Left Hand Agency

2021

USA - Remote

Media Buying

9

Underdog

Most media agencies play it safe. We don’t.

We built Left Hand Agency to break three of the industry’s most toxic habits:

• Bullshit performance promises.
  Too many brands have been sold the lie that growth comes from smokescreen metrics and endless dashboards. We tell our clients the truth: if you want salience and growth, you need reach, frequency, and creativity — not another DTC funnel “hack.”
• Rebates and principal-based buying.
  We don’t take rebates, kickbacks, or bulk media deals that put the agency’s margin ahead of the client’s results. It means we leave money on the table — but it also means our clients know we’re fighting for their growth, not ours.
• Media as creative’s ally, not its accountant.
  We reject the “spots and dots” mentality. Media is not math homework; it’s fuel for brand storytelling. We buy everything from digital to skywriting if it’s the right fit — and we measure it independently so we don’t grade our own homework.

Being indie lets us stay scrappy, blunt, and unbought. We’d rather piss off the old boys’ club than play along with their rules.

Independence means we don’t waste time on layers of red tape — and our clients feel it every day.

We were born out of reactive marketing, launching TV campaigns for stations across the U.S. where ads had to go live within hours, and sometimes minutes, of breaking news.

That DNA stuck. Even though our CPG clients aren’t always chasing headlines, they get the same radical flexibility: same-day responses, no endless chains of account reps, no “let me check with my manager.”

Our culture is built on three principles:

• Responsiveness without bureaucracy.
  Clients call, we act. Fast.
• Radical organization.
  We make deliverables and media plans so clear that in-house teams and creative partners tell us they’ve never seen an agency this organized.
• Education, not gatekeeping.
  We take the time to teach clients the “why” behind every buy, align KPIs up front, and invite them into the strategy instead of hiding behind jargon.

We don’t nickel-and-dime for calls or questions.

We don’t track billable hours.

We give strong opinions, push back against bad media ideas, and dive into the weeds. 

This means digging deep into buying behavior—for example, even considering whether a product’s weight makes New York a poor market for in-store sales.

Our vibe is scrappy, blunt, and deeply collaborative. Independence lets us keep it that way.

This past year, we helped two very different CPG brands prove the power of media done right:

• A Japanese cookie brand entering the U.S.
  We handpicked markets, built multichannel campaigns, and used a target-and-holdout methodology to isolate impact. The result: more than a 13% lift in in-store sales during the initial campaign.
• A personal care brand expanding its footprint.
  Using the same disciplined, independent approach, we delivered similar sales lift across selected markets — proving that smart, scrappy media can drive growth beyond performance marketing dashboards.

Unlike many agencies, we don’t “take credit” for every sale. We bring in an independent measurement partner to report incrementality — what the campaign actually caused, not what would have happened anyway. Too many agencies spin metrics to make case studies look shinier. We’d rather tell the truth, even if it’s harder.

That honesty and independence gives our clients something rare: proof they can take back to leadership with confidence, not caveats.

Left Hand Agency was born out of burnout and a refusal to keep playing by the old rules.

The agency’s founder, Lauren Ridgley, a former TV marketing executive, spent more than 13 years in corporate America, working to the point where even basic self-care felt impossible.

At one point, a chipped tooth went untreated for more than two years out of fear that taking time off would “look bad.” A colleague in a similar role delayed care too long, and when he finally went in, the infection killed him. That became her wake-up call: this job could literally kill.

After leaving corporate America, Lauren freelanced for six years, but a contract role plagued by scope creep and lack of control revealed the need for something different.

The vision became clear: build an agency that proved work didn’t have to be that way.

From day one, Left Hand Agency rejected burnout culture. Flexible schedules, respect for boundaries, and a commitment that no one should feel guilty for taking care of themselves or their families became core values.

The majority of the team has been with the agency since its early days. It is proof that when people are treated like humans, they stay.

Independence gave Left Hand Agency the chance to rewrite the rules for its team, its clients, and for what an agency can be.

Our biggest fight has been proving we belong in a world that wasn’t built for us, and doing it without compromising our ethics.

The CPG space is dominated by holding-company giants, old-boys’ networks, and decades of “this is just how it’s done.”

As a woman-owned indie shop, we weren’t supposed to have a seat at the table. And, we refuse to play by the industry’s dirtiest money games — rebates, principal-based buying, and fixed CPMs.

Our ethics reduce our ability to pad our balance sheet, and it makes it harder to grow. We'd rather grow through each client's success — and we're starting to see that momentum!

We could have taken the easy way out, padded our revenue with vendor kickbacks, and smoothed things over by following the status quo. But we didn’t. Instead, we fought our way in with truth, scrappiness, and results. Now we have case studies that prove awareness translates to sales — and in-store sales growth can be earned and measured honestly. 

Yes, it’s slower.

Yes, it’s harder.

But it’s also why our clients trust us.

We’ve won CPG business against much bigger players because we don’t just promise; we deliver.

And when you’re indie, that trust is everything.

As marketing directors and brand leaders get more sophisticated, they’re demanding accountability and transparency.

That’s where indie agencies shine. We’re built on collaboration, responsiveness, and truth, not smoke and mirrors.

We believe the next wave of growth won’t come from massive, bloated networks. It’ll come from indie agencies working together, each bringing their unique expertise to the table.

For us, that means partnering seamlessly with creative shops who don’t have in-house buying power, especially in specialized areas like retail media, and giving their ideas the distribution muscle they deserve.

We see independence not as a limitation, but as a network of specialists that’s stronger than any holding company could ever be.

Left Hand Agency will be the media partner in that indie ecosystem: the ones who fight for transparency, make creative work harder, and prove that honesty can scale.