Team Epiphany appears stronger than ever as it celebrates its 20th birthday

In 2004, husband-and-wife team Coltrane Curtis and Lisa Chu set out on a mission: leverage their cultural know-how and celebrity relationships to get a foothold in the advertising business. Twenty years later, the duo’s Team Epiphany is still going strong, evolving from a self-described “nomadic boutique shop” into a major full-service force in the marketing industry with offices in New York, Los Angeles and—opened in 2023—Miami. The culture-first agency was acquired by Stagwell at the beginning of this year. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here Team Epiphany has made a name for itself as an expert in multicultural campaigns, thanks in part to the agency’s focus on what it calls “active diversity”: thinking of DE&I efforts not in terms of quotas, but purposefully weaving the perspectives of its staff, clients and communities into every step of an ad’s development. Its nearly 90 full-time employees—roughly 78% of whom identify as people of color—work on an impressive client roster that includes American Express, Coca-Cola and HBO’s Max. “We weren’t trying to be diverse for the sake of diversity. We were inherently trying to be representative of the world-slash-community that we come from and live in,” said Curtis, who, prior to the creation of Team Epiphany, served as editor of Complex magazine and was a VJ (video jockey) on MTV. Ad Age A-List and Creativity Gala Buy your ticket to the in-person event Click here Styling itself as the “original influencer marketing agency,” founded when social media was still in its infancy, influencer-related projects still account for about one-fifth of Team Epiphany’s business, with experiential activations (45%), digital and social content (25%) and brand strategy (10%) rounding out the rest—all of which occasionally overlap for one major undertaking. For Tres Generaciones, for example, the agency harnessed the tequila brand’s “Always Get Up” platform to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Among the campaign’s components were an online hub that featured interviews and cocktail recipes; an in-person event in Hollywood that garnered more than 150 million earned media impressions; and the launch of a print magazine titled Generaciones. On top of its numerous advertising assignments, the agency last year forged a strategic partnership with Hoorae Media, co-founded by actress Issa Rae—a move that the companies’ principals said would allow them both to scale their businesses. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here

Team Epiphany appears stronger than ever as it celebrates its 20th birthday

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