In advertising, longevity is normally treated as a trophy. Agencies boast about the year on the door, the campaigns in the archive, the client who has been around since fax machines. WB Marketing had all of that. Its family tree began with Waters Advertising in 1960, passed through Top Line Marketing and Waters & Bridgman Marketing Solutions, and eventually arrived at two neat initials. Then, after 64 years of accumulated recognition, the company did the impolite thing: it retired the name.
That ending is more interesting than the usual agency origin story because WB Marketing did not collapse or drift away. It expanded. Five Hill Capital acquired the business in July 2020. Jean Matacunas became its owner and CEO, moved it from Newport News to Norfolk, and pushed an established advertising shop further into digital marketing, web development, search, video and brand strategy. By 2023, WB Marketing had eight employees and more than 30 clients. It was small enough to be intimate and broad enough to make the phrase “full service” plausible.
Its customers were the civic and commercial patchwork of Hampton Roads: the City of Norfolk, Virginia Health Services, The Breeden Company and Virginia Opera, alongside Manassas, SPAR, funeral homes, designers and professional-services firms. They came for the recurring headache that produces most agency revenue: too many channels, too few internal hands and no desire to coordinate a strategist, designer, web developer, media buyer and video crew separately.
The company that became its own client
The most consequential campaign WB Marketing managed was itself. In March 2023, Five Hill Capital acquired a majority interest in Meridian Group, a Virginia Beach agency founded 43 years earlier. Meridian brought 23 employees, more than 25 clients, and deeper public relations and traditional media experience. WB brought a rebuilt digital and creative operation. On paper, the arithmetic was tidy: more people, more disciplines, two offices and a claim to being the largest full-service agency serving Southeast Virginia.
The arithmetic was also the easy part. Creative companies sell judgment, and judgment lives inside people who have preferences about meetings, feedback, deadlines and which shade of green is obviously wrong. Merge two agencies too quickly and the assets you meant to buy can walk out carrying laptops.
Waters Advertising opensThe Hampton Roads agency begins the lineage that will eventually become WB Marketing.
A new owner and a Norfolk moveFive Hill Capital acquires the predecessor business and Matacunas rebuilds it as WB Marketing.
Meridian joinsA majority-interest acquisition combines an eight-person agency with a 23-person firm.
The names come downThe integrated operation moves under one roof and launches as Qantm Creative in July.
A leadership handoffNicole Newsome becomes CEO; Matacunas remains owner and moves into an advisory role.
The first fragile thing was chemistry
WB Marketing and Meridian spent more than a year behaving like one company before insisting that everybody call them one. The staffs worked on presentations together. They spent time learning one another's habits. Most memorably, they took personality tests, not as a bit of corporate horoscope, but as a map for how to communicate. One employee's brisk efficiency could look like another's indifference. The test gave them a less personal explanation.
“We paced our move because we didn't want to risk losing people by moving too quickly.”Jean Matacunas
The office mattered too. Instead of crowning one legacy team by moving the other into its territory, the combined staff took a fresh space at 427 Granby Street. Neutral ground made the new identity physical. It also gave leadership a chance to stage the transition rather than dump new colleagues, new systems and a new commute on the same Monday morning.
This is the useful part to copy. Let people rehearse collaboration on real work. Make communication differences discussable. Give a combined team a place that belongs to neither predecessor. And allow enough time for the new behavior to become boring before the launch party makes it look inevitable.
Co-create the new brand. Participation turns a name change into evidence of shared ownership.
Practice on live work. Joint presentations expose friction while the stakes are still manageable.
Move the humans gently. A faster integration is worthless if the people who made the deal attractive leave.
It is not a universal recipe. It needs complementary skills, leaders willing to surrender home-field advantage and enough financial room to run an integration for a year. A distressed agency with three months of cash cannot imitate the pacing. Nor will a neutral office rescue a deal in which the buyer secretly wants obedience rather than collaboration.
What the bundle actually sold
WB Marketing sat between a specialist studio and a national holding-company agency. A client could buy a brand identity, annual report or website, then keep the same account relationship for search marketing, geofencing, social ads, television, print and analytics. After Meridian, that menu gained more public relations, media and production depth. The alternative was either a narrower local shop or the overhead of coordinating several vendors.
Think
Research, positioning, campaign planning and marketing strategy.
Make
Brand systems, graphic design, copy, video and print.
Build
Website design, development, management and SEO.
Place
Digital, social, programmatic, television, radio and print media.
Explain
Public relations, content, events and brand storytelling.
Measure
Analytics, search performance, engagement and lead generation.
The business model was correspondingly ordinary and durable: project fees and retainers. WB Marketing never published a rate card. One unusual glimpse comes from public filings by SPAR, whose chief executive was married to Matacunas and whose relationship with WB Marketing was disclosed as a related-party transaction. SPAR reported paying the agency $103,000 in 2023 and $104,000 in 2024. That is one client, not company revenue, but it puts a useful number beside the phrase “full service.”
A rare public price tag
Annual service fees disclosed by one client. The Meridian acquisition price was not disclosed.
Awards are receipts, not the plot
WB Marketing had conventional proof of craft. Four 2022 Graphic Design USA awards covered four different jobs: an annual report for Manassas Economic Development, an advertising campaign for Breeden Construction, and websites for Virginia Health Services and SPAR. The agency reported four more GDUSA wins in 2023, including Breeden's website redesign. The range matters more than the trophy count. Municipal reporting, construction marketing, healthcare and a global corporate site do not share an obvious visual vocabulary. The agency's product was the ability to change dialect without losing the sentence.
A good ending leaves forwarding instructions
In July 2024, WB Marketing and Meridian became Qantm Creative. The name tried to hold the combined premise in one word: advertising as art, strategy as science. The old WB website now redirects there. In late 2025, Nicole Newsome, who had led digital marketing at WB and played a central role in the merger, succeeded Matacunas as CEO. Matacunas remained owner and became an adviser.
So WB Marketing no longer exists as a storefront brand, but it did not vanish. Its people, clients, phone number, Norfolk address and capabilities continued under the new sign. This is what succession can look like when a company values the institution more than its initials. The name did its job for a time. Then the agency's last piece of brand advice to itself was to let it go.