de Novo Alternative Marketing
No. 10 Small Company
329 10th Ave. SE, Ste. 112, Cedar Rapids
www.thinkdenovo.com
de Novo Alternative Marketing is a Cedar Rapids-based marketing agency focused on non-traditional campaigns. The company was founded in 2007 by Heather Smith Friedman and in 2008, Jen Neumann joined the firm.
Since then, the agency has evolved from a two-person operation to a full-service agency, with eight employees, located in the Cherry Building in Cedar Rapids’ New Bohemia neighborhood.
“(de Novo is) focused on helping clients reach their target markets in focused, measurable and often surprising ways,” Ms. Neumann stated in an email. “From strategy to fulfillment, de Novo takes a non-traditional route to market with a focus on digital delivery, social and mixing in guerrilla and experiential tactics. The results? Marketing that works.”
The founders have grown the company carefully, she stated.
“As a company that started very small and grew gradually, we’ve worked hard to make this a scalable agency, which allows us to plan for our growth rather than react to it,” Ms. Neumann said. “As we grew our number of employees, we also grew our collaborator network. And we work hard to learn what’s next, so we can help our clients become more efficient in how they use their marketing budgets as well. Internal education is an important part of the process for us. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is never a bad thing here and it is almost always followed by ‘but I will figure it out.’”
In its Coolest Places to Work survey, an employee wrote that some of the job perks include a gym membership, Pilates classes, healthy food in the breakroom, team lunches, ping pong challenges and educational opportunities.
“We also support each other socially, by partaking in things that are important to each other personally,” the employee wrote. “We are a diverse workforce, who all bring different perspectives to the table, which benefits us, and our clients.”
The company is not hiring, necessarily, but is always interested in learning about skill sets to determine if someone is a good fit with the company, Ms. Neumann stated.
-Gigi Wood
