, multidisciplinary digital brand communications.
“[Our] clients cross industries and geographies. We provide creative and strategy in the health care, insurance, banking and retail industries,” said Mary Sadlier, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at (add)ventures.
Those clients, who include CVS Health Corp., Hasbro Inc. and Timberland LLC, have been hard-won, especially at the start of the company’s history. Rosa, new to the industry with a new firm in the state in the late ’90s, moved back to Rhode Island to be close to his family as his dad turned 70.
“Unfortunately, when I moved back here, it was in the middle of the credit crisis,” Rosa said.‘Not only will we help move organizations forward, we’ ll have their back the entire way.’
MARY SADLIER, (add)ventures executive vice president and chief strategy officer
Clients were tough to come by locally, he said. But Southwest Airlines was offering cheap flights to Chicago, where the credit crisis wasn’t a concern, so he was able to travel to Chicago inexpensively to add clients. His fortunes grew a lot brighter.
With (add)ventures’ first Fortune 500 client, Textron Inc., he said, the company realized the power of telling the story of a brand through the employees and the values they draw on in their work.
“We saw how powerful that was,” Rosa said, and took the same approach with CVS not long after.
“We start from the inside out,” Rosa said. “Branding is not something you create. Branding is something you are.”
Often, when you see a sexy ad for a brand, “They forget to tell the people inside,” Rosa said, but branding works best “if we get the employees on board with the mission.”
Among their own employees, the average staff tenure is six years.
“We’ve grown with some of our clients for decades,” he said. “As they grow, we grow.”
An enduring value throughout that growth, said Sadlier, has been the firm’s “nice culture.”
“Often our clients all say you guys are so nice to work with,” Sadlier said. “That culture is what makes our work great.”
That work is performed by a 64-person staff of brand storytellers, culture creators, video, design and digital-experience makers.
“We are partners, not vendors, and some say working with us feels like working with family. Not only will we help move organizations forward, we’ll have their back the entire way too,” Sadlier said.
That approach has helped (add)ventures win industry awards, including the Summit Award, the South Florida Marketer of the Year from the American Marketing Association and numerous New England Emmy Awards.
The firm recently expanded into its new New England headquarters in East Providence with room for 60-person meetings, six breakout rooms, two full production studios and a clubhouse kitchen.
The space is designed to foster people’s creativity, Sadlier said. If you’re going to work at a creative endeavor all day, “why shouldn’t you spend it in a place that energizes you?”
The company also has offices in Miami and New York City, as well as partnerships with firms in Argentina.
Regardless of the assignment or the location, Sadlier said, “It’s quality relationships and experiences.”
