Best Places to Work: evok advertising

Company: evok advertising
Type of business: Full service advertising agency, integrating passion for creativity, digital prowess and strategic public relations.
Top local executive: Larry Meador, @evoklarry
Top local human resources executive: Terry Mooney, chief operation officer
No. 1 perk: Closed the day after the Superbowl. We encourage our team to watch the game, enjoy time with friends and family, and engage via social media with the ads. The next day, they need their rest.
Most recently added perk/change: We recently moved back to Lake Mary, cutting drive times down significantly for many of our team members. The new office is equipped with both Angry Orchard and Yuengling, a pool table, ping pong table, PacMan game, dart board and interactive white board. It also boasts a 4-station, 10-monitor “evoking social” media listening and engagement hub, and a 2,200-square-foot WiFi enabled outdoor deck with multiple seating areas to enjoy the Florida sunshine!
Description of company rewards program: Depending on the role performed, level in the company and tenure, some of our employees currently participate in a net revenue rewards program or a new business development program. However, all evokers are entitled to $25 just for turning in a prospect sheet — someone they’d like the agency to work with and why they feel the prospect is a good fit.
Song that best illustrates our company culture: Better Together by Jack Johnson
Little-known fact about my company: We occasionally stamp our payroll checks with “this is our clients’ money,” a gentle reminder to remember who we serve.
Key characteristics we seek when hiring new workers: A true passion for the industry; we can teach skills, but you can’t teach the love of the game.
Our hiring procedures that ensure we get the best people: Getting them is only half the battle — keeping them is the other half. We follow these four simple guidelines:
1. Hire everyone smarter than we are.
2. Share our success with them.
3. Fall on the sword for their mistakes.
4. Create an environment they want to come back to tomorrow.
Top two reasons this is a great place to work: We’re a family, in everything we do, all the way down to being open book. We promote from within.
The atmosphere in our office: Upbeat, creative, connected. Everyone at evok has the opportunity to contribute to all decisions, big and small, so with that feeling of empowerment grows a healthy desire to get involved.
Mantra that best describes our culture: “Ideas. Work. Results.” It’s been our tagline for almost 12 years and rings true today. Great ideas are the start and can come from anywhere, but are only truly cultivated with hard work to yield measurable results for our clients.
How we prevent complacency: In addition to our continuing education program and our lunch and learns, we also encourage cross training inter and intra-departmentally. It’s our goal to help each evokers ascend in their career, hopefully at evok, but even if they move on, we want their experience at evok to be worthwhile and them the better for it.
If someone walked into our office right now, they would see: Our director of agency happiness sitting at the front desk — her role in the agency is to make employees, guests, clients and vendors happy. She’s instituted a health and wellness program, tames the phone system, set up a dry cleaning service for the staff and even gets us each our special snacks on the grocery list.