Jennifer Henderson was on a solid career path. Graduating from Texas Wesleyan University with a degree in art, she had worked for several ad agencies and was working in Texas Wesleyan’s communications department.
But the creative spirit that led to her art degree still stirred within her. She began doing freelance work at night to satisfy that creative urge.
“I had always loved making ads and commercials for selling products when I was growing up,” she said.
Eventually, the day came when she had enough work to leave her day job.
That gave birth to the J.O. Agency, the “O” standing for Oliver, her maiden name. The agency is now celebrating 25 years and is something of a Fort Worth institution. According to the American Advertising Association of America, there are an estimated 22,000 agencies in the country and only a couple of hundred owned by women.
“It’s an amazing statistic,” said Henderson, who took some time recently to look back on her quarter century leading her firm.
She admits the first few years she didn’t even look at her agency as a business.
“I really just looked at this as a hobby,” she said. But some smart business people took her aside and said she needed to get serious about it.
“Being a marketing major and art major in school, you don’t get much business training, you just learn your craft,” she said.
She got down to business and took classes and began to learn the business side of running an agency.
“I still make mistakes, but I’ve learned a few things over the years,” she said.
Henderson also had support from some local women in the industry. She mentioned Debra Morrow who was president at Witherspoon Public Relations at the time.
“They were all very supportive and helped me learn the business,” she said.
She was also pretty headstrong to make it all work.
“When I started J.O., I was determined to make it work,” she said. “I was pretty stubborn from the get-go and wanted to prove my place in the man-dominated field.”
She was fortunate to have some solid local clients in Texas Wesleyan, Botanical Research Institute of Texas, TCU, Trinity Metro and Worthington National Bank. The agency also had some international clients like Swiss pharmaceutical company Galderma, which has local operations in Fort Worth and the Giant Screen Cinema Association.
“Some of those clients we still have 25 years later,” she said.
Among the agency’s most recognized works in Fort Worth are the cheeky Worthington National Bank ads that touted the bank’s locally-owned status and Texas roots and the print ads that announced TEXRail’s launch.
When the economy slowed around 2001, many companies cut ties with their larger agencies and began to use smaller agencies like J.O. Agency.
“It really helped us, because we were small and could work quickly. Some of the large companies took their work in house, but we were cheaper than some of the larger agencies and they would send us some work,” she said. “We always did well when the economy tanked.”
J.O. Agency has also always worked with nonprofits, but a visit to the White House in 2008 set Henderson to thinking about other ways she might aid nonprofits. The visit to the White House was to support an effort by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner’s “Billion Plus Change” initiative to provide more services to nonprofits.
Out of that, in 2013, grew The Cause Agency, a sister nonprofit marketing rim that offers discounted services to other nonprofits. The mission is to empower nonprofit organizations to better communicate with their communities.
“I feel like after 25 years we’ve proven ourselves to be a successful business and making an impact on the community,” she said. “And I think we’ve done it with a great deal of flair.”
Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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