Tom Denari, CEO of Young & Laramore, has been with the Indianapolis agency for 37 of its 43 years. That kind of math tells you most of what you need to know. Founded in 1983 by two creative guys, the shop has never chased a house style — the work takes the shape of whatever brand it’s serving, funny when a brand needs funny, quiet and beautiful when it needs that instead. What holds it together is a way of thinking about people. “If you ask someone why they buy something, they will likely give you an answer,” Denari says. “But that answer usually isn’t the real answer.” Finding the answer underneath is the whole job, and it’s kept clients around for 15, 20, even 30 years.
Two creative guys, four decades, no house style
The founding spark was creative craft, and 43 years later that’s still the first thing people picture when they think of Young & Laramore — work that’s beautiful, funny, and shaped entirely by the brand behind it.
The agency built its reputation by refusing to impose a signature look. Instead, it developed a knack for translating what a brand should stand for into messaging and media that amplify that position. The through-line isn’t a visual tic. It’s talented people who know how to find what a brand is really about, then build everything outward from there.
What Young & Laramore is known for: the unspoken truth
The agency’s whole approach runs on a single idea — the unspoken truth. Ask a consumer why they chose something and they’ll give you a reason, but the real motivation usually sits below their own awareness.
To get at it, Young & Laramore runs deep consumer immersion and ethnography, interpreting what people can’t articulate about their own decisions. That reading becomes the brand strategy — the spot a brand can fill that a person is quietly looking to fill. Their process even has a name: the Unspoken Brand Strategy process, and it kicks off every engagement, no matter the category.
Three things Young & Laramore does differently
First, they help a brand find its authentic voice rather than bolting a personality onto it. If a brand should be funny, it’s funny. If it should be serious, it’s that.
Second, they obsess over human behavior — the ethnography, the immersion, the hunt for what’s really driving a decision. Strategy flows from that intersection of who a brand is and what its audience needs.
Third, longevity. Two ECD partners have been there 20-plus years, the head of media over 20, the head of strategy — “the baby” — eight. A third of employees have stayed a decade or more. Ten have crossed 20 years. That trust becomes consistency clients can feel.
The power of being indie (and answering to no one in another state)
Independence, for Denari, is control. Young & Laramore decides which clients to take and which to pass on, with no holding company in another state dictating terms.
That freedom is also what keeps the standard high. “We want to do the best work of our lives, and we have the ability to do that together, because we’re an independent agency,” Denari says. When a client project deserves more time, the agency can choose to invest without asking permission from anyone. The M&A firms circling — Denari says he gets emails from them almost weekly — don’t change the math, because chasing numbers tends to land you on the wrong clients.
Why brands should work with Young & Laramore
Young & Laramore wants a seat at the brand strategy foundation, not a brief to execute. Every engagement starts with consumer behavior and motivation, then builds bold creative on top of whatever truth that surfaces.
The difference is how far down it goes. Some agencies want the TV and the big video and skip the coupons. Young & Laramore believes every single touchpoint either enhances a brand or diminishes it, so it sweats all of them. “The most insidious thing a client can do is trust us,” Denari says — because the more they trust, the deeper the agency wants to go. That’s how relationships turn into decades.
Why talent chooses Indianapolis (and stays, and comes back)
Of 70 people, all but five work in Indy, and the exceptions mostly moved away and kept their jobs anyway. Six left entirely, saw the real world, and came back. The newest example is chief client officer Adrian Strange, who returned after 12 years at GSD&M in Austin.
What holds people is a shared, high standard and the freedom to meet it. Trevor Williams, now an ECD and partner, once saw Young & Laramore as a stepping stone. He found something else — proof you can do national work for national clients without leaving Indianapolis, and built a career on it.
Underdogs, and comfortable with it
Asked whether Young & Laramore identifies as weirdos, misfits or underdogs, Denari doesn’t hesitate. “We are the maybe the most normal set of Midwesterners you might ever meet.”
Underdog, then — by geography and by choice. With few consumer brand headquarters in Indianapolis, the agency has to look outside its market and walk into pitches as the smallest shop in the room. “It’s like that’s normal for us. We’re used to that, and so I think that’s the thrill.” Forty-plus years in, nobody’s relaxing. “We’re always fighting and scratching and working our butts off.”
Dear Fernando Machado: come be unreasonable
Given the floor to call out a marketer, Denari points to Fernando Machado, the former Burger King CMO who recently became Chipotle’s chief brand officer. The two connected before the Chipotle news, and Denari’s pitch has nothing to do with a contract.
“Don’t have to work with you, that’s fine,” he says. “But if you would want to come to Unreasonable and share your thoughts over your career on how you have engaged consumers, I think that would be super fun.” There’s a symmetry to it: the first Unreasonable featured Russ Klein, another former Burger King CMO. A second one on stage would make a nice bookend for a conference built entirely around why people really do what they do.
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