From the second-floor window at 545 North McDonough Street, the Lenz team could look down in June 2026 and watch its own work become a place. The Decatur square was packed. Big Boi was onstage. A round, many-colored soccer ball appeared on signs and screens, the mark for WatchFest26, a 34-day World Cup gathering that Lenz had helped name and brand. This is a strangely literal picture of the agency's business: a client brief turned into a crowd, visible from the office.
Lenz Marketing is a privately held, full-service agency with 20-plus people and a long concentration in healthcare. It plans brands, builds websites, buys media, runs digital campaigns, handles public relations, manages reputations, and measures what follows. Hospitals and physician groups are the center of gravity. Higher education, nonprofits, conservation groups, municipalities, and festivals orbit nearby. The work is less Mad Men than air-traffic control: many channels, many stakeholders, and real consequences when directions are unclear.
A succession without the costume change
Richard J. Lenz founded the company in 1992 and put his family name over the door as a kind of warranty. Mike Killeen arrived in 2002, became a partner in 2014, and spent more than two decades learning the business before becoming president, CEO, and sole owner in 2023. Richard shifted into a consulting role. There was no dramatic renaming exercise and no public bonfire of the old playbook. The valuable thing being transferred was not just equity. It was accumulated judgment about clients whose services are difficult to buy and important to get right.
That continuity is part of Lenz's competitive position. A large network can offer scale. A narrow digital shop can offer one sharp tool. An in-house team can offer daily proximity. Lenz sits in the middle: broad enough to integrate the work, specialized enough to understand healthcare's ethical and regulatory edge cases, and small enough that senior people remain visible. Its healthcare materials emphasize HIPAA-certified staff, work for single-location and 100-location groups, and custom dashboards that show campaign performance.
“Communication holds us together.”Lenz's operating idea, in four words
The awkward subject is the product
Healthcare marketing begins with an uncomfortable fact: the customer may be scared, in pain, embarrassed, or searching at two in the morning. The product is not a sneaker. The agency's job is to help the right patient find the right provider without flattening care into a coupon. Lenz's answer is integration. Brand strategy makes the promise legible. A website turns it into a navigable choice. Search and advertising make the choice findable. Public relations and reputation work make it credible. Reporting shows whether people acted.
The agency sells that system through two doors. A Marketing Partnership is an extended engagement that combines consultation, direction, and multiple services, often for a year or more. A project is bounded: a new website, a brand, a campaign, then delivery. Lenz publishes no rate card. It does publish a client bill of rights, including the right to approve every expense before it begins, receive performance measures, know who is doing the work, and hear bad news quickly. “No surprise charges” is a more useful agency slogan than most agency slogans.
First fix the mismatch
The most revealing Lenz cases start with a gap between operational reality and public appearance. SouthCoast Medical Group had more than 80 physicians, regional stature, and a brand that did not convey the breadth of the practice. Its website was a weakness. Lenz's discovery process led to a shorter name, SouthCoast Health, then a logo, the line “Total Wellness for Life,” a new site with appointment requests, and coordinated television, radio, print, digital, PR, and social work. The first failure was not medical. It was translation.
Viral Solutions was the same pattern at emergency speed. In 2020, its founders had a capable drive-through COVID-testing operation outside a North Decatur church. The sign was homemade. The service was fast, accurate, free to patients, and available without an appointment, but the visual surface could not yet carry the trust the operation deserved. Lenz built a professional identity, an optimized registration site, signage, flyers, video, radio, PR, and 20 billboards. In three months, Viral Solutions grew from one site to nine.
Viral Solutions / the public-facing system catches up
There is a portable sequence here. Study the business before drawing. Make the outside match the quality inside. Remove friction from the next action. Only then amplify. The sequence is easy to copy; the prerequisites are not. It depends on an operation worth revealing, access that can absorb demand, subject expertise, and agreement about what success means. Advertising cannot rescue a broken patient experience. A beautiful dashboard cannot repair data nobody collected.
The square is not a metaphor
Agency websites routinely claim community. Lenz has receipts. Mike Killeen founded Amplify My Community, which stages concerts to raise unrestricted money for organizations fighting poverty and homelessness. Lenz has supplied sponsorship, marketing, and production. The 2024 Amplify Decatur festival raised $50,000; by then, Amplify events had donated more than $625,000 in total. The agency has also worked on the Atlanta Science Festival, the Decatur Book Festival, municipal campaigns, and, eventually, WatchFest26.
Then came the 2025 office move and the delightful bit of corporate cartography. The new Lenz symbol kept the orange circle from the original mark, softened the color, added green inspired by old rafters uncovered in the new building, and divided the circle into pieces. Those pieces represent its new office, its former office, the courthouse and John Lewis statue, and the MARTA-and-restaurant corridor. Many brands say they are rooted. Lenz drew the roots.
This does not make Lenz the right agency for every company. A consumer brand seeking a global celebrity machine may want a different scale. A business that needs only a cheap execution vendor may resent the discovery. And a healthcare operator unwilling to expose performance data would collide with the agency's stated emphasis on accountability. Lenz makes the most sense when the problem crosses channels, the subject carries consequences, and the client wants a partner close enough to notice the homemade sign.
Follow the work
The quickest way to understand the company is to move between its healthcare practice, its cases, and the local work unfolding outside its window.