How Tennessee’s Tombras emerged from the shadows

“Six or seven years ago, this would’ve seemed like science fiction,” said Dooley Tombras, reacting to the news that the agency bearing his name had been named Ad Age’s first Independent Agency of the Year. That’s not to say that Tombras, who holds the title of president, hasn’t always had grand ambitions for the agency started by his grandfather in 1946. But the fact that the agency is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, often considered flyover country by the New York-centric ad world, has traditionally hampered perceptions about Tombras the agency. But there are few illusions about the shop these days. It’s now a 466-person-strong agency about to hit the $100 million revenue threshold. Last year it won 13 new accounts—10 of them agency-of-record assignments. Among those wins are Frito-Lay’s SunChips, Yellow Tail Wine, BMW Motorrad and Sally Beauty. Tombras is also one of a few independents that offer both creative and media under one roof—it now handles $700 million in media business. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here The agency today counts four offices outside of Knoxville—in New York, Atlanta, Charlotte and Washington, D.C.—and has global ambitions, beginning with a soon-to-be-announced expansion into South America. “We had the realization that if we were going to go global, it only made sense for a Southern agency to go more south,” quipped Chief Creative Officer Jeff Benjamin. Tipping point It’s Benjamin who is cited as a major catalyst for Tombras’ ascendance in recent years. When Tombras recruited Benjamin, a highflier with experience at shops including Barton F. Graf and CPB, in 2019, it was a wake-up call to the industry. “It was a total coup and a milestone moment when we hired Jeff and got him to move to Knoxville,” said Dooley Tombras. “That put Tombras on the map.” It was also a tipping point for hiring talent, which in the past few years has included heavy hitters from Wieden+Kennedy, R/GA and Maximum Effort. “Tennessee used to be a barrier, and now it’s an advantage for us,” he said. “Culture has shifted. CMOs have kind of shifted their mindset; it was a disadvantage to be in the middle of the country before. And now there’s a lot of brands that are actually looking for that.” Case in point: two-year client Steak-umm. “We’re a small brand. We’re a family-owned company. When you look at our sales, we’re below $200 million retail,” said Max Scannapieco, senior VP of sales and marketing at Quaker Maid Meats, owner of Steak-umm. “We wanted an agency that had the same culture and beliefs that we did, that really had a lot of energy and excitement around being unique and different and real at the end of the day,” he said. The company looked at agencies in New York and Chicago, said Scannapieco, “and then we met with Tombras and they actually blew us away.” Ad Age A-List and Creativity Gala Buy your ticket to the in-person event Click here Tombras’ location has also given the agency a unique point of view, according to Benjamin. “It’s difficult to be influenced by an agency across the street, because there is no agency across the street,” he said. “It’s an ice cream place.” Making the magic “Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know,” Benjamin added. “So, we end up doing something that nobody else would choose, and there’s magic in that.” Some of the magic the shop produced last year included DeepSteaks for Steak-umm, a prank intended to underscore the fact that its brand is “100% real.” For the effort, Tombras used AI to deepfake vegans, making them appear to be carnivores who espouse their passion for meat. The campaign, touted as “part social experiment, part prank and part PSA,” resulted in some 500 million earned media impressions for the brand. “That was a really big risk,” said Scannapieco. “But it went very well. Even the individuals that we had interviewed through the process were very thankful. They were very mad at the beginning, but once they understood what we were trying to do, they were thankful for it and it educated them to a degree. And that’s really what we’re all about. We as a company have some cornerstones as they relate to who we believe we are—and honesty and integrity are key values by us as a company." Tombras’ work for MoonPie was literally out there: into space. The agency dreamed up the idea of targeting aliens as buyers for the sweet snack. Tombras got experts in unidentified anomalous phenomena and an author to create billboard copy in Lincos, the “extraterrestrial-optimized alien language” inscrutable to humans. The billboards were placed in areas including UFO mecca Roswell, New Mexico, and MoonPie hosted a drone show in Mexico over an ancient pyramid. Results from that event are hard to come by, given that extraterrestrials aren’t tracked by Nielsen. “Aliens have come forward [to MoonPie],” said Benjamin. “We are a great ad agency, but we lack the expertise of knowing whether or not those are actual aliens. We’re going to leave that up to NASA.” Social buzz is a key element of much of the agency’s work, such as its campaign for southern chicken chain Zaxby’s (an account now in review) that trolled Philadelphians by blaspheming the city’s famed cheesesteak with the addition of fried chicken on the sandwich. It then ran cheeky billboards taunting the City of Brotherly Love with lines such as “Here’s a sandwich actually worth naming a city after.” Tombras topped that with a video playing off the iconic running-up-the-steps scene in “Rocky,” but substituting Dolph Lundgren (who played Rocky’s archnemesis Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV”) making the climb, sacrilegious sandwich in hand. The agency says the push resulted in $4 million in earned media. “Jeff is always saying, make news, not ads,” said Dooley Tombras. “We want to insert clients into culture.” The shop’s edgy pro bono work—such as a campaign for World Vasectomy Day in which it created Valentine’s Day “Cards for Nards” (one reads in part: “I love you all the way from Earth to Venus, so do me a favor and disarm your penis”), or its effort to turn the word “special” from a pejorative into a positive for the Special Olympics through the use of influencers wearing T-shirts bearing the word—has also helped to lure and engage its young talent. On the shoot for the Special Olympics, “One of our art directors turned to me and said, ‘I love all the work I do here, but work like this just makes me feel like I’m making a difference,” said Tombras Chief Purpose Officer Lindsay Harris. “There are a disproportionate amount of people at Tombras that are in it for the love of the game,” said Chief Client Officer Ashley Butturini. Tombras’ family-owned legacy also defines it. “It’s our first value,” said Dooley Tombras. “When I was interviewing, I had to interview with Dooley’s dad. It was like a bad date,” joked Benjamin, before adding, “Family is a real differentiator for us. It’s a superpower.” Steak-umm’s Scannapieco concurred. Tombras’ culture “is very similar to our culture. It’s family-oriented, they really care about their employees and those that they work with … and they really connect with what we’re trying to accomplish.” Its other competitive advantage, said Butturini, is that this little ol’ Knoxville agency is often underestimated. “People don’t see us coming,” she said. “We like it that way.” See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here

How Tennessee’s Tombras emerged from the shadows

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