A Wisconsin Ad and Marketing Agency Rebrands Itself with a Fun, New Office Building

"We provide a unique voice for your brand," boasts Element, an advertising/marketing agency, on its website, www.goelement.com. So when Element outgrew its boxy space in a rural industrial park outside of Green Bay, Wisc., Lance Peroutka, agency director and co-owner, decided to apply his own business strategy to the company's new office space and create something "unique" for his brand.

"Our old space was very conventional and really 'vanilla,' " says Peroutka, 39. "We wanted our new place to be more representative of the creative style and creative solutions we give to our clients."

Last fall, Element left behind a cramped, generic space, and moved into new "unconventional" digs just down the road. From the start, Peroutka envisioned that the 9,000-plus square foot building would have a "modern industrial feel." Architect Rick Fisher and builders DeLeers Construction, an Element client, helped bring his creative ideas to fruition.

"It was a fun project to work on," says Paul DeLeers, Vice President of DeLeers Construction. "They are a creative organization, so it makes sense that their office follows suit."

The building is essentially "three boxes attached to each other with different rooflines," Peroutka says. There are some expected contemporary details: an open ceiling with an exposed ventilation system, industrial fans and metal light fixtures with wire cage covers, for example.

But other design elements are fresh and fun. In the "small conference room," molded cardboard square noise baffles become decorative wall art when spray painted orange, lime green and turquoise and attached to the wall with – Peroutka admits – double-sided tape. "The colors take over and there's really nice energy in there."

In some areas, the building has unfinished concrete floors, and these sections were left uncovered during construction, giving the flooring added character. "Whatever spills or marks [the workers] made, we wanted them to be part of it."

One of Peroutka's favorite design choices is the oversized sliding turquoise wood doors that bedeck Element's 10 private offices. "They add so much impact
and so much personality."

The new building, which currently houses 16 employees, is "100 per cent more efficient" from a functional standpoint than the company's former space, Peroutka says. Before, people were lined up to use Element's one conference room. Now there are two "official" meeting rooms, where executives can confer with their clients. But there are also informal meeting areas, including a colorful café with a yellow and orange curved island and molded white plastic barstools.

Additionally, the creative team now has its own designated area on the building's mezzanine level. Here, they are free to leave their materials spread out in the open – be it on the floor or the lime green, leopard-printed tabletops. They can also bounce on big colored balls to keep up their energy. And Peroutka is seriously thinking about adding a slide down to the main floor.

Peroutka says Element's clients have been receptive to the changes: "They expect us to be off the wall. It feels right to them too."

Jerry Mader, a long-time client and the publisher of Green Bay-based The Business News, is effusive about the new building: "This space exudes creativity the minute you walk in the front door. It really illustrates how creative the people working here are...

"It's just so much more open and brighter here. You really get the sense that exciting stuff happens within these walls." During construction, which lasted seven months, Peroutka worried that his designs were perhaps too unique. "There were a lot of times I wasn't sure it was going to work. I wondered 'Am I mixing too many weird things? Is it going to look terrible?' "

But in the end, Peroutka says reimaging Element's design was the right thing to do.

"Before I was new in the business and I thought that our clients wanted us to be conservative. Now, I am confident about our abilities and the things we have accomplished for our clients. I've made a conscious decision to be who we really are." i4

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