Iowa Advertising Agency Does Good

Ten years ago an Iowa advertising agency named ZLRIGNITION http://www.zlrignition.com forever changed its course. Call it a marketing ethic awakening. We lost our two largest clients in a matter of sixty days. We went from fifty people to twelve. It was a terrible time.

But we looked our business and decided a few things that would guide us forward. First, we decided that we would do good work, for good people, good businesses and good causes. Gone were the accounts that ciphoned the good out of people. Gone were clients that produced nothing good. No longer would we consider casinos, check cashing operations and other operations that lived on the underbelly of marketing and advertising.

I think it's important for businesses to have an ethic. The business world is not all about the money...well it's alot about the money but not all. You have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and ask, "Self, what have you contributed to this world?" Then you need an answer you can live with.

As a business, we decided that we wanted to be able to answer that question with positives rather than negatives. We wanted to be able to say we reduced teen smoking y 42 percent in Iowa. We wanted to say we helped problem gamblers rather than saying we helped them to gamble. We wanted to say that we helped people live healthier lives and we helped good businesses grow and good people succeed.

I'm happy to say that we achieved those things, made money and had fun in the process. We've also vastly improved the quality of our creative product. Our staff feels better about the work they do and that's an all around win.