Company Culture: Befitting its status as a long-standing regular on the Best Places to Work list, Brand Fuel (asi/145025) has an extensive list of words to sum up its culture: integrity-minded, caring, irreverent, dedicated, open, fair, gritty, kind, optimistic, learning-focused, creative, fun, challenging, team-oriented and respectful. “Brand Fuel’s management style is more empower and inspire versus command and control,” says co-President Danny Rosin. “People work at Brand Fuel because there’s a creative, fast-paced environment where quality work is respected, and a sense of community and reciprocity is nurtured in almost everything we do.”

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Appearances on Best Places to Work

In addition, the flexible work schedule (which employees rated exceptionally high on the Best Places to Work survey) and unlimited Brand Fuel T-shirts are much-loved perks.

COVID Changes: Brand Fuel offered a mix of remote and in-office work before the pandemic, though COVID escalated the #WFH component. Still, the firm believes good things happen when the team is together, and recently invested in two new offices in Raleigh and Virginia Beach, aiming to bring the workforces of Brand Fuel’s main offices “together on the regular and to get clients to engage with us in our showrooms when it’s safe to do so,” according to Rosin.

To keep employees happy and engaged, Brand Fuel has undertaken a variety of internal self-promo gift initiatives, provided a daily update replete with education, instruction and humor, administered surveys to inform company decisions in a bottom-up way, and right-sized salaries and reimbursed teams following minor pay cuts that occurred early in the COVID era.

Parting Tip: Hire great people that embody the values for which you’re looking. “Make caring part of your strategic plan,” says Rosin. “Volunteer and serve the industry and reciprocity will likely follow.”