Lafayette American was launched six years ago by Toby Barlow, former WPP global chief creative officer on Ford, and other key players from that team. But the agency spent six years building a reputation in other verticals before coming back to Ford and the automotive industry in a big way in the past year.

Lafayette started with Detroit regional clients including Owens Corning, BorgWarner and McClure’s Pickles. Then it branched into work with Amazon, Netflix, Chewy, Spotify, White Castle, Ram, Merrell, YouTube and Mazda. Most recently, the agency launched work for sneaker marketplace StockX and Ford.

The team of 40 produced a 2% revenue increase to $7.8 million last year, with growing momentum that projects a double-digit increase to $9 million for 2024.

Behind that momentum is design, a core part of Lafayette from the start, but one that was sometimes overlooked as little more than a value-added resource in a larger ad agency. So the design practice was relaunched as the standalone Scorpion Rose Studio late last year. The first work out of SRS was the rebranding of the Toledo Museum of Art which made the finals of the Ad Age Creativity Awards. And Lafayette American now expects SRS to double the agency’s design revenue this year.

For StockX last year, the agency created a “This Is Love” campaign capturing the affection the reseller’s customers have for sneakers, driving a 15% lift in traffic in exposed markets vs. control markets.

Having proven its chops in other areas, Lafayette American last year leaned more into automotive, an industry seeking new thinking for products such as electric vehicles.

That includes working with autonomous driving startup Argo and writing the EV strategy for Stellantis, including playbooks for each of the company’s vehicle lines that were delivered to agencies of record for execution, according to the shop’s submission. Lafayette American is also working with Mazda, including launching its TikTok channel.

Ford recently turned to the agency to handle a campaign for its BlueCruise hands-free driving technology. The idea was to eschew celebrities in favor of showing how thrilled real people are by BlueCruise. Spots shown in the NCAA Women’s Final Four and National Championship—the latter the most-watched college basketball game ever—helped build a quick 183% increase in miles driven hands-free by Ford and Lincoln owners.