Cashmere Agency’s leadership team built the company without having worked at other agencies—which means not knowing how things are “supposed” to be done. This just might be the shop’s biggest advantage.
Los Angeles-based Cashmere doesn’t define itself with the usual labels; it’s part lifestyle agency and part multicultural agency, and fluid about the clients it takes on.
“I don’t know how it should be done based on agency principles that have been around since the ‘Mad Men’ era,” says Cashmere Executive VP and Chief Creative Officer Ryan Ford, a former hip-hop journalist.
The agency also has a strong focus on diversity. The staff is three-quarters multicultural and half women; it’s not surprising that BMW recently named the shop its multicultural agency in the U.S. “These other agencies are never going to figure it out,” says Ford bluntly of established shops trying to be more representative. “Unless they rebuild from the ground up, it’s not something you can figure out.”
As for the agency’s work, it includes creative, experiential, media buying, social and more.
Cashmere recently won Jack in the Box’s social and PR account. And thanks to co-founder and Chairman Ted Chung having worked in the music and entertainment industry, last year the agency earned about 70 percent of its revenue from work that included social media for FX’s “Atlanta,” TNT’s “Claws,” TBS’s “The Last O.G.” and Walt Disney Co.’s “Black Panther.”