Geile/Leon Marketing Communications

An independent agency in St. Louis, Missouri, Geile/Leon Marketing Communications says it has spent more than thirty years on one question: how a brand stays relevant when customers, competitors and channels keep changing. The firm builds its work on the idea that change is constant, so a brand that was right five years ago may now be drifting away from what its customers think and expect.

Brand launches and renewals for shifting markets

The agency describes two kinds of brand work. The first is launching a brand from nothing, which covers naming direction, logos, taglines and the positioning behind them. The second is giving a mature brand a second life, where the job is to find what still holds value and update the rest. The company presents both as one discipline: whatever the challenge, the aim is a brand that customers recognize and keep choosing.

Broadcast and online video

Video is one of the firm's visible strands. It makes commercials and online video series, and it says its commercial broadcast work has earned two Telly awards. Examples in its portfolio include a film about an industrial central vacuum system made for Elmo Rietschle, a motor film for an industrial client, and a YouTube campaign series built around leadership perspectives for the Washington University Olin Business School.

Integrated campaigns across paid, social and traditional media

Beyond film, the agency plans campaigns that run across paid, social and traditional channels, so that one message reaches the same audience on several platforms. It also manages retail websites and social media accounts day to day, a role it describes as keeping a client's online presence current rather than building a site and walking away. Its national retail and diversity campaigns are listed among the work it is proudest of.

A diagnostic for brand relevance

The firm offers a free online tool that asks a company a set of questions about its brand and the market around it. The purpose is to show whether a brand needs a refresh before a company spends money on one. The firm presents the tool as a starting point for conversation, and its own work begins where the diagnostic points.

Clients and results the firm reports

Clients the firm names include an industrial equipment maker, a business school, a national home-building brand and a horse treat producer. For one retail client, the company says a campaign helped monthly sales rise by between 10 and 14 percent over the previous year without any increase in the advertising budget. The firm presents figures like these as its own reported outcomes rather than independently verified results.