Social Driver, a digital marketing agency in the District that specializes in websites and social media campaigns in the public affairs and advocacy space, has moved into a new space near McPherson Square due to the growth of its team. The 8,000-square-foot office space has room for the current team of 35, as well as for the additional people that cofounders Thomas Sanchez and Anthony Shop are looking to hire.
"We're still growing," says Shop, both in terms of the staff and the bottom line. "Our growth is coming from good people doing good work." Shop says that some of Social Driver's revenue growth is coming from the agency's structure, which employs both developers and marketers in-house, as well as its focus. "Our [nonprofit and public affairs] clients haven't found other firms that have technologists and strategists [in-house]. We're getting really good results."
The agency was founded in 2011 and, by February 2014, employed 20. The current team is evenly split between "technologists," who work on UX, web development, content management systems and data visualizations and so forth, and "strategists," who complete marketing and design tasks and helm social media and digital advocacy campaigns.
In 2013, Social Driver was ranked 7th on
the Agency 100, a list of the fastest-growing advertising agencies in the United States.
"A big part of our mission is education," Shop says. "Digital and social media are transforming what we do." Both Shop and Sanchez speak regularly at marketing conferences; additionally, the projects the agency undertakes often have education as a theme in some way. For example, Social Driver worked with the
Alliance for Excellent Education to run a campaign advocating for the
E-rate program, a federal program to improve Internet access in libraries and in schools. The FCC agreed to spend an additional $1.5 billion on the program, "and they used our hashtag to announce the expansion," Shop says.
Shop and Sanchez are looking to hire several more Social Driver
team members, including a senior-level public affairs account director, and members of the design and development, strategy and sales teams. "We're also creating a new executive assistant position," Shop says, "and a full-time human resources person to help with onboarding and recruiting."