BrainDo’s 10-Year Journey
Prior to 10 years ago, BrainDo was just a vision in the minds of our founders, Brian Cosgrove and Jenny Du. Little did they know, they were onto something big.
Our company’s journey has been filled with stories and successes. As we look back and reflect, we are excited to share these stories with you.
Brian and Jenny initially met in 2007 while working for the same company. They both had a goal of building a company with a comfortable environment and a large focus on team culture. As they progressed through their professional careers, this vision of a collaborative consultancy capable of delivering inspired work always remained top-of-mind.
In 2013, Brian and Jenny left their previous positions to launch BrainDo. The pair understood the importance of branding and wanted to come up with a clever name for the business – something that was meaningful to them both. Combining common misspellings of Brian’s first name and Jenny’s last name, Du, they christened the new business, BrainDo.
At its start, BrainDo was not yet a full-service consultancy. Instead, the newly formed company networked with other businesses, helping them navigate their various digital marketing challenges. Setting up shop at Venture F0rth, a co-working space in Philadelphia, provided an initial hub for consultation with other companies and enabled the development of long-term partnerships.
Many of these initial client conversations involved our team distilling complex conversations and topics into more digestible tactical work. Topics from app development to team development were broken down by BrainDo into organized marketing workloads, helping companies prepare for larger next steps in a less stressful manner.
While providing these initial consultation services, BrainDo also took on its first full-service digital marketing client. A well-known insurance company became one of the first to sign on with us, and we are still providing digital marketing services to their team 10 years later. As the business began to gain new clients, our small consultancy now needed to grow its team of experts.
In 2014, BrainDo acquired a legal services client that led to the expansion of our staff. We added new team members with expertise in content strategy, SEO, paid media, organic social media, conversion rate optimization (CRO), front-end development, A/B testing, and UX/UI design services. This influx of new talent elevated BrainDo’s capabilities and opened new doors for services that our team could provide.
As our team and client roster grew, we wanted to give our team some time each year to re-energize and refresh. To the end, we went on our first company retreat to Long Beach Island, New Jersey in 2015. Our ongoing commitment to team retreats may be one of the reasons that BrainDo was named one of the Best Places to Work for the first (but not the last) time in early 2016.
Since this initial retreat, BrainDo has embarked on many adventures as a team. Each year, we close the company for a week to bond as a team and enjoy all kinds of activities together. The team has traveled on international excursions (such as our much celebrated 2017 trip to Portugal) and also soaked in the sun at beachside getaways. And at last year’s retreat, we learned just how competitive our team can be when facing off on the beach volleyball court.
Towards the end of 2021, Brian and Jenny decided to hold fun monthly events to bring everyone together more than just once a year. Now, each new month finds our team learning to make mead, mini-golfing, or just doing team-building exercises together over dinner and drinks.
With 10 years of memories, our team has a lot to say about working at BrainDo. And the collaborative ethos instilled at the company’s inception still guides our perspectives. When asked about what he enjoys most about the company, Ben Rawner, a BrainDo project manager, explained, “I love when the team comes together to solve an issue.”
Sometimes collaboration requires a little personal sacrifice, as evidenced by an anecdote shared by web developer Andy Okupinski:
“The very first mechanical keyboard I bought I had shipped to the BrainDo office. It was a loud, clicky Razer board,” Andy shared. “I thought I’d use it at work with all the crazy colorful RGB keys. I typed three things, and [my coworker] Glenn looked up and said, ‘Are you kidding, Andy!?'”
He later conceded that the keyboard was, in fact, “slightly louder than most fire alarms.” Though he remains conscientious of his fellow BrainDoers, Andy is still an avid proponent of mechanical keyboards and boasts one of the coolest desk setups around.
In 2015, BrainDo cultivated its enterprise-level clientele, gaining a Fortune 500 marketing client that was its largest at the time. While our team has had prior engagements with enterprise-level clients, this opportunity led to more complex, expansive projects. These larger projects spurred the company to reconsider certain approaches and reframed how we support and develop enterprise client marketing initiatives.
Our understanding of emerging media, marketing trends, and the ever-changing digital landscape grew in sophistication as we gained clients. Most recently, BrainDo devised new tracking frameworks in response the the release of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and sunsetting of Universal Analytics. Upon Google launching GA4, our team was able to successfully migrate our clients to the new analytics platform with historical data intact.
One exciting new development for BrainDo is the launch of our very own podcast. BrainDo’s podcast, Marketing Roundtable, reflects the company’s collaborative culture and shares insights on complex marketing topics. With our podcast, we strive to educate, inform, and remove any barriers between our clients and the subject matter experts we value.
For BrainDo, the past 10 years have been full of learning experiences, significant growth, and treasured team memories. Looking ahead, we strive to remain at the forefront of modern marketing and continue to create inspiring work through team (and client) collaboration. As we journey onward across the next decade at BrainDo, we look forward to fresh challenges, new accomplishments, and maybe a little friendly competition at our upcoming team outings.
At BrainDo, we cover all facets of marketing and collaborate throughout our capabilities to ensure your business’s needs are always met.
If you have any questions about digital marketing, or are interested in how our team can help your business, please reach out to our talented team of digital marketers.
We’re excited to talk with you! Let us know about your project, challenges and we’ll get in touch with you shortly.
Thank you for getting in touch!
Keep an eye on your inbox - We'll be reaching out soon.