See How She Runs

How did CAP Creative, a full-service advertising agency transplanted in 2004 from the Green Mountains of Vermont, open its doors here with just one client, and within 28 months grow an enviable client portfolio full of some of the Sarasota-Manatee business community's heaviest hitters?

Owner and president Roxanne Joffe's first response isn't all that startling. The key, she says, is being "100 percent focused on customer service"-that and round-the-clock hours, a booming region full of possibilities and a marketing approach that takes a big-picture look at what makes some companies name brands and others forgettable flops. "I like to say we're not media brokers, we're business builders," she says. "It's not just about us buying media for a client. We look at everything, from how the business answers the phones to what their office looks like."

CAP also concentrates on looking at what the end user wants-which sometimes means the client's vision is secondary to the process.

These strategies have yielded results, helping CAP and Joffe's team of eight employees win an impressive 40 local advertising industry awards in two years-including 21 ADDY awards in 2006 alone-and to capture important local and national clients. Gross revenues for 2007 are estimated at $5 million.

The campaign that put CAP on the local map was the "I'm an Original" campaign for the Sarasota-Manatee Originals (www.freshoriginals.com), a group of local, independent restaurants that joined together to form Florida's first chapter of the Council of Independent Restaurants of America (CIRA).

Don Luria, president of Tucson, Ariz.-based DineOriginals, the trademarked brand for CIRA, liked the campaign so much that the national organization also decided to work with CAP. "We felt that what they [CAP] did was very effective, that they did their homework and looked at focus groups," Luria says. In the past year and a half, Luria says, "They've done very well for us."