Luckie’s John Gardner. Photo provided.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
AUG.t 23, 2022 | The largest marketing agency in Gwinnett was once a Birmingham, Ala., company which bought a local business and made the Gwinnett office its headquarters. The Luckie agency was established in Gwinnett in 2011 and now employs 130 people, with 70 of them based at their 20,000 square foot entire second floor offices across from the City Hall in Duluth. The agency is among the 10th largest in Metro Atlanta.
Luckie was originally founded in 1953 in Birmingham. Chairman Tom Luckie is the third generation to run the company, which just opened new offices there.
The company markets products for several well-known customers, though none of the headquarters of their clients are in Georgia. Its clients are Birmingham-based Regions Bank; McKee Foods (Little Debbie cakes) of Chattanooga; GlaxoSmithKlein of Raleigh, N.C.; Panama Beach, Fla.; Alabama Power Company; Blue Cross/Blue Shield; and the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, among others.
President of the company since 2013 is John Gardner, a Gwinnett resident, who moved here in 1996. The company recently added “CEO” to his title. He spends most of his time in Duluth, though travels to Birmingham about twice a month.
Gardner was born in Denver, Colo., and grew up in the South, graduating from high school in Alexander City, Ala., and obtained his degree from the University of Alabama. He moved to the Atlanta area two weeks after the Olympics, working for a Tucker marketing firm, which later moved to Peachtree Street. He picked the Brookwood area as his home because of the Gwinnett school system for his two daughters. One daughter now works for Georgetown University as a health care policy analyst, and the other, a UGA graduate, works for Luckie as an account manager.
Gardner had started another marketing company, Integrative Logic, also based in Duluth, which Luckie bought in 2011. He says of his strategy for working with clients: “You start with the understanding of the internal workings of the company, and then take it externally.” On most of the company accounts, there will be multiple staff members working. “For the Regions’ account, for instance, about 35 people work on it. Panama Beach has four full time staffers, and another 20 going in and out according to their speciality. Yes, we have lots of meetings; sometimes it’s overwhelming.”
Visit the Duluth office, and you get two sensations: the atmosphere is so very quiet, and at the same time, so large. You don’t see a lot of people. “Most of the staff is usually in the office three days, with two days working remotely. Many younger members like to live in Atlanta, and have a relatively easy reverse commute. They point out that they work two extra hours when working at home.”
A major reason the company is headquartered in Metro Atlanta is because there is a bigger professional marketing talent pool here. Gardner says: “You have more people on the technical side, and there is a bigger immigrant talent pool here, which helps.”
Gardner bases his company in Gwinnett since the operating costs are lower. “What would cost $19 a square foot for our offices in Gwinnett would be at least $39 in Atlanta. This also allows our employees to have a higher quality of life and work balance. They never miss a kid’s tennis match, or have to fight heavy traffic. Many of our people live in Forsyth or Hall Counties, or even in Athens. These are definite advantages to us in Gwinnett.”
That’s how the Luckie agency works on solving problems for their clients.
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