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GYK Antler Grows Business, Wins New Accounts

August 31, 2020 – Integrated marketing company GYK Antler has continued its 2020 growth trajectory with three account wins within the financial services and consumer packaged goods categories. The company kicked off 2020 with a refined strategic focus and evolved business model, reinforcing GYK Antler’s position as a creative growth engine fueled by an entrepreneurial spirit. This momentum is reflective of the growth engine at work and a shared belief with these new clients that creativity is the ultimate brand and business advantage.

GYK Antler is proud to welcome the following three clients to its roster:

Sallie Mae – Based in Newark, DE, Sallie Mae is the leader in private student lending, providing financing and know-how to support access to college. Sallie Mae believes education and life-long learning, in all forms, helps people achieve great things. Staying rooted to this core belief, Sallie Mae has tapped GYK Antler to strategically redefine their brand positioning. As lead agency, GYK Antler will bring this new positioning to life through an integrated brand campaign, establishing a cohesive look and feel that will support all marketing assets.

Ocean Spray – Headquartered in Lakeville, MA, Ocean Spray is a farmer-owned cooperative founded in 1930 by three cranberry farmers. Today, Ocean Spray consists of 700 small family farms across the United States, Canada, and Chile, who have preserved the family farming way of life for generations. Just as their farmers have been innovating for 90 years, Ocean Spray is driving forward its health, wellness, and sustainability goals. GYK Antler is working with the Ocean Spray food team to reinvigorate the 25-year young Craisins® Dried Cranberry brand with a new advertising campaign, leaning into the cooperative’s dedication to the health of people and planet. The campaign is slated to launch in the early Fall.

brekki – A Carlsbad, CA-based company with a line of dairy-free, ready-to-eat Overnight Oats, brekki was founded in 2017 with the mission of providing people with a convenient, nutrient-dense meal option that tastes great and can be enjoyed during breakfast, lunch, dinner, or anytime in between. brekki was acquired in December 2019 by the executive team of Cedar’s Foods, the global leader in Mediterranean Foods, and has enlisted the help of GYK Antler to establish new branding for the company and its products, from packaging to digital content to branded merchandise, and develop an integrated marketing strategy to differentiate the brand amid a crowded and fast-moving overnight oats category.

“Our team could not be any more excited to be partnering with these truly great brands – and just all-around fantastic clients and good people,” said Managing Director Mark Battista. “GYK Antler has been making tremendous strides this year, leveling-up an already strong foundation of integrated thinking through the hiring of some excellent new talent and enhanced marketing services offerings. These wins are a testament of our people’s hard work and commitment to creating ownable, actionable and enduring ideas that ignite our clients’ brands and fuel business growth.”

These client wins, in addition to GYK Antler being named lead agency on the Wahlburgers business in Q1 2020, follow the appointments of two key executives to the company’s leadership team in the past year. Mark Battista joined the company last summer, bringing more than two decades of experience building impactful, insights-driven campaigns for leading brands across several highly awarded advertising agencies. Pam Hamlin, a veteran in the advertising industry and former CEO of Arnold Worldwide, was named President of GYK Antler in September 2019. In partnership with CEO Travis York, Hamlin and Battista have been propelling growth at GYK Antler, implementing a strategic plan to modernize the business, hire best-in-class talent and champion the belief that creativity is the ultimate brand and business advantage.

Read coverage of the brekki and Sallie Mae wins in MediaPost. 

About GYK Antler

GYK Antler is a creative growth engine fueled by an entrepreneurial spirit. Established in 1975, this integrated marketing company of creative entrepreneurs embraces its clients’ challenges as its own and believes that creativity is the ultimate business advantage. To deliver on this belief, GYK Antler unleashes an integrated team of strategy, creative and media to create ownable, actionable and enduring ideas that ignite brands and fuel business growth. GYK Antler is proud to represent both emerging and established brands, including Cedar’s Hommus, New Hampshire Travel & Tourism, Ocean Spray, Wahlburgers, Baskin-Robbins, York Athletics, Dunkin’, Sallie Mae, Ken’s Foods, New Hampshire State Lottery, Timberland, ESPN and Sweet Baby Ray’s. A fiercely independent company, GYK Antler is headquartered in Manchester, NH, with an office in downtown Boston.

YORK Athletics and GYK Antler Launch “Fight From Home” Campaign

YORK Athletics and GYK are proud to have launched the #FightFromHome campaign to help keep everyday fighters and COVID-19 frontline workers on their feet.

The initiative asked fans and community members to purchase a pair of Gail sneakers for a frontline worker, either for someone they know personally or as a random act of kindness for a stranger. In exchange for their generosity, donors were rewarded with a pair of YORK sneakers for free. 

To spread the word, GYK deployed a targeted digital campaign via owned and earned media, mobilizing people to help support everyday fighters across the country and beyond. As a result, 1,163 pairs of sneakers were delivered to essential workers coast-to-coast in the U.S., and as far away as Australia. Additionally, the #FightFromHome campaign took home a Silver Bowl in the 60th annual Ad Club Hatch Awards in the Work for Good Category.

Read coverage in NBC Boston, the Boston Herald and Gear Patrol.

Established Creative Entrepreneurs Launch York Creative Collective

Oct. 17, 2019 / Pam Hamlin, former Global CEO of Arnold Worldwide, and Mark Battista, former EVP of Brand Experience at Arnold Worldwide, join a group of creatively-minded business leaders to launch York Creative Collective (YCC). The company, founded by Travis York, CEO of marketing agency GYK Antler, unites the resources, relationships, experiences and capabilities of numerous highly successful, independent and creative ventures, with the mission of growing brands and businesses that share a commitment to creativity, craft and quality.

“We created York Creative Collective as a home for brands that seek the resources of a highly creative and entrepreneurial team in order to drive growth and take them to the next level. YCC has the freedom to flex talent across teams, ensuring that all businesses and employees alike reach their highest potential,” shared York. “As a lifelong entrepreneur, I’m proud to introduce YCC as we seek to lead, inspire and champion creative entrepreneurs through our collaborative model.”

YCC was formed to maximize growth opportunities for its creatively driven brands, businesses and people. The network of ventures all operate under an integrated model, with shared bottom line, infrastructure and business operations. At the center of YCC is marketing services, which serves as the growth engine to fuel the ventures. The model is self-sustaining, where the ROI of the work is reinvested to scale the collective.

The first ventures to join YCC include:

  • Full-service marketing agency with a content studio with integrated media offering, GYK Antler
  • Emmy-winning video production company, Big Brick
  • Direct-to-consumer training footwear brand, YORK Athletics
  • Media platform with a content arm, Iron & Air
  • SaaS reporting & analytics platform, Explorics
  • Sports media platform, Kompany39
  • 7th-generation premium drum manufacturer, Noble & Cooley
  • Non-profit, Rock on Foundation

YCC also has a strategic alliance with the newly launched investment company, York IE, that provides access to supplemental capital to accelerate scale of the collective’s ventures.

“It’s been rewarding for the YORK Athletics team and advantageous for the business plugging into the extended GYK Antler and YCC family to more strategically plan our growth, leverage their marketing expertise and collaborate with some awesome talent,” said Mark McGarry, Co-Founder and CEO of YORK Athletics.

“YCC brings together a really unique combination of talent and capital to grow brands and businesses who believe that creativity is a key to sustained growth. Being independent gives us the freedom to do what’s best for our ventures and our people,” said Hamlin. “I’m passionate about building businesses and I believe this model represents a new way forward to elevate the impact of creativity and entrepreneurship in today’s changing marketing landscape.”

YCC companies have continued to grow over the past few years with GYK Antler achieving a 62% growth rate over the last five years, and YORK Athletics having sustained an average yearly growth rate of 131%. GYK Antler was also recognized by Forbes’s list of Small Giants – 25 companies that value greatness over growth – as well as Inc. and Entrepreneur for exceptional growth. Big Brick Productions is a recognized Emmy-winning production company and Iron & Air is a robust and innovative publishing shop complete with a content arm that works with iconic brands like Toyota, Rebel Yell and Converse.

Read coverage in our Forbes or Adweek features. 

Pam Hamlin Joins York Creative Collective as President

Pam Hamlin is joining York Creative Collective as president. A 20-year veteran of Arnold Worldwide, Pam formerly served as the historic ad agency’s global CEO.

For YCC, Pam will lead strategy and operations across the portfolio to help fuel the growth of the creative ventures and inspire a high-performance culture. 

York Creative Collective was founded by Travis York, the CEO of marketing agency GYK Antler, which serves as the growth engine powering the collective. 

Read coverage in Ad Age and MediaPost.