We’ve had a strong couple of days for our trophy shelf. EAG Advertising & Marketing was named one of the KC Chamber’s 2026 Top 10 Small Businesses. And now we’ve been named a Kansas City Business Journal 2026 Champions of Business honoree. Do we love a little outside validation? Sure. Sounds about right.
But let’s be clear: we did not build this agency to collect plaques. We built it to do work that actually moves the needle. The awards are just the receipts.
And we’ve got the receipts:
- KC Chamber’s 2026 Top 10 Small Businesses
- Kansas City Business Journal 2026 Champions of Business
- Ingram’s Magazine Best Places to Work
- Numerous Gold honors from Nonprofit Connect’s Philly Awards for nonprofit marketing and communications work
- Several Fountain and Ambit awards for marketing campaign excellence, website design, creative design and data-driven marketing
- Recognition in Kansas City Business Journal lists, including Top Fractional Executive Service Companies and 1,500 Largest Private-Sector Employers
- CEO Michele Markham received the Enterprising Women Diamond Legacy Award and was selected as an Advocacy Meeting Captain at the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices Summit in Washington, D.C.
- Michele was also named to Ingram’s Kansas City Top 25 Women Executives
- Chief Client Services Officer Angela Ridpath graduated from the KC Chamber Centurions Leadership Program
- Kansas City Agency of the Year
Why this keeps happening
Here’s the part that matters. And it’s the part you don’t always see in a headline.
- It’s the way our team shows up for clients when things aren’t straightforward.
- It’s the way we take care of each other when the pace gets real.
- It’s the extra push, the follow-through, the details not always seen, but everyone feels.
And recognition like Kansas City Agency of the Year and Ingram’s Magazine Best Places to Work are the result of our culture – which also comes with benefits. In the marketing industry, the average client-agency tenure has dropped to less than three years but EAG significantly outperforms this benchmark. Our average client tenure is 5.41 years, almost double the industry norm. At the time of this blog, 56% of our clients have been with us more than three years. Even more impressive, 19% of our clients have partnered with us for a decade or longer. This mirrors our employee tenure, which is 5.7 years, spanning all four current working generations.
Recognition like this is just a reflection of the standard we’ve set and our refusal to stop raising it. The next step is always harder, and it only happens if we commit to holding that standard for ourselves and for each other.
The bottom line
We’ll take the recognition. We’ll toast it. Then we’ll get back to what actually matters. Because the hardware is not the win. The win is the work that earned it.
All Hustle. No Hype.