Tombras' big ideas and big ambitions pay off with new business and smart hires

Knoxville, Tennessee-based Tombras is grabbing headlines with some plum assignments, including social media agency for Subway and creative and media agency for Steak-umm, whose sassy Twitter voice has gained a cult following. The wins helped the family-owned indie boost revenue by 45%. Its media billings rose by $150 million and the agency brought on 100 new employees during 2021. See all of Ad Age's 2022 A-List winners here. Among the new staffers is Jeff Benjamin, known for his work at Barton F. Graf and CPB, who joined as chief creative officer. Since then, Tombras has come away victorious in 12 out of 15 pitches, the agency said. And the pandemic has served to strengthen the shop and attract more new talent, drawn by its location—which the agency says offers “access to nature, space and calm in a time when larger metropolitan areas have become restrictive.” As a means to increase its diversity, Tombras last year established a major endowment with the University of Tennessee with the goal of recruiting BIPOC talent within the state. The shop said in its entry that the intent “is to double the percentage of BIPOC graduates, double the size of the overall program, thereby quadrupling the number of BIPOC grads entering the industry.” The shop has committed to a 13% BIPOC leadership by 2023; currently, it’s less than half that, at 6%. As another means to draw more BIPOC candidates to Tombras, the agency is no longer requiring a college degree and is actively seeking talent beyond the advertising industry. Among Tombras’ clients are Orange Theory Fitness, Mozilla Firefox and Hotels.com, for which it did an ad last year promoting Resorts World Las Vegas, which was toured by Captain Obvious. See all of Ad Age's A-List 2022 winners here. For a signature client, Big Lots, Tombras coined a new term, “Bigionaires,” in a campaign starring comic Retta, “Saturday Night Live” star Molly Shannon and “Modern Family” actor Eric Stonestreet, who “live big” every day thanks to the discount chain. The effort resulted in double-digit two-year same-store sales, and November holiday period sales were up 10%.

Tombras' big ideas and big ambitions pay off with new business and smart hires

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