Communication Arts September/October 2025 Featured Advertising Agency

We’re proud to share that we were one of only two agencies awarded a full-length feature in the Communication Arts Design Annual 2025 issue. To be recognized on a national stage like this is both rare and humbling, and we’re honored to have our creativity celebrated among the very best in design. Read along below to hear the secrets behind the last 25 years of our journey and see the evolution of our work.

Communication Arts September/October 2025 Feature Article

This Raleigh, North Carolina–based ad agency has found success through unforgettable campaigns and an equitable business plan.

By Kimeko McCoy

Abrand new, pristinely white boat drags behind a pickup truck off the sales lot and down a highway before rambling into the woods. First, it smacks into a tree. “Boom,” the pickup truck driver says with a Southern drawl. The truck’s passenger smiles alongside him. Foot still on the pedal and camo hat on his head, the driver cuts the wheel, slamming the boat into a parked car—hooting and hollering, as some would say—before fishtailing the boat into a lake.

After everything, the fishing boat sits unscathed. “I’ll take it,” the driver says.

That 2006 spot was The Bubba Test, a minute-long commercial for Triumph Boats, a manufacturer based out of North Carolina. It took ad land by storm, becoming a viral video sensation long before the days of TikTok. Marketing Daily covered the commercial, calling it a “viral TV ready” spot. The News & Observer, Raleigh’s local paper, wrote “Triumph sales jump after ads brag that its boats can take abuse.” Even the New York Timestook notice, spotlighting the campaign in its coverage in November 2006.

If you ask The Republik, the North Carolina-based, independent creative advertising and marketing agency behind the spot, The Bubba Test was what put them on the map.

“It was smart. It was interesting,” said Dwayne Fry, partner and strategy director at The Republik. “That was the changing point.”

The Bubba Test was one of the first projects Fry had worked on after he arrived at The Republik in 2006. It has now been more than a decade since he first stepped through the agency’s doors to join chairman and chief executive officer Robert Shaw West. Fry said he’d heard about West before he ever met him, intrigued by his work and innovative ideas.

Today, Fry, West, and a team of eighteen creatives, strategists, communication specialists and more make up The Republik, an agency known for its irreverent ads, atypical approach to the agency model and commitment to its motto: “Defy the odds.” In an era of consolidation and churn, The Republik will celebrate 25 years in business next year with a values-driven approach that makes it a standout in a sea of creative agencies.

“We think we can outdo anybody’s work if we have the opportunity,” Fry says. “We think we’re this outlier, but we’re not. We’re just good at what we do. That’s the bottom line.”

Founding

The Republik dates back to 2001, when the world was marked by the launch of iTunes, the collapse of the energy giant Enron and the release of the first Harry Potter movie. Nike had released its basketball freestyle commercial, and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show was still en vogue. At that time, West cofounded The Republik after working at big agencies left him dissatisfied with the work and creative experience.

West’s colleagues and clients describe him as an entrepreneur at heart who loves creative, advertising and everything that comes in this industry. He’s insightful and curious, and his passion for the work is made apparent by the twinkle in his eye, according to his past clients. People describe his work as intriguing, and those who have worked with him say he’s only ever a phone call away.

Before launching The Republik with a small team of eight who also hailed from top agencies, West held creative positions at big-name ad agencies not long after Madison Avenue’s heyday. He served as senior art director at agencies including Ammirati & Puris, Earle Palmer Brown, and Foote Cone & Belding. His portfolio included clients from BMW to athletic and streetwear brands like Reebok and FILA. He’d been in the business from the age of eighteen, pounding the creative pavement for a decade before a lightbulb came on for him.

“The agency [and client] relationship was starting to deteriorate,” West said. “I [didn’t want to] spend the rest of my life in a business that works with people who don’t really like working with them.”

So, he didn’t. Sometimes, the problem at big agencies was what West calls a “self-preservation mentality” among the staff: colleagues seemed more hinged on climbing the corporate ladder instead of working together as a team to produce great work. Ultimately, it caused clients to lose faith in agency partnerships. That mentality didn’t quite sit right with West, who opted out and launched The Republik.

The Republik is an employee-owned and -managed company, meaning West is in an elected position as the chief executive officer of the company like other committee positions. The fact that he’s held the gig for more than 20 years speaks volumes. Employees also have ownership stakes in the company, making for a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats approach.

You’re sitting around a table where everyone’s vested in your interest, and the owners, or the people that you’re sitting with, are vested in their interest. That’s not a traditional agency, and it’s damn sure not a holding company.” —Robert Shaw West

It makes a difference with clients, too, West says. When employees are owners in the company, they have skin in the game, wholly investing in the client work and being unafraid to “ride the rollercoaster of a business,” he adds. “You’re sitting around a table where everyone’s vested in your interest, and the owners, or the people that you’re sitting with, are vested in their interest,” West says. “That’s not a traditional agency, and it’s damn sure not a holding company.”

Viral before virality

When the work on Triumph first started, the boat brand was one of 1,500 others, according to The Republik, and needed a way to stand out. The company approached the agency asking for a demonstration video, a beauty contest in the water with bright sun and blue sparkles. Triumph had a budget of an estimated $11,000 to produce the video; meanwhile, the company was spending about $50,000 on media. The agency had other ideas, focusing on Triumph’s unique distinction of manufacturing a plastic boat, making it what The Republik calls the “World’s Toughest Boat.”

The Republik used that media budget and cranked out The Bubba Test for $40,000. According to the News & Observer, Triumph sales jumped after that ad spot. For boats that ranged from $10,000 to $50,000 at the time in a sluggish market, sales went up 23 percent for Triumph, per the newspaper.

Another ad spot featured a priest and boy fishing when, suddenly, a Triumph boat seemingly falls out of the sky. In yet another, an angry husband, cheating wife and boat slam into a mobile home. This campaign called new creatives to the agency, including Georgie Ubben, a strategist who has been with The Republik for just a year.

“I remember going through the portfolio; I remember the specific ad I saw that [The Republik] made,” Ubben said, referring to the Triumph spot. “I was like, ‘I have to try and work with these people because they were just doing ads in a different way than a lot of agencies in Raleigh.’”

A seat at The Republik’s table

At The Republik, staff aren’t the only ones with a seat at the proverbial table. Clients like Happy Dirt and Dilworth say the agency’s relationship with clients is part of its secret sauce.

Formerly known as Eastern Carolina Organics, Happy Dirt, a North Carolina–based organic produce grower and distributor, came to the agency in 2018 desperate for a rebrand. Founded in 2004, the company was growing, but it was stuck in a creative rut. Even the brown and green colors, reflective of organic produce, were boring. “The brand was stuck in a box,” says Randall Diers, president and chief operating officer of Happy Dirt.

Enter The Republik, the agency that specializes in breaking out of boxes. The agency revamped the brand with a marketing strategy, social media platform and packaging, introducing a team of animated characters named Sugar Ray, a literal ray of sunshine; Love Bug the ladybug; a Tachinid fly named SuperFly; and Flower Power, a goldenrod flower.

We think we can outdo anybody’s work if we have the opportunity. We think we’re this outlier, but we’re not. We’re just good at what we do.” —Dwayne Fry

“It felt very much like we were partners in this, and we all knew where we were trying to go,” says Diers of his experience with The Republik. “It was like creating a movie script around a table, and we all just did our part. At the end of the day, [here was] the film, and wow, it was amazing.”

That same ethos carried into The Republik’s work with Dilworth Coffee, a 35-year-old coffee brand that needed a unified look and feel for its business at a time when its distribution and retail presence were quickly expanding. The Republik created posters, counter cards and social ads featuring what the agency called Dilworth’s inner “dude” vibe. The visuals featured eye catchers such as surfers with giant cups of coffee atop their boards and an elephant splashing along with a sloshing cup of coffee held tightly in its trunk. “We got the insight of Robert and Dwayne when it really counted to look at our problems differently and break us out of our box,” says Jeff Vojta, chief executive officer and original store manager at Dilworth Coffee.

And that work won the agency a 2024 American Package Design Award in Graphic Design USA and a 2025 Graphis Award.

The challenge going forward

While the agency has grown from eight to eighteen over the past 25 years, the journey hasn’t been an easy one. Not every employee is keen on the idea of an entrepreneurial-like work environment at an employee-owned agency. On the other side of the phrase “A rising tide lifts all boats,” there’s the antithesis: “A falling tide sinks all ships.” Company ownership means everyone benefits when it’s busy, and when it’s hard to keep the business afloat, everyone takes on the low tides.

The kind of people you find at The Republik are people that have owned their own businesses—people who are comfortable with hard numbers—but creative at the same time. They wear multiple hats: strategists write copy, and accountants manage social media strategy. For example, office manager Janine Levitt, who has been with The Republik for the last seventeen years, also manages activations and public relations.

The agency’s ideology hasn’t been for everyone, with some younger creatives preferring more flexibility in freelance models or a company-owned model. On a broader scale, the ad industry is constantly facing seemingly never-ending headwinds, whether that be the dawn of digital advertising, agency consolidation or the current rise of generative AI. But through it all, as West says, “It’s all going to come down to who can employ and keep the most creative people.”

After nearly 25 years in business, The Republik looks to a future not defined by scale or the industry’s latest shiny object but by staying in the same principles that have carried it thus far: teamwork, integrity and creativity. And maybe that’s the secret sauce that keeps clients coming to The Republik.

As West puts it, “I love bringing people’s dreams to life, and that’s what we do.” ca

Kimeko McCoy is a digital marketer turned marketing reporter, mixing her habit of being extremely online with storytelling to build a digital narrative around brands.