Richmond United Launches New Era for Youth Soccer with Dotted Line Agency Partnership
Richmond’s youth soccer scene just got a major boost with the unification of the Richmond Strikers and Richmond Kickers under the new Richmond United brand and relaunch from Dotted Line Agency. This collaboration promises to elevate youth athletics across the region and on the national stage with a fresh vision and impactful identity. Read more about our exciting partnership and its bright future in the Richmond Times-Dispatch article.
A Look Back. A Step Forward: DLA’s 2024 Impact Report
As we dive into the new year and reacquaint ourselves with the flurry of emails, meetings, and new goals, we’d like to pause for just a moment. Before we charge ahead, let’s make one final toast to our clients, our partners, and our incredible team.
Here’s to making 2024 a milestone year for DLA. For the late nights and early mornings. For the weekend emails and the calls taken from cars, airports, and sidelines. For the moments when you pushed the work to be better, when you challenged each other with gratitude and respect, and when you trusted us to help bring your vision to life.
This past year was special. It marked 10 years since Dotted Line partnered with its very first client in 2014.
From those humble beginnings as a team of one, we’ve grown into a full-service, high-touch agency. The journey has been as much about embracing challenges as it has been about celebrating wins, and 2024 was no different.
We invested in our team, enhancing leadership and client service capabilities to ensure we’re always meeting the unique needs of those we serve. Through campaigns and high-impact marketing programs, we achieved results that reflect the exceptional talent and dedication of our team.
Together, we’ve built momentum.
And that momentum is captured in our 2024 Agency Impact Report. This report isn’t just about numbers or milestones – it’s about the shared vision that drives everything we do. It’s about the partnerships that continue to grow stronger and the ideas that make a difference. It’s about our commitment to innovation, excellence, and sustainable growth.
To everyone who’s been part of this journey, thank you. Your trust and support are what make Dotted Line what it is today. Take a moment to explore our 2024 Impact Report. We hope it inspires you as much as the year inspired us.
Here’s to 2025 and the stories we’ll create together!
Twist Broadband Taps Dotted Line Agency to Help Free Cable Customers from Bad Wi-Fi
Are you tired of dealing with hidden fees, slow Wi-Fi, and horrible customer service associated with traditional wired internet providers? Twist Broadband, a startup that aims to revolutionize the home internet experience, hears you. They have partnered with the creative minds at Dotted Line Agency to deliver a playful yet powerful marketing campaign that personifies the frustrations associated with outdated cable internet services and positions Twist as the superior internet provider.
Meet the Cable Snake: The Friendly Villain You’ll Love to Hate
At the heart of the campaign is the Cable Snake, a mischievous and humorous villain that wreaks havoc on its customers by sneaking in hidden fees, constricting speeds, and slithering away when there are problems.
Ron Villacarillo, Head of Creative at Dotted Line Agency, shares the inspiration behind the character: “We knew we had to take on big cable companies, so we created a playful villain that came straight from the source. A coaxial cable naturally looks like a snake, so we made it represent everything wrong with the current cable internet experience.”
While the Cable Snake causes chaos, Twist enters as the champion of hassle-free Wi-Fi, rescuing consumers from the grip of cable monopolies with a promise of Wi-Fi that goes “above and beyond.”
AI-Powered “Cable Horror Stories” Bring Frustration to Life
In addition to the Cable Snake, Twist’s campaign dives deeper into the nightmares of cable internet service with “Cable Horror Stories”—a series of videos that dramatize real customer experiences. Using AI tools, Dotted Line brings online reviews of cable companies to life with visuals and sound designs that intensify the horror and remind viewers why it is time to cut the cable.
Break Free from Bad Wi-Fi
With its blend of humor and truth, Dotted Line delivers a campaign with a bold message: It’s time to leave cable behind. Twist is paving the way for a new era of home internet, one in which customers don’t have to struggle to have trustworthy internet service.
In our latest interview featured on LBBOnline, DLA’s Head of Creative, Ron Villacarillo explores the dynamic relationship between agencies and their clients when it comes to creative ideation. While agencies bring expertise and strategic thinking to the table, some of the best and most innovative ideas often originate from the clients themselves. By fostering a collaborative environment, we can harness their clients’ unique perspectives, leading to campaigns that resonate more deeply and authentically.
Curious to learn more about Ron’s perspective on how client collaboration can drive creativity?
Ron Villacarillo Named Head of Creative at Dotted Line Agency
Independent, award-winning marketing agency Dotted Line has hired ad agency veteran creative leader Ron Villacarillo as Head of Creative. Villacarillo reports directly to Lauren Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Dotted Line.
Villacarillo brings a wealth of experience, having worked with agencies nationwide, shaping brands from Fortune 100 companies to non-profits. His diverse portfolio reflects his deep industry understanding. While his background is in visual storytelling, he takes pride in collaborating with teams to discover and express the soul of a brand through any medium. He believes in creating work that is authentic, entertaining, and culturally resonant.
“I’ve watched Lauren and Dotted Line grow since their early days as an agency, consistently impressed by their tenacity and evolution. I’m thrilled to unite our efforts, aiming to enhance creative excellence and ensure ongoing success, said Ron.”
DLA earns Bronze Award from Advertising Club of Richmond
Honored to share that our rebrand work for Shades of Light has earned us a bronze award in the Design category at this year’s Richmond Show! It’s humbling to stand among such creative giants in the Richmond community. Thank you Advertising Club of Richmond. Massive thanks to Shades of Light for trusting us with their vision, and to our team whose dedication brought it to life!
A big congratulations to the team and to our clients as DLA takes home a gold, a bronze, and three merit awards at the Healthcare Digital Marketing Awards. Thank you to all of the many people involved in making work that gets notices—work that works.
Tech Partners Podcast: Interview with Lauren Sweeney
Our CEO and Founder Lauren Sweeney spoke about what she brings as “Something Extra” to this podcast from our friends at Technology Partners. Host Lisa Nichols – and Technology Partners CEO – interviews to share their stories and show us what it takes to influence, encourage, and be a true leader in our daily lives.
Optimize your marketing efforts and watch your ROI increase
Every successful company focuses on attracting new customers or deepening relationships with its existing customers. One critical way to do that is with effective marketing – of your product, your service or your people.
But are you spending enough time and energy analyzing your data? Your aim is to determine if you’re getting the best return on your marketing spend. We see it time and time again: Marketing teams think it’s easy to pluck that out of a sea of data, but they jump in without knowing what they truly need to look for.
Here’s why 83% of marketing leaders at top companies say it’s hard: The information you need to gauge marketing efficacy often requires culling a combination of data points and, perhaps, their interrelationships. For example, you might see overall stagnant sales, but a deeper dive might reveal an uptick with a new product or in a geographic region. You need to peel back another layer to understand what’s driving those gains and assess how you might apply learnings to replicate that performance in another product line or market.
A results-oriented business recognizes that marketing drives the company toward immediate and stretch goals. But your leaders need to look beyond why marketing is important to how it plays a part across your enterprise. From the initial business strategy to onboarding a new client, you find a marketing expectation – and opportunity.
Connected data points point you in the right direction
Integrating and understanding the impact of your marketing efforts across your organization creates levers that you can push and pull to make meaningful change. That’s because you now are analyzing the data to know precisely what’s working – and, even more importantly, what’s not, because that is wasting marketing dollars, which nearly 40% of companies today have reported experiencing.
With these new insights in hands:
1. Understand your consumer’s journey.
Our previous post spoke about the importance of a research-based consumer journey, which helps you set up different marketing tactics that support every stage of that buying experience. Research-based insights provide a solid foundation for future decision-making.
2. Create paths that drive sales.
You must dig into that data to ensure you’re capturing the right information that can point you to the right actions. Make sure you understand the impact of your marketing activity across earned, paid and owned across the various stages: awareness, interest, consideration and purchase.
3. Calculate ROI by mapping conversions.
You’re looking for the bottom line on your marketing efforts. Weigh how much you spend against the volume of business growth to determine how much each new customer costs you. The better you tell your company’s brand story and promote your product, the higher your return on your marketing investment. Of course, other factors come into play – the uniqueness and demand for your product and the caliber of your sales team, just to name a couple – but conducting these simple exercises on a set frequency will help you map trends over time.
When you break down your sales processes into what your prospect experiences at each moment, you can develop tailored marketing that serves up exactly what they need to take the next step forward. You also can then go back to your performance data to break down what tactics are working and where you can make your limited marketing dollars work more for you.
Many of the clients we serve are growing in midmarket status, with burgeoning full-spectrum marketing programs in step with their organization’s growth. The more you grow, the more pressure they face to improve your ROI. With larger marketing budgets come large risks – and rewards, which is where we prefer to focus. With every new creative campaign, we return to the analytics, as we help businesses align your customer’s journey and marketing touchpoints to quickly close gaps and seize opportunities to maximize your spend.
How the right teams help you reach your marketing growth goals faster
By Lauren Sweeney
Emerging companies often focus on developing a silver-bullet marketing approach or a proprietary process or product to help sell – important elements in the scaling journey of a business. But many of those companies fail to invest energy or resources into where ideation starts.
An effective marketing formula draws in both art and science. Creating engaging ideas that grab attention or educate customers about your offer begins with expertise before you even start thinking about those concepts. Many different disciplines come together to create this magic formula.
When you partner with an agency, you’re not partnering with a business: You’re partnering with talent who possesses refined, specific skills. This talent, when built for the right team and challenge at hand, is poised to deliver great creativity, which, in turn, generates results. And the best agencies hire top talent, which is a core ingredient of their success.
Dotted Line takes this one step further because we’re in invested in your growth to drive our growth. Our model starts by having the right A-level talent engaged in a business problem up front to develop work that makes a measurable impact on your business.
But talent is only part of the equation. We also bring together the right “fit” of team members, who demonstrate positive energy and shared values. Then we give them the freedom to do what they’re great at: shine for our clients.
How effective are your marketing teams?
We believe you should start with your people and how they work together, peeling back the layers to understand what energy is going into your marketing efforts. After all, consumers ultimately buy into stories and momentum above all else. Forming and nurturing high-performing teams with design, branding, and content experts – who care as much about the business impact as the creative output – is the first step.
But you need to keep digging, by asking yourself questions to analyze your marketing team’s performance:
Does your team understand the global picture of what you are working to accomplish? In simplest terms, do they get it?
Does your team buy into and work under the same shared values?
Do you see healthy working dynamics, such as collaboration and communication?
Is the development of your marketing pieces flowing seamlessly across the team? Or do things always seem to be coming off the rails at the handoffs?
Do your weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports show forward progress?
Partnering to hit shared goals
Our niche at Dotted Line is working with emerging companies, many of whom likely have growing in-house marketing teams. We come in as a partner to augment those internal capabilities, as we work together to reach your business goals more quickly.
To us, having high-performing teams both within our client and agency is the secret sauce that positions your brand to lead your business in growth.