J.O. Agency
Jennifer Henderson in front of one of the many messages her agency has conveyed over the years.
Jennifer Henderson is living professional fulfillment but getting there required a season of discontent.
She had just graduated from Texas Wesleyan and went to work for a couple of different ad agencies.
“I thought, ‘What the hell have I done? I'm in an industry that I can't stand’,” Henderson recalled recently. “I had bad, bad experiences.”
A lot of backbiting, dog-eat-dog-world mumbo jumbo.
“It just didn't seem like an ethical kind of industry to be in,” she said. “I think it was just the leadership that ran those agencies. It just didn't feel right to me.”
So, she liberated herself and said to hell with it.
Born out of the experience was the J.O. Agency, a communications firm that this year is seeing silver by celebrating a landmark 25th birthday.
“I was determined to make it work,” she said. “I was pretty stubborn from the get-go and wanted to prove my place in the man-dominated field. Fast-forward 25 years and here we are — outplaying and outlasting many other agencies ... and I’d like to think we’ve done it with flair. As a 25-year-old full-service agency in Fort Worth, we have beat the odds again and again.”
Henderson notes that keys to success have been in innovation and "doing wild and crazy things" when it comes to creativity.
The Fort Worth-born agency has landed big accounts and notable clients among the city’s base of organizations, including TCU, Botanical Research Institution of Texas, Trinity Metro, Texas Wesleyan, and Worthington Bank, among others. International clients include Galderma and Giant Screen Theater Association.
Today, the J.O. Agency employs 10, all working at its brick-and-mortar in the creative corridor at 440 South Main. A number of freelance contractors do work there, too.
It all began while she was working at Texas Wesleyan, the place she had earned a degree in art. When she had given the industry a stiff-arm when she went to work in Wesleyan’s communications department. She was climbing the ladder there, ascending to a communications director, but the work didn’t involve her own creation of art and advertising.
“It was a lot of directing,” she said.
So, Henderson began freelancing at night. “That kind of filled my soul with creativity,” she said. A creative not being able to create is like denying a Buddhist refuge in meditation.
“That’s kind of how I started [J.O.],” she said. “That [the freelancing] just got really busy and I was really lucky. I landed some really big accounts on the side and they started asking me to travel the world and do the projects worldwide. And that was when I finally decided I needed to quit my day job.”
One of those first big clients was the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association. A friend from Wesleyan, Mary Ann Henker, was the director of special projects there.
It was also Henker who helped arrange Henderson’s visit to the White House in 2008.
The J.O. Agency was one of nine Texas businesses invited to George W. Bush’s White House to discuss Sen. Mark Warner’s “Billion Plus Change” initiative that was encouraging donated services to nonprofits.
The J.O. Agency had already been doing pro bono work for nonprofits since its founding.
Henderson was interested in exploring ways to better incentivize nonprofit work through tax deductions. She also wanted to test the idea of a nonprofit marketing agency.
“I talked to a lot of big businesses and some major corporations that were also being represented there, but the idea went over really well,” she said.
Despite a funny story about getting lost in the basement of the White House — “they didn't tell me the right way to go” — the visit to the executive mansion spawned the creation of J.O.’s Cause Agency in 2013.
The Cause Agency is a mission-focused, nonprofit marketing firm offering discounted services to other nonprofits.
“That's what we were thinking … a way to give back to the greater good and start our own nonprofit and do it full time and offer super discounted services or free work if we can for nonprofits that really need it. Everybody who does work for us, they love nonprofits and they're good at what they do. That ended up being a better solution in our mind.”
She notes still how few women-owned agencies exist in the industry. It’s a point of pride that she’s made it, but she’s also determined to do what she can to change it. According to data she cited, fewer than 1% of advertising agencies in North America are owned by women.
So, giving back to Henderson also includes mentorship, particularly to young women in the PR/advertising field.
“Mentorship has been huge for me and I try to do the same for the younger people who enter the agency field,” she said. “When I was disenfranchised by the agency world, I didn't have any anyone to look up to, but thank goodness I've had some enter my life that have helped me through. I love helping because it would sure would have helped me in the beginning.”