Marketing entrepreneur parlays passion for social causes into successful business

MORE Advertising founder and CEO Donna Latson Gittens had one long-term dream for most of her early professional career — to run a television station. But after more than two decades in the TV industry, with this dream not looking likely, she did what all good entrepreneurs do, and turned a better opportunity into a business.

In 1997, Gittens, who was born and raised in Grove Hall, started an advertising and marketing firm around the then-nascent idea of social marketing. The goal was to help nonprofits and public sector agencies use the media to provide public information on social issues with a focus on changing behavior — and this focus has continued to help the company succeed to this day.

“We want to support socially responsible companies, but also work with nonprofits and public sector agencies,” said Gittens, who has given MORE Advertising the tagline “Agency of Change” to underscore the centrality of social change to her work. “We have a lot of people from the advertising world who want to stop selling cars and refrigerators and come over to our side and really focus on things that can help build community.”

With an impressive portfolio of clients, including Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, Mass General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts and the Boston Red Sox, MORE Advertising has launched over 300 marketing campaigns.

World Series rings

The company, now based in Newton, provides a variety of services, including advertising strategy, branding, video, print and web design, social media marketing, public relations and event planning.

The Red Sox have been a major client for 13 years. MORE Advertising has helped the hometown team with community relations, event planning, copy editing and print design. In particular, the firm works to connect the Boston Red Sox Foundation with the Boston community and also designs and produces the Red Sox community report.

Gittens’ Red Sox efforts have earned her three World Series rings. When visitors come to her office, she proudly shows one of the gold bands with her name on it.

But she is even more proud that her company helped run a cancer prevention campaign that inspired 45 percent of the men the campaign reached to contact a doctor.

Having spent more than 20 years working in public affairs in the television industry — mostly at WCVB TV Channel 5 in Boston — Gittens had a strong base to move into the advertising and marketing world.

Still, she calls her move to leave the industry and start her own business a “major leap of faith.”

Gittens said the move took some of the parts she loved most about working in television and turned them into a different career.

At Channel 5, one of her core tasks was helping to develop public service campaigns in which the station partnered with a nonprofit organization and a private corporation to focus on raising awareness for social issues.

The most well-known — and the most influential for Gittens’ future career — was the “A World of Difference” campaign in the late 1980s that aimed to end racial, ethnic and religious prejudice. The campaign was very successful for Channel 5, eventually broadcast around the country and also used by 150 U.S. school systems as a model to promote education and events against prejudice.

“That really gave me an introduction to using traditional media around causes,” Gittens said.

And it was an inkling of what she would one day focus all of her time on with her own company: “using the media for the right reasons,” as she puts it.

A focus on causes

In 1997, when she started her business, she gave it the name Causemedia and spent the early years establishing a strong business working with nonprofit organizations and public sector agencies on marketing campaigns. These campaigns covered issues including anti-smoking to pregnancy health habits to compulsive gambling.

However, as the company evolved — starting from a one- and then two-person operation in Watertown to a 10-employee company in Newton — the environment for social marketing and social business exploded, opening a whole new market of opportunity for Gittens to work on the kind of campaigns she likes with a broader spectrum of clients.

With almost all businesses today looking to publicize their corporate responsibility efforts, Gittens no longer feels it necessary to focus only on nonprofit organizations and state agencies. In 2012, she rebranded her business with the launch of MORE Advertising in an effort to expand the firm’s range.

This approach resulted in clients like pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk turning to MORE Advertising to help increase their supplier diversity.

Gittens has seen signs that her business is expanding.

“We’re moving into a larger space, we’re hiring. We gained new clients. We’re definitely open for more business,” she said.

She has enjoyed her years as an entrepreneur running and growing her business, but she enjoys working closely with clients and does not want the business to grow to the point where she is not able to do so.

Her education at Park University in Kansas City, Missouri gave Gittens the background to enter the television industry, but she credits earning her MBA from Northeastern University — while working for Channel 5 — with laying the groundwork to allow her to start her own business.

Passion and rewards

Gittens believes her love of of the work she does has helped more than anything.

“Part of being an entrepreneur is that you are open to a lot of different things, but you have to have that core about wanting to be passionate and be able to sell what it is you believe in,” she said.

But she also admits being an entrepreneur has its challenges, and can be very tough.

“You do whatever you have to do to get the job done,” she said. “Being an entrepreneur sounds really cool, but there is a lot that goes into it.”

Judi Haber, principal at MORE Advertising, has worked with Gittens for 18 years, joining Causemedia a month after the firm was started. She says it has been a perfect fit because the two share a work ethic, complementary skill sets and an enjoyment of learning from each other.

“Working with Donna for the past 18 years has been nothing short of a wild ride. She is constantly pushing the envelope asking everyone that works for her to think creatively, dig deeper to be the best at what you do, and lastly, to be fearless,” Haber said. “I am a better business professional and leader for working alongside her for all these years. I consider Donna both a mentor and a friend.”