All images are courtesy of ndp agency.
Bob Fox: I want to understand a little about why your organization is unique. How is this reflected in your space and how are you using your space to achieve your business goals?
Danny Fell: ndp agency has been around for a little over 30 years. We’re a marketing and advertising agency, but are heavily focused on the digital side, so I would say we’re more of a digital-forward advertising agency. We were founded in Richmond, Virginia in the early 80s by a few individuals who previously worked in the healthcare industry and were looking to start a healthcare marketing consultancy firm. During the agency’s early days, it was almost exclusively focused on healthcare marketing. We grew over the years to specialize in the healthcare industry and it has allowed us to do a lot of national work that we happily continue to do today. The company also grew over the years through a series of acquisitions. Our headquarters is still in Richmond, but we currently have two other offices in Virginia and Tennessee.
We do full service marketing, advertising, and communications for organizations, for profit and not-for-profit companies and brands. Our team executes design, the digital media buying and planning operations, strategic public relations, research, and market research for our clients. We provide a full suite of marketing and communication services.
Healthcare is still our largest sector – it’s about 70 percent of our work and we’ve diversified beyond hospitals into life sciences, medical technology, health technology, and health information. The rest of our work is in sectors such as hospitality, banking, and manufacturing.
The agency has about 65 employees now, and one of the reasons why I point out our acquisitions and our multiple offices is because culture is a real challenge for us. With our remote workforce, this is one of the factors that we struggle with, like a lot of companies with multiple locations or remote staff.
One of several conference rooms named after geological features in Virginia.
Bob Fox: How would you describe your culture?
We have a creative culture and one of exploration, curiosity, and investigation. Our brand platform, is expressed through our newly painted walls containing our brand statement:
“We make a difference through creativity that inspires, that changes behavior, that changes the world.”
Our real strength is in inspiring and changing behavior among consumers, stakeholders, and target audiences that our clients seek to speak to.
Our culture is fairly laid back but we come from a more research centered, data-focused, strategic background. We’re not a creative boutique in the true sense, we’re a little more of a blend between a consultancy and creative agency.
Bob Fox: How is your space reinforcing a creative culture? Are there any physical elements capturing the essence of that?
The space we were previously in for many years was not an ideal space for a couple of reasons. We came from a space that was three old buildings connected together. It had a house type-feel with people on different floors, different elevations, closed offices, and low ceilings.
The space we’re in now has been truly transformational for us as it’s very open, well lit, with very few private offices and any offices that do exist have glass walls. In contrast to where we came from, it was like night and day. That was by choice, and by design.
There were a couple of things about the space that we intentionally sought in designing it. We are in a 15,000-square-foot, one-story warehouse and we wanted to keep as much openness as possible with very few partitions, no large tables to make people work at, and a lot of light. We also built a very large work cafe that doubles as an eating, working, and gathering space. Throughout the day it becomes a large open area for people to grab coffee, a snack, and work there as well. With our remote workforce, a lot of us come and go, so our work cafe has become a popular feature of the space.
