Last year was Alma’s 12th consecutive year of growth—and also saw the highest revenue rise in its history, up 10% over 2020. Alma attributes that to its ability to reach both general market and multicultural audiences with its work.

See all of Ad Age's A-List 2022 winners here.

“What has happened in our industry is that agencies like ours had to play defense for many years, and now we're playing offense," said Luis Miguel Messianu, Alma CEO and creative chairman. “Based on our growth, based on what's happening in the world, we don't have to explain ourselves. Just like a number of great agencies that compete with us that were born with a Latino DNA, [we] are mainstream, because if you think about it, the mainstream is no longer white. The mainstream is a mix of skin colors and perspectives. We don't have a chip on our shoulder. We look at ourselves as an agency that's prepared to address the realities of  an ever-changing country.”

Better With

There’s no better example of this than Alma’s “#BetterwithPepsi” campaign. While Pepsi is undoubtedly an iconic soda brand, nine of the top 10 burger chains in America serve Coke, which has a larger market share than Pepsi. In August 2020 a blind taste test conducted on Pepsi’s behalf showed that among 233 adults who visited fast-food burger joints, about 60% said they preferred a McDonald’s Big Mac, Wendy’s Dave Single and Burger King’s Whopper with Pepsi rather than Coke.

Buy your ticket for the Ad Age A-List & Creativity Awards Gala at AdAge.com/ACGala.

Tapping into this insight, Alma came up with the idea for a print and social campaign on National Burger Day in which it "hid" the Pepsi logo in paper bags of those three burger chains. To create the pictures, which also showed up on billboards near those outlets, the agency worked with an origami artist to re-craft paper bags in ways that made the Pepsi logo visible. VaynerMedia also played a hand in the campaign, creating imagery that involved mascots of these burger chains.

The idea was one that Alma proactively pitched to the brand without the brand first asking for ideas or work. 

“If you think about it, the brand is the brief," Messianu said. “We don't need to wait for a specific brief, because we know the brands, we know the passion points of our audience, and we know what the business situations are for most of our clients. The genesis of that idea had to do with the fact that most fast food companies in the U.S. work with Pepsi's competition. We always say that we don't compete with other agencies. We compete with our clients' competitors.”

Overall the campaign was one of Pepsi’s most successful ever, producing 3.4 billion impressions and a 7% lift in consideration, according to Alma.

Molson Coors work

The agency was also able to take a West Coast regional budget and create national buzz when it created a Coors Light campaign centered around getting retired NFL coach Tom “The Iceman” Flores into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was the first Latino quarterback and head coach, winning four Super Bowls in his playing and coaching careers, but had been snubbed for more than two decades.

As a result of the campaign, Coors Light received significant lifts in national recall (almost doubling the brand’s 2020 average) as well as increases in consideration (75% among all 21+ drinkers), and actually helped Flores get inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Alma also teamed up with Latin music artist J Balvin, again for Miller LIte.  The brand created a limited-edition beer can that used Balvin’s signature lightning bolt and neon aesthetic with Miller Lite’s logo. The campaign featured Balvin’s take on the brand’s tagline which was switched to “Es Jose Time,” using the artist's actual first name. The goal of the campaign was to reach a Latino audience by showing Balvin beyond his on-stage persona. As part of the campaign, the agency redesigned a Brooklyn bodega where the Latin artist surprised unsuspecting customers.

The campaign surpassed the agency’s goal of 850 million impressions, nearly reaching the 1.2 billion mark.

Winning and growing business

Overall the agency saw significant new business growth. Eighteen of Alma’s total of 25 clients were brought on in the last 18 months. New clients added last year included Amazon, Bacardi, Intuit Quickbooks and SC Johnson’s Raid. Alma also won multicultural agency of record opportunities for CVS Health, Aetna, Wells Fargo and others.

The agency significantly grew its relationships with some existing clients. Most notably, Alma’s Pepsi business grew by 85% as the shop won work for brands including Rockstar Energy and Mexican juice drink Jumex, Frito-Lay Sabritas and Goya's Galletas. Shortly after Alma launched a couple of campaigns for CVS, the retailer increased the agency’s fee by nearly 50%. McDonald's, Google, Eli Lilly and Molson Coors also increased their scope of work with Alma. The agency also co-created, with Omnicom sibling DDB, Miller Lite’s Miller Timeless Collection as well as its Beernaments campaign in late December.

While Wells Fargo had originally brought on the agency as a multicultural partner for the product side of its business, its scope grew 150% last year. Alma was brought on as part of a multi-agency Omnicom solution for the bank brand Concord, where Messianu leads the combined entity’s creative portion, Messianu confirmed. Concord also works with agencies including BBDO, Rapp, OMD and Siegel+Gale.

A big part of the agency’s 85% pitch/win rate last year was due to its strategic approach to new business, developed in 2020 and referred to internally as the Unlock Framework, which Messianu equates to the “Big Mac’s secret sauce.”

“When we talk about the Unlock Framework and we talk about consumers with clients, part of what becomes unlocked is that clients are hearing about consumers in a new way, " said Angela Rodriguez, senior VP of strategic planning. “Everybody talks about insights but when we're bringing forward the way we think about consumers, the way we do segmentation, the way we're thinking about connecting people to their brands, it feels fresh. That's where we get a lot of head nods.”

Knowing when to say 'no'

Alma—which brought on 41 new hires last year—declined 13 pitches. While the agency didn’t lose clients to reviews, it decided to part ways with a long-standing client, Clorox. Messianu says one reason for the split was Clorox’s decreasing commitment to addressing multicultural audiences over the past few years. The second reason was that the agency was being asked to retrofit ideas for multicultural audiences.

“They wanted us to become consultants to the general market agencies,” Messianu said. “That goes against our sense of mission. So we decided that it was best to part ways after many years of working together.”

The agency also made it clear it has no issue working with other agencies, having done so many times including its McDonald's work with Wieden+Kennedy.

“They just wanted our insights for another agency to interpret them,” said Isaac Mizrahi, co-president and chief operating officer of Alma. “We are an advertising agency. We are not a consulting company. We do a lot of consulting, but as part of the process. So if somebody wants to topicalize a general market idea to show some one-size-fits-all total market [approach], that's not what we do anymore. Maybe there are a lot of great agencies that can do that, but we believe that if you want to grow we know how to get you there. So if you want to partner with us we'll be happy to partner, but you're going to have to respect that we are not at the kids' table anymore. We are at the adult table, and we want to be respected for that.”

See all of Ad Age's A-List 2022 winners here.

“We're an industry that normally says ‘yes’ to everything, but the ‘nos’ are what makes us stronger,” Messianu said.