May, 2026.- The biggest waste of money for any client is blending in. Jeff Graham believes that. He also believes it is especially true for purpose-driven organizations.
As President of SUKLE, a 30-year-old independent agency built to solve the toughest challenges for brands trying to make the world a better place, Graham operates with a simple conviction: creativity is the last, most effective means of driving business. You cannot remember what you do not notice. You cannot act on what you do not remember. That is where “unignorable” creative comes in—work that makes people stop, take another look, activate their brains, and ultimately, act.
SUKLE’s clients are not traditional consumer brands. They are state health departments in Colorado and Wyoming, Denver’s water utility, a citywide climate action program, and Children’s Hospital Colorado. These organizations face a brutal reality: they are competing for attention against the full spectrum of great marketers—Nike, Progressive, Liquid Death—but with smaller budgets and no free pass just because their work is laudable. The creative bar, Graham argues, is actually higher. Because the KPI is not just building preference. It is changing behavior.
In this interview, Graham reflects on the legacy of Denver Water’s “Use Only What You Need”—a campaign enshrined in the Obie Hall of Fame alongside Apple and Nike—and how Mother Nature helps keep it relevant. He explains the delicate balance of “bravery and kindness” that defines SUKLE’s culture: bravery makes things interesting; kindness keeps it sane. And he celebrates the freedom of independence—the ability to do what is right, not just financially expedient; to walk away from a pitch or even a client when mutual respect fades.
This is a conversation about purpose, risk, and the stubborn belief that unignorable creativity can be a genuine force for change.
1. The Sukle Proposition: Sukle describes itself as “unignorable creativity that drives outsized impact for purposeful brands.” What does “unignorable” mean in practice, and why is it particularly important for purposeful brands versus traditional consumer brands?
Today, brands and agencies all have access to the same data sets, media tools and digital channels as everyone else. Creativity is the last, most effective means of driving business. You can’t remember, what you don’t notice. And you can act on what you don’t remember. That’s where uningorable creative comes in. It makes people stop and take another look. It activates people’s brains so they not only enage with it, they remember it and ultimately it drives them to action.
Many of the clients we partner with are in the public sector: state health departments in Colorado and Wyoming, Denver’s water utility, a citywide climate action program, a state program to get kids to put down screens and go outside. It’s easy for clients in that space to fall into the trap of measuring themselves against their counterparts in neighboring states, or the region. The result in a lot of the work that never even gets noticed. The reality is we’re competing for people’s attention against the full spectrum of brand from great marketers like Nike, Progressive, McDonald’s, Liquid Death, and so on. To truly connect with people and move them to take the action (eg. get vaccinated, quit smoking, save water), we have to create campaigns that are every bit as insightful, entertaining and motivating as the those consumer brands we’re up against – albeit with smaller budgets. Our clients don’t get some sort of free pass because it’s a public entity doing laudable work – we still have to make people stop, think, care and ultimately, act. The biggest waste of money for any client is blending in. We believe that’s especially true for purpose driven organizations.
2. Recent Momentum: Sukle has seen a string of high-profile wins, including the return of Denver Water, new duties for Colorado Department of Health & Environment, and being named lead creative agency for Children’s Hospital Colorado. What’s driving this momentum, and how does the agency’s positioning resonate with these particular clients?
To some extent I think the penduluum has swung back to the center a bit, and there’s a desire from clients to go to market with really strong brand work that says in no uncertain terms who they are, and what they stand for. That’s after years of clients really overinvesting (IMHO) in low funnel, programmatic campaigns for the transactional certainty it promised. The client organizations we partner with are looking for a solid mix of “brand + demand.” It’s great to see the resurgence in clients looking for an agency partner that can bring big, bold creative ideas.
We position ourselves as “A Force For Change” and that’s all about partnering with purpose-led client organizations who believe in creativity’s ability to make a positive change in the world. When Sukle works shoulder to shoulder with clients like Denver Water, CDPHE, Children’s Hospital Colorado or Wild Oats – the work we create together becomes a force for change. I think clients are responding to that invitation to be a part of something bigger than just cranking out ad campaigns, measuring/optimizing them, and doing it all over again. But rather to do things in a materially different (and we’d argue better) way that leads to sharper insights, high-impact creative, and disproportionate results for client organizations who are trying to do something that makes the world a better place.
3. The Denver Water Legacy: Denver Water’s “Use Only What You Need” campaign is enshrined in the Obie Hall of Fame alongside Apple and Nike. How do you approach evolving a campaign with that kind of legacy while keeping it fresh and relevant for new generations?
If I get a chance to show somone a single example of our work, it’s “Use Only What You Need.” Not simply because it’s fun, entertaining creative work with great results – but because of the timeless, human insight that powered that campaign. To get people to use less water, we couldn’t tell them they had to “conserve water” or “preserve Colorado’s future” – that’s eat-your-vegatables messaging that wouldn’t work. What we knew would work is everyone knows that being wasteful is dumb. No one wants to be thought of a wasteful person by their neighbors – nobody wants to be “that guy” on the cul-de-sac. That insight is as durable and potent today as it was a decade ago. More than anything I’d say Mother Nature helps us keep it fresh and relevant. The rapidly changing dynamics of our climate, like the severe drought we’re currently facing here in the West, help us to keep putting that “don’t waste” insight to work in a relevant, current context that impacts people’s daily lives in a very real way. When we knew we were headed towards this recent drought declaration, bringing back “Use Only What You Need” was a no brainer – because people remember it, they love it, and it’s been hugely successful in getting Denverites to be mindful about their water use.
4. Bravery & Kindness: Mike Sukle described the new hires as bringing “the balance of bravery & kindness we expect from our team.” How do these two qualities coexist in an agency culture? Can you give an example of what “brave and kind” work looks like?
We challenge category conventions and break creative rules on the regular, but we always do it respectfully – whether it’s with clients or with each other. You can have a sharp point of view about what you believe is going to make the work better and stronger, while still hearing each other out, and being kind to one another. We have a saying around here that “Bravery makes things interesting. Kindness keeps it sane.” I’d point to our work for Wyoming Department of Public Health as an example of “brave and kind” work. It was a vaccination campaign in the 2nd least vaccinated state in the union. After the Covid pandemic, there was so much controversy and misinformation regarding vaccines that the Health Department saw a drastic decline in vaccination rates across all adult and childhood diseases. The convention would be to bludgeon residents with fear-based, finger-wagging appeals. We approached it very differently. We reminded people that vaccines are one of the greatest achievements in the history of public health and we did it with a dose of humor, a touch of history and beautiful cinematic approach. That “brave and kind” approach took a state that was in danger of falling below the herd immunity threshold for many diseases, and turned it around – increasing vaccination rates for adults by 19% and 2.5% for children.
5. Purposeful Brands as a Focus: Sukle was “built to solve the toughest challenges for brands that are trying to make the world a better place.” How does working on public health campaigns (nicotine education) and environmental messaging (Denver Water) differ from traditional consumer brand work? What’s the creative bar for work that has to change behavior, not just build preference?
The common thread across our work is the KPI for campaign success is people making some sort of behavior change – to get vaccinated, get off tobacco and nicotine, conserve water, adopt a new action, spend more time outside. Frankly, I’d argue those are much harder comms tasks than getting someone to hit a Starbucks this afternoon or to go buy the latest Nike basketball shoe. While we use all of the sophisticated digital targeting tools at our disposal, and we augment our campaigns with very population-specific messaging – large scale behavior change work requires agencies to uncover a universal human truth, that super-relatable insight that moves potentially millions of people to do that one thing we need them to do. And its imperative to communicate that message in a way that’s dead simple, compelling and motivating. Another difference is the type of competition you face it can be much more fierce than traditional consumer marketing. Here in Colorado, tobacco and nicotine companies spend 100X more to market their products than what we have. So our work has to be more compelling and more memorable to work that much harder. And many times our “enemy” isn’t another brand. It can be apathy and inertia that keep people from taking action. It can be lack of time and energy when we are persuading parents who might be working two jobs to add yet another thing to their list. Or it can be a physical dependency on a substance, and you’d be hard pressed to find a tougher challenge than that.
6. Independent Agency Advantage: Sukle has been independent for 30 years. How does independence shape the agency’s ability to take creative risks, build long-term client relationships, and maintain its focus on purposeful brands compared to network agencies?
There’s a reason that indies are having a “moment” right now relative to to big agencies and holdcos. I think it’s rooted in both a breakdown in trust in the holdco model, and a belief that independence from shareholder pressures to grow at all costs leads to agency partners who truly have their clients’ best interest at heart. Indies aren’t here to steer you to yet another network agency, or sell you media inventory we bought in bulk during the upfronts and really need to unload this quarter. The essence of small indie agencies is freedom. Freedom to do what’s right, not just what’s financially expedient. Freedom to grow…or, to not grow. Freedom to insist on a sky-high creative standard on every project, for every client – not to be precious, but because we know it’s what works. Freedom to focus only on the sectors and capabilities where your team’s superpowers lie – and leave the rest to other agencies. Freedom to work with clients that share your values and truly want the kind of work that you do. Freedom to walk away from a pitch simply because you didn’t vibe with the people you met on the call. Even the freedom to walk away from a current client because the relationship is no longer characterized by mutual respect. Large agencies and holdcos can’t do that. And while Sukle has been independent since 1995, I’d argue 30 years later, there’s still no better place to be in our industry than in a small, independent creative agency.
