Advertising Ventures Rebranded as (add)ventures

Advertising Ventures, Inc., a 19-year-old Providence-based agency producing work globally, has announced its new branding – (add)ventures – to better reflect the company’s combined strategic and creative services offerings. (add) represents the aligned dynamic disciplines of brand stakeholder communications – marketing, branding, public relations, advertising, and corporate, cause, and employee communications – all services that (add)ventures integrates to build brands and brand loyalty.

"We have evolved far beyond an advertising agency, and our name change is long overdue," said (add)ventures Chief Creative Officer Stephen Rosa. "Our client partners depend upon us to create much, much more than ad campaigns. We combine strategic intelligence and creative genius to inform and inspire brand stakeholders. The (add)ventures branding better represents who we are, what we do, and how we work."

Rosa founded Advertising Ventures in 1989 as a boutique alternative to traditional ad agencies. His award-winning creative work and client partnership service model attracted Fortune 500 companies. Advertising Ventures soon found itself on prestigious lists as well – including the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing privately held companies in both 2003 and 2004. As Rosa’s agency grew, so did the scope of business problems his client partners asked the firm to solve. Rosa recruited top marketing, branding, public relations, video production, interactive, human resource, and corporate and multicultural communications talent to meet his client partners’ needs.            

The innovation continued as Rosa and his core team of 27 employees integrated the various disciplines, developing proprietary methodologies and product suites. The resulting creation of the aligned dynamic disciplines of (add)ventures forged a total brand communications solution for internal and external brand stakeholders. (add)ventures is equally effective in helping its client partners generate brand loyalty among customers, employees, businesses and community partners.

"Our client partners were frustrated by having to engage several misaligned firms – ad agencies, PR firms, design boutiques, human resource, and marketing consulting firms – offering these disciplines in a vacuum," added Rosa. "The (add)ventures model alleviates the futility of marrying  incompatible quick fixes of multiple firms and eliminates the inefficiencies of managing separate, disjointed firms. We have multidisciplinary experts ranging from branding to advertising, design to diversity, and PR to HR all working side by side to create brand solutions that stand the test of time."

Rosa emphasized that the (add)ventures identity reflects an evolution of scope and services – not a change in the firm’s culture. "We’ll always give back generously to the community and take our work far more seriously than we do ourselves," he said.

Regarding the risky decision to change an identity with so much equity and success, Rosa said the name change was a necessary step up for the growth of the company. "Removing advertising from our name will make it easier for our client partners to engage our firm to solve problems beyond the advertising and marketing space," he said. "In the past they often had to fight to convince higher-ups and procurement departments that a firm called Advertising Ventures was the best fit to solve a PR, business, human resource, or Internet problem."

Rosa concluded that ultimately, the passion, innovation, and humanity of his firm remain its greatest strengths. "Just like that start-up business we were 19 years ago, we are still a minority-owned business hungry to prove ourselves every day," Rosa shared. "Every campaign is still the most important one we’ll ever do. We still exist to solve problems and make people happy. The creativity of our work and quality of our relationships have always spoken loud and clear. We are confident the new (add)ventures branding will too."

Explore the story of our new brand in motion here.