Rauxa is rising.
The Costa Mesa-based tech-driven marketing agency—reporting a 90% jump in revenue over 2015—debuted at No. 5 on this year’s Business Journal list of the fastest-growing large private companies in Orange County. Quite the leap, especially for an 18-year-old company.
The ad shop posted $114.9 million in sales for the 12 months that ended June 30, up from $55.2 million last year. Expanded workload from existing accounts and several additions to its client roster helped spur the growth, which followed the 8.7% dip in revenue the agency recorded from 2015 to 2016.
“We continue to grow because clients see us as business partners as much as marketers,” said President and Chief Executive Gina Alshuler, who joined the company in 2001 and took over from founder Jill Gwaltney last year.
“It’s in our combination of data, technology and content that magic happens.”
Rauxa, considered by Adweek and other industry followers to be the largest female-owned independent agency in the country, recently started working with Dallas-based TGI Fridays. The agency is collecting and analyzing data to help the fast-casual restaurant chain “deliver more personalized experience to their customers,” Gwaltney said. “If you ordered tacos from TGIF on Friday at 5 p.m., then we would set it up so you get a notification through your app the next Friday at 4 p.m. ‘Are you thinking about tacos today? There’s a special offer for you.’… We combine data, tech and content, and that’s what our differentiator is, what helps us drive so much of this below-the-line advertising.”
Rauxa’s team also started working with Amazon Marketing Services. It developed marketing materials that help authors reach new customers on Amazon.com.
Happy Clients
Rauxa, whose name is Catalan for a redeeming touch of madness, is also busy with new projects from existing clients. The agency signed with Alaska Air Group Inc., a Seattle-based operator of Alaska Airlines, as it prepared to acquire Virgin America last year. It’s now helping the airline transfer “people from the Virgin (frequent flier) plan into the Alaska plan, and that’s been going really well,” Gwaltney said.
Rauxa also developed the online platform Customs for Costa Mesa-based Vans Inc., enabling consumers to personalize their shoes. The effort, launched this year, was well-received, prompting the apparel company’s parent, VF Corp. in Greensboro, N.C., to expand it to Vans’ e-commerce sites in Asia, Europe and Canada.
“That’s a great company, growing and always looking to innovate,” Gwaltney said.
The agency, which in 2012 acquired its former web design contractor, ThoughtMatrix Inc. in San Francisco, developed the Customs platform in-house. It’s now looking at using artificial intelligence to “pre-optimize direct-response [email campaigns]” and “predict what is going to work the best” for client Verizon Communications Inc.
“Instead of getting results on the back end … you’re really predicting which creative is going to resonate,” she said, adding that predictions are based on data collected from previous projects for the New York-based telecommunications giant, which consolidated its fiber-optic communications network FiOS account with Rauxa, along with connected-vehicle services Telematics and mobile video network Go90.
“We are always looking for ways to help our clients be more successful in (new business) acquisition and then also in engaging consumers, [who] are expecting everything to be relevant and personal to them,” Gwaltney said.
The agency serves the Verizon account out of its New York office, which recently moved from SoHo to bigger digs—a 50,000-square-foot space on the 44th floor of a 2.67-million-square-foot office tower in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park City.
“We were able to get into [it] at a more attractive price,” she said, adding that the agency’s 130 employees there also work on the Keep America Beautiful and Embrace Home Loans Inc. accounts, and global social strategy for multilevel marketer Amway. Its other offices are in Seattle, San Francisco and Atlanta.
Rauxa’s tech team recently updated online components of Allergan PLC’s Brilliant Distinctions, a patient savings and loyalty program for the drugmaker’s facial aesthetics lines, including Botox. The effort included rollout of e-commerce platform Brilliant Connections for Allergan’s SkinMedica products. Rauxa’s team also updated a mobile app that tracks points earned with every purchase.
Gwaltney’s son, Cooper, runs Cats on the Roof in Culver City, along with his brother-in-law, Olympic rower Glenn Ochal.
The video content shop operates independently but has “a major agency supporting them with projects for our clients,” she said. It recently picked up social media video work for Allergan’s Linzess, a drug that alleviates “symptoms associated with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation.”
Gwaltney said, “[Allergan] picked Cats on the Roof because in 36 hours they came up with 16 ideas about poop.”
