Montieth Illingworth

For some firms, 2020 proved a boom year. Montieth Illingworth’s 13-year-old agency is one of them.

Diversification’s one reason; Illingworth has grown horizontally, with clients from the art world and asset management to clean energy and tech. Smart globalization’s another; instead of investing tons in overseas offices, Illingworth cannily chose a multilingual team that works across borders. For most of the firm’s clients, staying out of the news means success, but Illingworth’s also engineered a few media coups this year.

Almost exclusively among agencies this year, Illingworth’s company maintained a 25% growth rate through the pandemic, an achievement for a business of any size that’s not Amazon or Walmart. Illingworth is also a former journalist; his 1991 book on Mike Tyson is now becoming a movie with Anthony Hopkins starring as Cus D’Amato.