The Shipyard Runs Marketing Like an Engineering Problem
The Columbus agency behind In-N-Out's growth run wants to build brands people love - and prove it with numbers. Its bet: creativity and data belong on the same team.
Most agencies quietly pick a side. There are the creative shops, the ones who win the awards and make the ads people actually remember. And there are the performance shops, the ones who live inside dashboards and can tell you the cost of every click. The Shipyard, an independent agency headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, was built on the stubborn idea that the split is a false one - that you can chase the feeling and the number at the same time, and that doing so is less like art and more like engineering.
The agency even has a name for it: marketing engineering. In plain terms, it means keeping brand strategy, creative, media buying, data science, in-house production, and public relations under a single roof, on the same team, working the same problem. The company's own line for the ambition is blunter. "We don't just chase impressions," it says. "We build brands that leave one."
01Brand love, treated as a system
The Shipyard describes itself as a full-service marketing and communications agency built around five capabilities: brand strategy and identity; creative and campaign development; media and performance marketing; digital experience and innovation; and public relations and reputation management. What separates it from a traditional agency org chart is the refusal to silo those functions. A strategist, a data scientist, and a media buyer are meant to sit close enough to argue.
That structure is the whole pitch. Emotional resonance gets you noticed; full-funnel performance turns attention into growth. The Shipyard's argument is that treating those as separate departments - one to make you feel something, another to make you buy - leaves value on the table. Build the system once, and the creative and the analytics reinforce each other instead of competing for budget.
02The Double-Double
The most-cited proof point in the agency's story is a hamburger chain. The Shipyard's work is tied to roughly 400% sales growth for In-N-Out Burger over three years - a run the agency likes to call, with the obvious wink, a "Double-Double." It is exactly the kind of number a performance shop would put on a slide, attached to exactly the kind of beloved brand a creative shop would kill to have on the reel. That combination is the point.
In-N-Out sales index, illustrative
The roster around that fry story is deliberately wide. For Visit California, the agency's tourism work has been tied to large year-over-year growth in ad-influenced travel spending. Elsewhere the client list runs from Nationwide and American Electric Power to Scotts Miracle-Gro, natural-skincare brand Weleda, the Ohio Lottery, logistics-automation firm Swisslog, and electric-air-taxi startup Joby Aviation. Fries to sunscreen to flying cars is an unusual spread, and it is the clearest evidence that the "system" is meant to be category-agnostic.
03The client on the other side of the table
The Shipyard sells to marketers who are tired of choosing. Its natural customer is the CMO or brand lead at a mid-to-large company who wants the creative firepower of a name shop but has a finance team asking for attribution and ROI. The agency serves both B2C and B2B - CPG and retail, tourism and economic development, financial services, energy, technology, healthcare, and logistics - and has built out an explicit ecommerce and D2C practice for consumer brands chasing direct growth.
That last piece is where the LinkedIn title in this file fits: the agency runs a dedicated eCommerce practice, a signal that "performance" here isn't only upper-funnel media theatre but also the unglamorous work of conversion, retention, and revenue.
04Buy the shop, keep the founder
The Shipyard's founder, Rick Milenthal, built the agency after his previous company, Engauge, was acquired by Publicis Groupe. Rather than sell into a holding company again, he grew this one by acquisition while staying independent - and, notably, by keeping the founders of the shops he bought.
In 2020, the parent company acquired Sacramento's Mering, and its founder Dave Mering became vice chairman. Design studio Turner Duckworth and innovation shop TinyWins joined the group. Then in 2024 came the biggest move: the acquisition of Fahlgren Mortine, at the time the reigning PRSA national Public Relations Agency of the Year, whose leadership stayed in place and whose CEO, Neil Mortine, was named a vice chairman. That deal pushed the combined company to roughly $350 million in billings, about 400 people, and around 10 offices.
05Independent, and funding the run
The business model is a familiar one dressed in integration: fees, retainers, and media commissions across strategy, creative, media, analytics, production, and PR. What's less familiar is the financing. Public records point to a $80 million convertible note in mid-2025, part of a reported total of about $167 million raised - unusual for an agency, and a sign that the acquisition engine is being deliberately fueled rather than left to organic growth alone.
06The independent bet
The Shipyard occupies an increasingly rare slot: an independent of real scale in a market being consolidated by holding companies and by tech-forward challengers like Media.Monks. Its competition runs from creative-led independents (Wieden+Kennedy, Mekanism, 72andSunny) to media specialists (Horizon Media) to the network agencies inside Publicis and Omnicom - and, always, to the in-house teams that brands keep building. The differentiator it leans on is the one in its name for the discipline: full integration, sold as engineering rather than as a menu of services.
Whether "marketing engineering" is a genuine operating model or a well-packaged positioning is the fair question. The agency's answer is its results and its recognition - an Adweek Fastest Growing Agency, a two-time Campaign world's-top-independent, a 2025 Effie winner - and a client roster that keeps agreeing to test the theory.