10 years: A look back and a look forward.

AcrobatAnt celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. What have we learned? Well, the five Ants who have been here since the beginning—owners Angela Harless, Diane Davis, Danny Sadler and David Downing, and Associate Creative Director Bryan Cooper—have learned a few things, among them:

  • Hard work, in the vast majority of cases, supersedes great talent.
  • If you have great talent who also possess a great work ethic, consider yourself lucky.
  • We’re lucky.
  • Never say “never.”
  • Always say “always.”
  • Our best project is our next project.
  • Work hard. Play hard.
  • Time flies.

If you want a little context to go with the wisdom we’ve summarized above, you can find it somewhere in the following examination of some of the changes AcrobatAnt has experienced since we opened in 2008.

Fun Times In 2008!

You might remember that 2008 was not the best year for the economy. Our country was beginning something called The Great Recession. Remember the burst of the housing bubble? The bailouts? The market panic?

But through hard work, and having great clients, we survived just fine. And we learned two more valuable lessons: Nothing is easy, and take nothing for granted. These lessons would sustain us and shape our perspective over the next 10 years.

 

 

Client Diversity.

People always need healthcare, even during a recession, so we were fortunate that healthcare clients made up the bulk of our business starting out. Over time, as the economy got better, our clientele diversified as we ventured into other industries: food and beverage, oil and gas, financial services, and arena marketing, to name a few. With our healthcare experience, we continued to add health system clientele, too, both local and national.

Location, Location.

AcrobatAnt launched from the epicenter of downtown Tulsa, at 5th & Boston, but soon moved to our current Lincoln Plaza location at 15th & Peoria (otherwise known as Cherry Street). It’s an old building that was originally part of Lincoln Elementary School, which was built in 1909. Now and then some Lincoln Elementary alumni will pop in to see what’s become of their old classrooms, and we gladly let them look around. More often, people wander in looking for Jason’s Deli or Nola’s, which are located on the floors below us.

But it’s a great space with a lot of charm and character, and we feel right at home here.

 

Job Satisfaction.

It’s a testament to the kind of work environment we’ve created that, relative to other agencies, we’ve had very low turnover here. Of our five original owners, only one—Hal Collins—has left, and that was to pursue his dream of retiring to the open road in his massive motor home. Godspeed, Hal, wherever you are!

Associate Creative Director Bryan Cooper also has been a fixture since the beginning, and there are many Ants with five or more years of service. Great clients, great people, great camaraderie—it’s a winning combination built for the long run.

 

Growing With The Times.

Like every agency over the past 10 years, we’ve adapted to the digital revolution. We’ve dramatically expanded our web development and social media expertise, improved the efficiency of our internal processes (eliminating those bulky old job folders, for example, in favor of a cloud-based project management tool), and done everything necessary to keep up with the rapidly changing world of advertising and marketing.


It has been a great 10 years. We are so grateful to all of our clients, vendors and employees—past and present—and we can’t wait for the decade ahead.