Jane Crisan, CEO of Rain the Growth Agency, joined the Portland shop in 2013 when it was still known as R2C Group—a direct response television specialist with nearly 15 years of infomercial expertise under its belt. Today, Rain is a 300-person, women-led independent agency with $700 million in annual billing and a track record that includes scaling brands like Peloton, Chewy, SimpliSafe, 23andMe and most recently Dr. Squatch to acquisition by Unilever. The agency’s client roster also includes Humana, Shopify, Curology, Cirkul, 1-800 Flowers, Lume, Babbel and BISSELL.
“People come to us when they want to efficiently scale their business,” Jane explains. That clarity isn’t accidental—it’s the result of 27 years perfecting what the agency calls Transactional Brand Building, a methodology that delivers both sales and brand growth without compromise. Rain has what it calls the “Billion Dollar Club”—a roster of brands the agency helped scale to acquisitions worth nine and ten figures. As Jane puts it: “We honestly never know who they are until they start to emerge.”
From DRTV powerhouse to full-funnel growth machine
Rain the Growth Agency was co-founded in 1998 by Michelle Cardinal and Tim O’Leary—she ran a media agency, he ran a creative shop, they got married and combined forces. The original name was R2C Group, and the specialization was direct response television. “They were a DRTV powerhouse for many, many years,” Jane says. The agency built its reputation making phones ring for clients, mastering the art of long-form storytelling, testimonials and product demonstrations that drove measurable results.
Around 2012, something shifted. A new kind of client started calling—what Jane now calls “Fast Companies.” Brands like Christian Mingle and SimpliSafe had built businesses in the digital space but needed to move into measurable television to reach scale. That’s when Rain started evolving beyond linear TV into cross-channel planning, building out capabilities in radio, podcasts, print, direct mail, digital and advanced analytics. By 2013, the agency had added brand strategy and research. Today, Rain is full-funnel and full-channel, but the core expertise remains video—television, CTV and YouTube.
What Rain does better than anyone else
Rain specializes in efficiently scaling businesses at critical growth inflection points. The agency’s sweet spot is working with direct-to-consumer brands that need to move fast, make decisive calls and reach transformational milestones.
The Billion Dollar Club is proof of concept. Rain worked with SimpliSafe and took them to acquisition. Same with Chewy.com before the PetSmart deal. Same with Peloton before they became a household name. Most recently, the agency helped scale Dr. Squatch before its Unilever acquisition. “A lot of direct-to-consumer businesses are attracted to our methodology and our approach, because we identify what growth stage they’re at, and then can take them to the next,” Jane explains.
That deep expertise in performance marketing means Rain gets to solutions faster. The team understands how to use testimonials, long-form content and robust demonstrations to sell complex products—tactics the industry is now rediscovering under buzzwords like “performance branding.” For Rain, it’s just Thursday.
Being indie means making bets before clients need them
Jane came out of the holding companies—WPP, JWT, Wunderman Worldwide—so she knows exactly what Rain isn’t. “The most important thing about being independent is that we control our destiny,” she says. “We can make decisions very quickly. There isn’t somebody over in London making a decision about my account here on the West Coast.”
But it’s not just speed. Independence allows Rain to invest in capabilities before clients even know they need them. Jane points to AI as an example: “You have to start incorporating it in your business. You have to put the money and the resources into it in order to explore, to create a product and productize it and put a price on it.”
Holding companies, she notes, always wanted agencies to sell it first, then build it. “But in reality, people want to know that it’s proven. You have to have a real product, and it needs to be proven, and you have to have a case study in order to sell it.” Indies don’t have the luxury of wait-and-see. They have to lead.
Why fast companies choose Rain
Rain’s ideal clients are growth-stage DTC brands that need to scale quickly and decisively. Often, they don’t even have a CMO yet—the founder or CEO is still making the marketing calls. “Our best clients are people who are in that Fast Company category, and we honestly never know who they are until they start to emerge,” Jane says.
What makes Rain different is the agency’s ability to move at the speed of the client’s ambition. There’s no bureaucracy, no layers of approval, no waiting for someone in another time zone to weigh in. Just rapid decision-making backed by a $9 billion strategic database of media results and response history. Rain can look at a brand’s growth stage, map the path to the next milestone and execute with precision.
The agency’s Transactional Brand Building approach means clients don’t have to choose between performance and brand. They get both, simultaneously, without compromise. For founders who are betting everything on growth, that clarity is invaluable.
Why talent picks Portland over holding companies
Jane drove Rain to a “flexible-first” work model during COVID, allowing employees to choose how and where they work. That decision opened up hiring across all 50 states and gave the agency access to top-tier talent who wanted autonomy over geography. Rain now has 300 employees nationwide, with retention rates well above industry average.
The agency’s culture is built on solving interesting problems without the bureaucracy. Jane championed the formation of an internal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee and expanded employee benefits significantly. People come to Rain because the work matters, the clients are scaling and there’s no performative nonsense—just smart, decisive marketers building brands that move fast.
Portland remains the headquarters, but the talent base is national. “We don’t have a lot of bureaucracy to make decisions,” Jane says. “It can just be conversations, and then we’re off and running.”
Entrepreneurs who can’t work for anyone else
Michelle Cardinal, Rain’s co-founder, always said she was unemployable—a true entrepreneur who couldn’t imagine working for someone else. That DNA runs through the agency. Jane came from holding companies where decision-making was slow, political and often disconnected from the client’s reality. At Rain, the opposite is true.
The agency attracts people who want ownership over their work, who thrive in environments where speed matters and who get energized by brands on the edge of transformation. It’s a shop for people who don’t need six meetings to make a decision. “We can make an investment even before our clients need it,” Jane says. That forward-thinking mindset is what separates Rain from the rest.
A hello to the next Billion Dollar Club member
Jane doesn’t name names when it comes to CMOs she wants to work with. Instead, she focuses on the category Rain knows best: Fast Companies in growth mode. “Our best clients are people who are in that Fast Company category, and we honestly never know who they are until they start to emerge,” she says. “Most of the time they don’t even have a CMO. A lot of times, the original founder, CEO, is involved in the decision making.”
That’s Rain’s sweet spot—founders who want to move fast, scale decisively and reach transformational milestones without the bloat of traditional agency models. If you’re building something that needs to hit escape velocity, Jane and her team have a proven playbook. The Billion Dollar Club is always open.
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Jane Crisan LinkedIn
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