The interesting thing about an ampersand is that it refuses to finish a sentence. It promises another item, another thought, another person at the table. For an advertising agency, this is either an excellent name or a dangerous one. The punctuation keeps asking for more.
Yes& has spent eight years answering it. The agency began in 2018 when three Washington-area firms - PCI Communications, LeapFrog Solutions, and Carousel30 - combined. Together they had about 55 people and a simple diagnosis: clients were spending too much effort coordinating niche providers. The new firm would put video, events, government outreach, branding, websites, and digital marketing behind one door.
Then the door kept getting wider. Lipman Hearne brought higher education and philanthropy. CommCore brought cameras, coaching, and the uncomfortable art of preparing executives for a crisis. Beacon Digital brought performance marketing for cybersecurity, fintech, and software. Williams Whittle brought five decades of nonprofit work. Hothouse brought consumer creative and Atlanta. Symmetri brought technical B2B. Metaleap brought design. Modo Modo brought more B2B strategy and a client list fluent in healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and technology.
01 / The original nuisance
Full service is usually a menu. Here, it is the plot.
Most agencies describe themselves by listing capabilities until the commas give up. Yes& is more revealing when described by the annoyances it removes. A government campaign may require audience research, procurement fluency, bilingual creative, paid media, public relations, a website, and an event. A university fundraising campaign may require a brand platform, donor research, a film, social content, and a road show. The client does not experience these as departments. The client experiences one problem.
That is where Yes& sits in the market: between the giant holding-company network and the collection of boutiques. It is privately held and independent, but broad enough to pitch integrated national work. Its customers range from FEMA and the U.S. State Department to Mercedes-Benz, IHG, Pirelli, Disney, Pfizer, the Smithsonian, universities, associations, and nonprofits. The common feature is not sector. It is complexity - regulated markets, technical products, layered constituencies, or missions that cannot be reduced to a clever line.
02 / The acquisition machine
Buy the knowledge that cannot be improvised
The agency did not ask one generalist team to wake up fluent in federal procurement, dental workflows, university advancement, cybersecurity buyers, hotel loyalty programs, and crisis interviews. It bought firms already carrying those calluses. Chairman Jeb Brown has described the filter plainly: culturally compatible teams that add capabilities and diversify the client mix.
The ampersand gets crowded
Lipman Hearne - higher education, philanthropy, nonprofits
CommCore - media training and crisis communications
Beacon · Williams Whittle · Hothouse - B2B performance, nonprofit expertise, consumer creative
Symmetri · Metaleap · Modo Modo - technical B2B, design, growth strategy
The patient part is easy to miss. Lipman Hearne joined in 2022, but its name did not disappear until April 2026. Four years is a long goodbye in a business addicted to launch announcements. It suggests that integration was treated as work, not typography: combine the services, share the clients, preserve the reputation, and only then change the sign.
“Ever since I heard the name Yes& I knew there was something special about this company.”Zihla Salinas, on becoming CEO in 2025
Salinas inherited the operator's version of the ampersand. She had led U.S. operations and global marketing at ENGINE and had run Trailer Park Group. At Yes&, her brief includes organic growth, new business, acquisitions, creative development, and the less photogenic task of making all those nouns share a system.
03 / Evidence, not adjectives
The work gets interesting when the metric has a story
For USAging, the obstacle was vaccine fatigue among older adults and people with disabilities. Yes& reframed vaccination as a way to preserve independence, not merely avoid risk. The “You've Got This” campaign equipped more than 88 local partners with bilingual materials. It produced more than 455 million impressions and drove over 74,700 users to the website through paid media.
For the Smithsonian, the agency built a preview tour for a fundraising campaign. Across nine cities, more than 1,350 people encountered over 75 branded touchpoints. For CGI Federal, Yes& combined geofenced digital placements, out-of-home media, and mission-specific video in federal markets. The agency reports a 48 percent click-through rate for the digital work and millions of outdoor impressions.
The numbers are not directly comparable, and that is the point. An integrated agency is not selling one repeated unit. Sometimes the job is mass reach. Sometimes it is getting 1,350 valuable people into the right rooms. Sometimes it is making an enterprise software platform understandable with an interactive slider. The measurable outcome changes because the actual problem changes.
04 / The useful copy
The seam is the product
There is a playbook here, but it is narrower than “buy companies.” First, acquire adjacency: a skill current clients already need, not a random source of revenue. Second, keep the people who carry the tacit knowledge. Third, let integration take enough time that the old firm's trust is not squandered for a new logo. Fourth, show the handoff in the work. Research should change the creative; creative should survive contact with media; media results should change the next round.
Buy a practiced specialty
A portfolio page is not expertise. Look for teams with repeat clients, field-specific language, and operating habits.
Integrate on client time
Retire legacy names after the service model works, not simply because the transaction closed.
Count the handoffs
If the client becomes the traffic manager between acquired groups, the promise has reversed itself.
Do not confuse breadth with demand
The model earns its cost only when clients genuinely need several disciplines and value one accountable partner.
The model becomes less persuasive for a narrow assignment with a fixed craft, where a small specialist may be faster and cheaper. It also weakens when acquisition pace outruns shared process, or when the parent company sands away the very expertise it bought. An agency collection is not an integrated agency merely because every invoice has the same logo.
Yes&'s bet is that independence and scale do not have to be opposites. Its history begins before the name - the company lists 1986 as its founding year - but the modern experiment began with that 2018 merger. Every acquisition since has added another unfinished clause. The punctuation is still asking for more. The harder and more useful question is whether the client can feel the conjunction.