Business Hall of Fame: Joe Kubic

Joe Kubic did not want to start an agency. 

He wanted the Cleveland shop that hired him out of college to stop making ads the old way. 

A flier then was a week of work. It was a slow, manual pre-digital process from laying out type to preparing camera-ready artwork, and separating colors for press. But as a student at Kent State University, he watched an Apple computer donated to the student center complete similar work in a matter of minutes.

He saw that desktop publishing was the future. 

“This is going to change our industry,” he told his bosses at Baron Advertising.

The answer, as he remembers it: “Ah, kid, what do you know?”

So Kubic and his friend Mark Nuss decided they would find out. In 1989, a year out of college, they founded Adcom to bring digital tools to a traditional advertising and public-relations business.

His parents were skeptical. “Oh, geez, why are you doing that?” he recalls. They worked out of a Shaker Heights house where they also lived. Rent, insurance and vendor bills came due. Lunches were often packed by Nuss’s wife.

“Mark would bring them in, we’d have a ham sandwich, and keep going,” Kubic says. 

He kept a Plan B, enrolling at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. The hope was he would not need it.

First-year revenue was five figures. Kubic paid himself about $13,000. 

“It’s more staying power,” Kubic says. “The superpower is just the ability to have grit and overcome the challenges that you get yourself into.”

Today, Kubic is chairman of Adcom’s executive board; the company employs about 110 people and generates roughly $40 million in annual revenue.

It’s a long way from the first account that stuck, Hilarities 4th Street Theatre, the Cleveland comedy club.

“That was our first real break,” Kubic says.

The club was always promoting new comedians and events. The staff was hand-drawing fliers with markers, cutting, pasting and copying. Adcom could do it faster. That was the pitch, and the partnership became proof.

“We were introducing a faster way to bring creative to market,” Kubic says.

Entertainment became an early foothold. The work pulled them Downtown often enough that Adcom moved to the Flats, which helped lead to larger assignments, including KeyBank.

In 1994, Dan FitzSimons was looking for a successor for FitzSimons Advertising and Public Relations, a firm of about 15 people. He wanted a more modern shop. Adcom acquired the company. Overnight, the number of employees doubled.

The growth accelerated from there.  Adcom has made six acquisitions. 

A founder needs an idea and the willingness to bet on it. A builder must persuade other people to join him. Kubic learned both roles.

“People start to believe in you,” Kubic says. “Employees decide to work for you and put their careers in your hands. You feel obligated to succeed.”

Kubic believes Cleveland must foster more startup companies. His own is evidence of what is possible.

“We can grow companies better than we can attract new ones,” he says. “It’s hard to attract new companies.”

David Gilbert, president and CEO of Destination Cleveland, cites Kubic’s passion for the city, his vision and relationships as key traits in his success.

Gilbert recalls that shortly after he took over the organization, there was an effort to create a new marketing campaign for the city. A number of people wanted the easy line: “Cleveland Rocks.” But research showed it was familiar, stale and not moving the needle.

Kubic was one of the leading voices for doing the harder thing.  The effort became the “This is Cleveland” campaign.

“It made a real difference for me, it made a difference for the organization, and ultimately made a big difference for this community,” Gilbert says.

Adcom and Kubic have long been intertwined in the community.

One of their longest local relationships is with VeloSano, Cleveland Clinic’s fundraising movement for cancer research, which is in its 13th year. 

Micki Byrnes, the former president and general manager of WKYC Media, joined Adcom last year as chief communications officer. She’s been working with Kubic on civic boards for years and says his work with the creative class and nonprofits is particularly powerful.

“He has embraced the technology, but he’s never lost the human touch,” Byrnes says. “That is why I think Adcom has stayed and thrived.”

While technology has changed dramatically since that Apple computer at Kent State, Kubic is still thinking much as he did in 1989: What can we do differently? What’s next?

“I’ve always thought every entrepreneur can succeed if they can endure,” Kubic says.

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