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Big Agencies and Freelance. In 1985, after 7 years working for some of the largest and best agencies in the country like FCB/Chicago and DDB/NY, Follis began a freelance collaboration that started his entrepreneurial career. With fellow admen Jon Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum, Follis helped win a handful of new accounts and helped create a dozen attention-getting ads for young shoe designer Kenneth Cole. That landmark campaign helped establish Cole as one of the biggest names in fashion and helped propel Follis's entrepreneurial career. 
 Follis & Verdi: Hot New Agency on Mad Ave. With the Kenneth Cole campaign success Follis began freelancing with the top agencies in New York including Chiat/Day, Della Femina, and Levine, Huntley. He was also approached by an entrepreneurial account man; Ellis Verdi. Eight months later Follis & Verdi splashed onto the scene with a hot, new account and attention-getting campaign. The campaign for Sorrell Ridge Fruit Spread was so successful it was featured in Forbes, ADWEEK, CNBC and a Harvard Business School case study. New accounts including No Excuses Jeans, The American Stock Exchange, Solgar Vitamins, and French Toast Clothes soon followed. So did major ad awards and more press in USAToday, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. And in 1991, the duo were honored at The White House for F&V's award-winning national campaign against child abuse. After just two years Follis & Verdi was one of the hottest young agencies on Mad Ave. 
 Follis DeVito Verdi makes it to the top. To assist with the growing workload creative man Sal DeVito was brought in to help. Eventually, freelancer DeVito was added as a partner and Follis & Verdi became Follis DeVito Verdi. In '93 the young agency reached a peak when it was acknowledged by The NY ADDY Awards as the second most awarded agency in New York, just fours years after its founding. And, agency creative director, John Follis, was selected "One of "New York's 12 Best" by The New York Ad Club. 
 Follis 2.0 Foreseeing the coming digital shift Follis then moved on from Follis DeVito Verdi to start Follis, Inc. With an eye on the new media landscape Follis Inc became one of the first agencies online, in 1996, with its award-winning, 450-page website. Throughout the 90's Follis continued its press-worthy, results-getting work, in online and traditional media, including this groundbreaking guerrilla marketing effort covered by The New York Times, USAToday, TIME and a Prentice-Hall marketing textbook. After 13 years, the client remains a Follis account today. With the new decade came a new business model. In 2002, Follis created Follis Marketing Therapy to address the needs of businesses with limited marketing budgets. In the process, he expanded the business model to a worldwide market. In '05, John Follis coined the term "G-Cred", for Google credibility, which came to national attention in his ADWEEK article. Staying on the leading edge of marketing and social media Follis added two more websites in early '06: a blog The Follis Report and podcast The Marketing Show with John Follis. And, in 2007, John was accepted on Wikipedia as an industry leader and innovator. In 2009, the U.S. Commerce Association honored Follis Advertising with an award recognizing it as a business that "has achieved exceptional success" and "enhanced the image of small business through service to their customers." And, in late 2010, a G-cred ebook and website was completed. 
Today. And, tomorrow. Follis continues helping clients around the country in all media. The Marketing Show is now syndicated on iTunes with top guests from around the world. And, Marketing Therapy continues to serve entrepreneurial clients across the US. John is also a featured blogger for three nationally respected blogs: AOL/ADWEEK's "Fuel the Future", Small Business Trends, and his own Follis Marketing Report. As a requested speaker he's addressed The Social Media Conference in Chicago, The World Business Academy in New York, the New York Business Expo and The Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. 
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