Top Marketing Communications Firms in the Federal Government
As another fiscal year comes to a close, GrowthLab is proud to present our annual list of marketing communications leaders in the federal space. These rankings include the top 100 marketing communications firms based on FY2023 data for prime, unclassified contracts awarded across all U.S. federal agencies.
In addition to our industry-wide rankings, we highlight the firms making the biggest moves over the past year in terms of new contract value captured. We also take an in-depth look at some of the small business leaders primed for continued growth in the public sector.
Download the full report here.
Here is the video from the webinar where the GL100 was unveiled.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
We're going to talk about the methodology. There's a specific methodology that we followed on this, which is going to impact the rankings quite a bit, so wanted to make sure that everybody's clear on the methodology and what's in what's out, etc. We're going to talk about the biggest movers. We've got a lot of companies new to the list this year. We've got a lot of shakeup of companies that fell out of the list and companies that saw some really good growth. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the top 100 companies. We've got a bunch of slides on 10 at a time that we're going to talk about quickly, and then we're going to talk about the top companies by socioeconomic designation. We've got the top three woman owned large businesses, small business, HUBZones, etc. on all of that.
So we're going to highlight and spotlight some of those companies. We're going to talk about some insights, and then we are going to have a q and a, really hoping to have active discussion in the q and a. But that said, let's focus on the macro environment and not any company specific as I want to be mindful of conflicts and having data and everything else accessible. So we'll close out with the q and a. So real quickly, you probably know Tommy and myself, partners at GrowthLab. Hopefully you've been receiving the emails from us on all things marketing communications. If you don't know who we are, nice to meet you. Would love to hear from you and would love to meet some new faces as we go. And throughout the years. And for everybody else, I'm seeing a lot of very familiar names and faces on the Zoom here.
So very, very good to have everybody join. So real quick on the methodology, what this report focuses on is prime contract dollars obligated. We don't necessarily, we're not tracking the one and a half billion dollars IDIQ that a company got on. We're actually looking at task orders that were obligated in funds. So prime contract dollars and also not subcontract dollars as it's really hard to see subcontract dollars. We're really focusing on marketing communications makes codes, so none of these should be surprises. 541613, 541810, 541820, 541830, etc. The one big caveat on this is 541611, in which there is some marketing communications work on that is excluded from the list as it's really difficult to cipher communications. Non communications task orders on 541611. So that'll be maybe the biggest driver. If you're looking at some of the prime contract dollars that we're showing in future slides or seeing where and how other companies stacked up, if there is a large amount of 541611, those are not accounted for.
But 541820, 541830, 541613, which is where the dominance of the dollars is included. We did remove companies that are not primarily focused on marketing communications. So General Dynamics, GDIT has quite a bit of communications work throughout. We removed them and 40 other companies from the top 100. We also did combine revenues in the event of a known merger acquisition. We didn't count for all mergers and acquisitions since many of those are private transactions, which we might not be aware of, but many of them are. So in 2022, we saw Marcom and LMD, we saw Hatcher Group and Horne Creative. So a lot of those as well as the big acquisition in 2023 Fors Marsh and Brunet Garcia, those are accounted for and those are combined revenues. When we look at those company dollars. We also consolidated companies under their parent company. As we all know, there's quite a few holding companies dominating the space, and they all have 2, 3, 4, 5 agencies operating under their holding company umbrella.
For example, Ketchum, Porter Novelli rolled up under Omnicom Weber, Shandwick, FCB, Mullin Lowe, et cetera, rolled up under Interpublic Group on down the line. So consolidated companies under their parent company. And then lastly, we leveraged open market non GSA classifications to determine size and designations. We had to go to some objective source. So that was our objective source. So getting past all of the methodology, the observations from 2023, we saw a lot of good stuff, stable spending, looking at the last three years, five years even marketing communication space has really been somewhat stable. It's all yielding about two and a quarter, two and a half billion dollars worth of spend on those next codes that we saw earlier. So at a macro level, it's really stable, it's consistent, it's off by just a hundred, $200,000 from 2022. Where we saw the big differences in spending though in 23 was really on agency specific.
So Army went up largely as Army recruitment and some of the other things CMS went up with some of their large healthcare enrollment, healthcare.gov contracts. And then one could also assume that NIH went down as the big aspa COVID-19 contract fell off the map in 23. So NIH spending by and large went down. But across the board, stable spending across we're, we're going to talk in a slider to a pretty big shift that we saw in subcontracting to prime contracting. There were a couple companies that were really, well-known really strong subcontractors making their way into winning some prime contracts. So that's been shaking up the competitive space a little bit, which is exciting to see. We're going to talk about continued contracting preferences and the continued use of BPAs, IDIQs, GWAC, etc. and then talk about largest finding ways to compete. No secret that this is a small business preferred contracting environment. So that's not to say that large businesses aren't winning their fair share because they certainly are, but there's certain things that they're doing which we'll cover as well. So Tommy, you want to take this one?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I think one of the things that we saw, like Mike just mentioned, that we saw some of the companies kind of coming out of traditionally being more in a subcontracting role, moving in touch into more of a prime role. So obviously Culture one World, they were a pretty heavy hitter on the subcontracting side with census. They kind of popped out and instead the Prime role. The other one that I really thought was interesting was Arrow Arc. So Arrow Arc is so the mentor protege joint venture with Aptive Resources and with Artemis Arc, and they hit the ground running very quickly and started winning work really fast right off the bat. So it's really, really seeing new companies starting to hit the hit the GL100, some of these are familiar Rock Creek has been around for a while, but they're kind of back on the list.
Speaker 1:
So no secret that small business contracting is the new norm. We're seeing a lot of large businesses see their contracts go from full and open to small business set aside. And if we look historically sort of at the larger contracts, a few years ago, I remember when the FEMA NFIP program, $112 million give or take, went small business, that was sort of a big thing in 2023, we saw quite a bit of very large communications contracts go up. So Census Digital Communications, couple hundred million dollars, and then this one was the NASA $217 million contract that PCI productions won. Cool thing about that one is if you start given that that's so much labor versus pass through media dollars, if you look at that, that's really a top five contract based on labor or anticipated fee that rivals any of the top contracts at any of the holding companies have just looking at fee per year. So pretty cool to see on that. But continued thirst for small businesses.
Speaker 2:
And I think just want to reiterate that we thought that was really interesting when we broke down the way that contract was structured. I mean when we ran the numbers on that, just kind of ballparking, I mean it actually stacks up like Mike said in the top 25. So even the large military recruitment contracts from a fee standpoint and labor standpoint, this is actually stacking right up against them, which is pretty cool.
Yeah, so again, everyone is seeing this. I think this is no surprise to anyone as we're continuing to see streamlining on the acquisition standpoint, the government is really focusing on best in class vehicles, multiple work contracts. We're seeing even contracts that we had seen traditionally that had been standalone, that had been standalone for a while. We're starting to see some of these move to these best in class vehicles. So obviously the ones I think all of you guys are familiar with, NIH picks three, well picks two, but we're waiting on picks three. The CDC health marketing services, BPA and then the CMS National Education campaign. So I mean this is not going away. I think originally when they started trying to move to these best in class vehicles, there were some bumps a little bit that were some contracting officers. They weren't as happy with it, they didn't like working within the confines of it, but that seems to have gone away for the most part. We're seeing, I mean occasionally we've seen a couple pop out that were originally in one of these best in class vehicles, but for the most part we're seeing more go in than come out. And so it does seem like this is kind of the move is going to best in class vehicles. It's not going away and it seems to be accelerating.
And then the other, we've talked a little bit about this already. So we've mentioned it's a large, competing is small. I mean everyone knows that I'm a huge proponent of the SBA mentor protege program. It's no secret. But I think that when Mike and I started with Growth Lab, let's see, four and a half, five years ago that we did not see very many of these at all. So originally, I mean we saw a few, just a handful, but it was really kind of from the Marcom side, we just did not see nearly as many mentor proteges. But lately it's been kind of spinning up and I think, so originally there was Ogilvy and EFK and that was kind of like it from the larger companies. We just didn't really see very many more of these. But now there's about 20 of these right now of the mentor protege joint ventures within marcom space.
We've actually facilitated probably about two thirds of those, which is really cool. We're really, really proud of that. I really love this program and getting companies set to compete in this. We're starting to see more holding companies move toward this finally. And then also some of the companies that have sized out recently within the last few years have definitely picked up and really, really focused and went all in on this mental protege thing. So I think this is really cool. It is a direction that I think we're seeing really accelerate and I think it is going to continue because it does work. And I think Arrow Arc is kind of the perfect example of that. I mean, you saw how they just appeared kind of out of nowhere and they have really, they've done really well with the program.
Speaker 1:
Then lastly is the continued consolidation in the market. So we saw quite a bit of consolidation through mergers acquisitions in 21. We saw a bit more in 22. And then the big one that I alluded to earlier, probably everybody in the market saw was the Fors Marsh acquisition of Brunet Garcia from Q1 of 23. So we're seeing that be used as a growth strategy on a few fronts. We're seeing companies use m and a to buy into or buy their spot onto a BPA or IDIQ, etc. Tommy just sort of mentioned the continued emphasis and preference for that. So we're seeing a lot of consolidation in net space. We're seeing a lot of consolidation companies using m and a to get into new markets. I don't know they're really interested in DOD or HHS or whatever it might be. So let's go out there and acquire our way in there.
So seeing quite a bit of consolidation, saw some of it in 23 and talking to a lot of companies at the moment currently on exploring this both from a buy-side and sell side. So would expect 24 to be another healthy year of m and a transactions. So let's celebrate the movers before we get into the top 100 list. One thing that you'll see in the full report, which will be sent following this webinar is we've got a page on the top 25 companies that showed the biggest growth from 22 to 23, 88 companies were on a crossover. The million dollar threshold this year, which is pretty awesome. 81 companies in 22 had over a million dollars of prime contracting revenue based on, again, the methodology that we talked about earlier this year we're seeing 88. Tommy mentioned the eight companies that joined the list, which is really exciting.
Not so exciting is six of the 10 companies last year that were on the list saw pretty significant declines, totaling $426 million. So quite a bit of money was lost that if you add sort of the decline of those six of the 10 firms from last year, $426 million, pretty staggering number one could assume that a lot of it was based on the COVID-19 pullback. And a lot of companies in our space sort of saw the benefits and had the benefits of the COVID-19 messaging and marketing outreach stuff, which obviously contributed quite a bit. But in happier news, let's celebrate. Let's celebrate the winners. Top 10 movers from 22 to 23 are on this page. ABT saw a 368% change, about a million dollars in prime contracting spend 5 million. We talked about PCI productions number three earlier, winning that massive NASA communications contract. As that contract continues to ramp up and more and more dollars continue to be obligated, that number is going to explode in 2024.
So expect to see PCI continued growth moving forward. LRG, we'll talk about LRG later today, but really interesting group HUBZone that's winning some great work. So saw 110% change with them. Red carrot number eight, going from 7 million to 12 million, Danielle. And that team's really been doing an awesome job of diversifying out and continued expansion across more and more federal agencies. So she's seen a lot of growth there. And then lastly, number 10, Omnicom went from 5 21 to 8 74. So by far the largest dollar amount increase of that 200, $353,000 increase, I guess 3 million, sorry, not 300 million. Sorry, I'm trying to do math on the phone here. Not a good idea. But number 10, 67% increase, that was largely continued domination by DDB on the Army contract. And a bunch of the other agencies, Porter, Ketchum, et cetera, are winning quite a bit of work, especially in the HHS space. So these are the top 10 movers from 22 to 23. So pretty impressive changes here. So top 100 firms, we're going to go through the top 100. Pretty excited about this list. Tommy, you want to take us away?
Speaker 2:
Yep, absolutely. So I think the one that I wanted to touch base on, we're not going to walk through every single company on here, but we're just going to touch on a couple that we saw just from a, we thought was interesting. So I think one of these, so brack at number 96, we thought that they were interesting. They won the D-L-L-S-A comms contract at that was recent. And then the other is the Dynamic Integrated Services at number 91. So the contract that was interesting for them was the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. It was a joint va, DOD transitioning services member outreach and evaluation contract. So that was kind of the highlights for a couple of these companies that we saw from awards in FY 23. And then on this one Montage Marketing group at number 18, I think the highlight for FY 23 for them was they won the Millennium Challenge Corporation contract for outreach communications for the whole agency and then BLN24, they do digital and comms from a comm standpoint, they won an award within NIH. And so they've really, BLN24 has actually grown a lot in the last year. They've really kind of exploded. So that's been an interesting company to watch
Speaker 1:
Going into, I guess 71 through 80 Tommy.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so on this one I think obviously Reingold been a stalwart. They've been in here for a long time. Bridge Group is interesting. Bridge Group has graduated from the 8a program, so they're won a number of events and comms contracts. And then of course graphic industries has been around at DOL for a while. TMGL has been interesting. They've been popping up recently. They've won a number of awards recently.
Speaker 1:
Here's 61 through 70. Pretty great. We're starting to see prime contracting dollars. Get north of 2 million bucks with this group EFK group. Tommy mentioned earlier the protege to Ogilvy under WPP. They're continuing to do some really great work at NSF and others. Marketing for Change is an interesting one. I sent out a note about their CEO transition a few weeks ago if everybody saw that one. They're doing some really good work across HHS over at NIH specifically night outreach. They're on the CMS BPA for research, seeing some good task orders there. And then they've been a longtime player at DOD DHRA , so they're doing quite a bit of good work. Pretty diversified as well.
Speaker 2:
One other thing too, if you go back one second, the other one that I wanted to touch on was Davis Management Group. They were, I think originally more focused on events, but they've won some comms work with DOD. And so they're starting to make a play in the comm space as well within DOD and USAID.
Speaker 1:
Great. 51 through 60. We're getting closer. A lot of these. Alan Newman, a longtime player on the CMS research BPA I just mentioned Marketing for Change, doing the same thing. barum is a very longtime player on this list with all of their work at DOD and elsewhere. Census number 51, about four and a third, $4.3 million there. Really well diversified across HHS, specifically C-D-C-A-C-F. They've got a bit of DHS work, bit of state department work, sense of social media, et cetera. So rounding out the top, I guess the second half of the 50 here since it's at 51.
Speaker 2:
Yep. And then, so we mentioned MOO earlier with the large State Department contract, LRG we talked about, we mentioned that. So another company that originally they did more events work, they've really branched out into Comm Space, one of the few HUBZone companies in the comm space. They've got the EPA Office of Water Comms contract, and then they've also won work at USDA as well. And we've talked about ADG Creative, they've been around for a long time. They're doing work within DOD and the IC. They've continued to win more work in that space as well.
Speaker 1:
I think 42 is on here. They're the incumbents on the Secret Service recruitment contracts. So 23 was a year for recruitment contracts. 24 and 25 are going to be very good years for recruitment contracts. Quite a bit of opportunity right around the corner on recruitment. And then folks probably know about the Ignited 48. They're the long time and incumbents on TSA pre-check. So probably some of you guys saw that RFP late last fall. That's their great work over at the TSA
Absolutely. So top here we go. Get into the top 40. We talked about a few of these companies earlier. Hatcher is on here. They're doing a lot of great work across a handful of federal agencies. And then in 22, they acquired HornE Creative Longtime Incumbents on FBI recruitment and others. So they're here at 33 and 31 Bixal Solutions. Really good to see these guys on this list. They've been in comms and then they got into some digital analytics and a whole swath of other capabilities, but they're back at it and winning quite a bit of comms work these days. So definitely a company to watch at 31.
Speaker 2:
And then the other thing I just wanted to mention was Contracting Resources Group. I think if you're not familiar with them, they have the DHA strategic comms contract, and so they've got a little bit newer to the list. And then of course Concepts Inc. I think their focus has been at DOL, they just been a long time incumbent there and they just recomp competed that contract, right
Speaker 1:
Top 30. We talked about a few of these earliers Culture one we talked about really getting into Prime contracting one, a couple nice DOD DHRA contracts in 23. Banyan Communications 29 at 8.2 million. They're seeing a lot of work on the CDC health marketing BPA. And then we also talked about PCI productions at 27 a few minutes ago, winning that big NASA communications contract. We are seeing some of the larger companies that were really large last year and maybe top 10, top 15 rankings. Start seeing their names in this top 30 page as well as the next slide or two.
Speaker 2:
And then, yeah, okay, go ahead. And then Schatz Publishing Group, they have done, they continue to rack up more wins one of the other hub zone companies, one of the few HUBZone companies in the space. Red Carrot has continued to expand into new agencies. They've really picked up a lot of wins recently and they've really kind of branched out into a number of new agencies.
Speaker 1:
A lot of these are probably familiar names. DCG doing a lot of comms work at DHS, state Department, va, et cetera. LMD Agency, a long time popular agency at DHS successfully recompeted their Coast Guard recruitment contract in 23 and then IQ at number 11, 30.5 million does quite a bit of work across HHS. And they're a really strong shop in HHSNIH etc. So here we are getting into top 10, ranking six through 10. Tommy, you want to jump in?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I think, gosh, Crosby has been doing really well and continued to move up on this space. They also just recently did a new mentor protege, so that's exciting. Then we've got the NORC or National Opinion Research Center. Aptive, we've mentioned they have formed their mentor protege with Artemis Arc. And so Arrow Arc is on here. Elevation has grown quite a bit. And then of course Plowshare at number six.
Speaker 1:
So getting into the top five, we've got StrataCom with their big NHTSA contract. We've got Fors Marsh, $108 million last year doing a lot of work across a lot of different groups. And the three holding companies, WPP 211 millions Interpublic, $530 million and Omnicom at 874 finishing getting the top spot in the 2023 top 100. So a lot of obviously top three being holding companies, seeing a lot of recruitment contracts. Omnicoms got Army and Air Force Recruitment. Interpublic's got quite a bit of public health work as well as Mullen, one of their agencies one or successfully retained the DOD JAMRS contract, which is a few hundred million bucks. And then WPP has quite a bit of work as they've always had Ogilvy VML, et cetera. So a lot of activity at the holding company level.
So getting into the top large businesses. We just covered this down top large businesses, Omnicom, IPG, WPP in that order. You see here 22 to 23 growth, two of the three increased, one of the three decreased and what their largest contracts are. As I mentioned, Omnicoms got Army and Air Force. And then they're also doing quite a bit of work at CMS, specifically Porter Novelli and Ketchum. And Interpublic has the anti-tobacco contract at FDA, which is their largest contract, followed by a very large contract for CMS and mentioned DOD JAMRS recompete for $455 million. And then WPP, they've got the Marine Corps recruitment contract $662 as well as the Navy.
So from a small business standpoint, the top players are Elevation. We saw them pretty high on the list. They saw quite a bit of growth from 22 to 23, essentially doubled. They've got that $154 million CMS Hispanic Health Insurance Marketplace contract. They're the longtime incumbents on DHS CBP communications. And then they also won the import export import bank communications in 23 for seven and a half million bucks. We talked about Aptive has been the incumbent on the OPM recruitment marketing contract that is seeing quite a bit of federal agencies use that BPA for their recruitment marketing and advertising needs. So they're seeing quite a bit of contract dollar obligation there. And then they continue to be a powerful force in the VA from recruitment marketing to the Choose VA marketing campaign, everything else. And then I think I mentioned earlier that IQ is an extremely strong small business with quite a bit of work at HS $32 million at NIH for accelerating COVID-19, another 26 for HRSA and another 25 for FDA CTP communication support services. A lot of these we're going to see the same things. Top woman owned Smalls Aptive is both a small business and a woman owned small business. So we're going to see them here on the list. Top woman owned small IQ number two. And then we talked about LMD in the top 100 as well with their Coast Guard contract. They've got a really nice contract at DHS specifically. And then they also had the Department of Energy EERE communications contract.
Tommy, you want to kick us off into the SDVOSB?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so we're seeing the same name again. So Aptive is the top SDVOSB we've already covered them. DCG is be number two. They've got the See something say something and Blue Campaign at DHS. They also have CP3 at DHS and then the VA Suicide Prevention Arrow Arc. We've already covered this again, we've touched base on this Arrow. Arc is the mentor protege joint venture between Optiv and Artemis Arc. And so they just won the $48 million VA recruitment contract. So that just catapults 'em right into the top three very quickly. So Aptive is kind of on here twice a little bit. And then the top HUBZone. So we have Schatz Publishing Group, so their contracts, they've got a lot. They started, they used to do more, seemed like it just kind of a lot of small contracts that came together. Now they've competed and won some larger contracts as well.
So they've got the DOT FHA comms, the GSA marketing services, and then the VA National Cemetery Administration 508 document remediation. Their big win in 23 was the GSA marketing services contract for 15 million. And then LRG has shot up in here. It's kind of the other hub zone company within the GL 100. So their contract, they won the HHS HRSA Logistical Support services, and then they have the EPA Office of Water Communications contract. And so they've really kind of shot up here very quickly here recently. And you can see they've had like 110% growth in the last fiscal year.
Speaker 1:
And then top eight a businesses we've mentioned, I think each of these companies a few times on the last 35 minutes, starting with Red Carrot, seeing a lot of diversification there, saw really good growth, 74%. Everything from HUD, NSF, DOT, everything between 2023, they won that $5.1 million branding supplies contract at FAA. PCI Productions we talked about a few times winning the NASA communications contract. They also have other NASA work as well as recruitment work at DOD. And then Culture ONE we talked a few times as well, winning two contracts at DHRA for suicide prevention and civilian recruitment. So they round out the top 8a businesses.
So following this before we take these slides down and get into Q&A, so feel free to drop in any questions in the chat here and we'll try to monitor it. We'll follow up. We'll send out this recording and the full report in the next 24 hours award winners this year. We created a nice little LinkedIn badge for you. We'll also send that as well for any LinkedIn posts that you all want to make and looking to celebrate being in the rankings. So be on the lookout for that. And then it'll continue to be on the lookout for all of our emails. We send out emails every other week with various reports, webinars, et cetera. We're going to do a upcoming webinar for OASIS+ now that the marketing and public relations domain is getting closer and closer. A couple months ago we talked about an opportunity brief over at NIH for one of their communications programs.
We're going to continue doing more of those. If there's anything else that you want to see from a report standpoint, webinar standpoint, please let us know. The other one that we are doing that was a pretty good success in 2020 was the election. Dissecting the election, did a special report on that at the time. I guess it's still the same of what to see in a Biden administration win in November versus a Trump administration win, which federal agencies go up, which federal agencies go down, et cetera. So be on the lookout for that special report as well. And then as always, if we're not already connected on LinkedIn, email, etc., here's our information for both Tommy and I both email as well as that QR code will take us to our LinkedIn pages. So feel free to connect and would love to hear from you.