About

WE'RE AN AD AGENCY, BUT WE'RE REALLY NOT.

We consider ourselves professional storytellers but the industry we reside in is called advertising. We don't believe advertising works anymore and that building campaigns off of key messages is outdated. We believe that when a person receives over 3,000 messages a day that odds are, they're not paying attention to you.



We believe that marketing is about sharing stories and creating relationships. It's about creating a conversation and arming people with the story about you that resonates with them. As a result, they want to share it with their friends.



So we're an ad agency but we're really not. We have been sharpening our storytelling skills for confident brands since 2002. We are listed in the Boston Business Journal as the 14th-largest ad agency in New England.



Our moral guides everything we do at Small Army. It helps us discover which clients we are interested in forming a relationship with. It helps our clients understand what matters to us. And it definitely guides us when we're hiring fellow storytellers.



When your company knows its moral, it will drive everything you do. Communications. Media placement. Social media conversations. Product development. Recruiting. And things you haven't even thought of yet. You will no longer be guided by strategy statements and key messaging, which often lead to manufactured campaigns instead of authentic conversations. In short, you will find your company's soul.

People

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  Allison Reilly

  EVP, Relationship Management & Strategy

  Never content with the status quo, Allison is happiest when she is finding new ways to think about a challenge. Throughout her career she’s never been afraid to try something new thus her experience expands many roles—project manager, writer, researcher, strategist, researcher, and agency owner. And she’s brought success for clients in many industries—nonprofit, education, healthcare, B2C, B2B—on notable accounts such as AT&T, the ADL, and GE. By considering every challenge an opportunity, she has become an integral part of Small Army and helping clients find their soul. And if she’s not honing in on the hearts of her clients, Allison can be found nurturing her own heart running the streets of Andover, or guiding the hearts of her 4 children.
• 

  Sam Pitino

  EVP, Creative Director

  Sam's design career started when his 10th grade art teacher gave him a bunch of wooden slabs to make parking signs for the school lot. From there, at 17, he started his own sign painting business out of his mother's garage, painting signs and trucks for local. Then took his talents and began to craft his design and advertising skills at Plainspoke, Catapult Thinking, and Eymer Design. A few years and several creative awards later, Sam now leads the creative department at Small Army, telling client stories through advertising, branding and interactive experiences. When he's not designing anything that gets in his way, he's enjoying his downtime fishing, driving his kids to sporting events, writing and playing music with his band.
• 

  Jeff Freedman

  Founder, CEO

  Jeff’s career started at Hill Holliday, followed by 2 years at a smaller Boston agency (DRK). Jeff joined the start-up CGN in 1993, launching their interactive group, growing the agency from 4 to 60 people and selling it to Epsilon in just 5 years. In 2002, Jeff started Small Army with his friend and colleague Mike Connell with a vision to create an agency built upon relationships. After Mike’s passing in 2007, Jeff founded the 501c3 Small Army for a Cause and the annual Be Bold, Be Bald! cancer fundraiser, which has raised close to $1 million for more than 50 cancer charities around the country. Jeff is a regular speaker and writer on the topics of leadership, storytelling, relationship building, and social responsibility.