It’s been said over and over, that the world doesn’t need another advertising agency. But San Antonio does. It desperately needs a great one…a really great one.
As the 7th largest city in the U.S., San Antonio boasts incredible diversity and creativity with a warm hometown feel. It raised giants like Rackspace, Valero, HEB and USAA, financial institutions like Frost Bank and Broadway Bank, and food chains, such as Whataburger, Taco Cabana and Jim’s. The combination of these factors means the town is ripe with opportunity for innovative and effective advertising. Yet, for some reason, as a city of over 1.3 million people, we can’t seem to muster the strategic brainpower and the creative chops to do amazing work for most of these big homegrown brands, let alone grow the medium-size ones.
These major companies were pioneered right here in San Antonio, creating communities, providing jobs and catalyzing the economy. They put San Antonio on the map for technology, energy, convenience and benefits for veterans. One would think these industries would like to engage with local agencies, their siblings in community, to foster even more growth in the city where they matured and thrive. Yet, somehow, most of them take their ad budget outside city limits, even out of state.
Some will say, we’re just not big enough to have a great agency, we’re not New York, Chicago, L.A. or San Francisco. True, but we’re also not Portland, Oregon, home to Wieden + Kennedy, or Minneapolis who has Fallon, or sleepy Sausalito, California who is responsible for Butler, Shine & Stern. All smaller in size than San Antonio, yet on the map for award-winning advertising like Nike, Citibank and Mini.
Others might say, we don’t have the budgets to do great work. Perhaps, but to be honest, it’s ideas that matter, and they don’t have to be expensive to be great. To move people, to touch hearts or create laughter, all they have to do is tap into a human truth and communicate that truth in an interesting way. Yes, big budgets are nice, but they’re not necessary for great work.
Or they’ll say the clients here aren’t sophisticated. Maybe, maybe not. We all know great ideas are difficult to come by, and great ideas that the client will buy are even more difficult, but they’re not impossible. It just takes looking at things in a different way, and highlighting the truth from a different perspective, with more creativity.
Creativity begets creative thinkers, which breeds unusual strategies and catalyzes new insights.This fosters smart, powerful, honest work; work that makes a difference, grows the community, as well as the industries that make up this town.
The time is now for a new San Antonio agency rooted in this city’s soul but reaching far beyond its borders to turn this thing upside down, shake the foundations of the ad community and woo some of the big San Antonio companies back to their roots.
We don’t need to be New York or L.A., but we do need to engage in the fundamentals of meaningful insights and smart strategies to create brilliant communication. If we can do this and inject our deep sense of community, marrying it to grit, elegance and heart with intellect, we’ll be on to something. That way we won’t be chasing awards but earning them by moving people, building brands, and reshaping narratives.
This is a call to the creatives, the strategists, the clients who want more. The infrastructure is here. The stories are here. The ambition is rising. All we need now is the conviction to build it together. Not just an agency, but a movement. One that proves to ourselves, and to the world, that greatness doesn’t live in a zip code. It lives in the will to create amazing work.