Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 17, 2025
Story by Mara Reinstein, BJ ’98
As the Super Bowl approaches each year, teams across the country huddle up. So do the creatives inside Kansas City–based VML. The agency gathers its people to figure out how to score when the big game pauses and the ads take over.
Whether the Chiefs make it to the Super Bowl or not, a breakout commercial counts as a touchdown. VML has delivered them for Progressive and the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. It even reunited Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan to show a little extra enthusiasm for Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
“We’re working on connecting with consumers nonstop,” says Beth Wade, BA ’95, VML’s global chief communications & integration officer. “A Super Bowl spot is still the showcase of traditional brand advertising. That said, there are a mind-boggling number of different ways to experience a brand today.”
Take VML’s most audacious success story, for example. Starting in late 2016, the social media team began shifting Wendy’s presence from a polite corporate fast-food monotone to a sharp, quick-witted persona that treated the internet like a place to spar, tease and actually have a little fun.
The shift crystallized a few months later when McDonald’s posted a promotional tweet with a broken link on Twitter (now X), prompting Wendy’s to reply with the line that defined its new voice: “When the tweets are as broken as the ice cream machine.”
Among the world’s largest creative advertising agencies, VML boasts more than 25,000 employees across 64 international markets. Among its thousands of high-profile clients are Colgate-Palmolive, Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, The Coca-Cola Company and Wendy’s. Beyond the big names and eye-popping numbers is an amazing, multibillion-dollar Mizzou-built success story. Although bustling ad agencies are typically associated with bluebloods in silver skyscrapers on Madison Avenue, this one bleeds black and gold.
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Start at the beginning. Co-founder Craig Ligibel — the “L” in VML — graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1970 and received his master’s degree a year later. In addition to Wade, Jon Cook, BJ ’93, global CEO, is a proud alum as well, as is Brian Yamada, BJ ’93, VML’s chief innovation officer.
There’s not enough space to list the dozens of VMLers with Mizzou diplomas, especially as the number continues to grow. “Missouri graduates tend to find their way here,” Cook says, “because the school has done such a good job at creating the right mindsets for our business.”
There’s even an official collaboration. Since 2017, each semester the program has brought students from the Novak Leadership Institute and the Journalism school’s Strategic Communication program to VML’s headquarters in Kansas City for a day of mentorship and learning. The School of Journalism’s NY Campaign, co-led by New York program director Reuben Stern, BJ ’93 MA ’16, offers students the chance to intern at VML’s Big Apple offices.
Brandon Butcher, associate director at the Novak Leadership Institute and professor in the School of Journalism, says VML stands alone in the depth of its connection to the school. “But it makes sense,” Butcher notes. “VML understands how community engagement and professional ambition can thrive together.”
It’s perfectly understandable if your idea of an old-school ad agency involves well-dressed men sitting around a conference room table smoking Viceroys and batting around slogans for cereal, Mad Men-style. But in the early 1970s, Ligibel started his unglamorous post-Mizzou life behind the wheel, rolling from farm to farm asking growers whether their Harvestore Silo feeding devices were doing what they promised.
“I recorded their answers on black-and-white reel-to-reel videos,” Ligibel recalls. “I always had muddy feet doing it, but the work led me to work for a firm in Kansas City. It was literally a grassroots effort on my part.”
Cut to 1992, when he and his longtime friends John Valentine and Scott McCormick found themselves at a career crossroads. They decided to form an agency that would, as Ligibel put it, “be faster, cheaper and better” than their competitors. “We wanted to do important things for big clients,” he says. First, they designed a phone card for Sprint. Then they raised their profile by convincing former Mizzou undergrad Christopher Clouser, then a senior VP of advertising for Minneapolis-based Northwest Airlines, to let VML handle their marketing.
Cook was just VML’s 28th employee when he joined the business in 1996. Fifteen years later he became global CEO. “There were a lot of us kids in our 20s who had the keys to the kingdom,” he says. “And most of the kids are still here. I look around now and realize we’re the adults.”
Along the way, the agency has expanded to become a behemoth. A brief history: It was acquired by WPP in 2001 and merged with the legacy creative agency Young & Rubicam in 2018. In 2023, it merged with agency Wunderman Thompson, which itself was a merger between the famed agencies Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson. “I’m proud that the DNA of those companies live on in VML but in a more contemporary way,” Cook says. He adds that VML has grown to include offices everywhere from Seattle to Hong Kong.
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Despite the global reach, VML remains proud to call Missouri home. With good reason. “We’re grounded in our Midwest values,” Cook says. “I don’t mean as a cliché. We show up and never take anything for granted and never seem like we’re too big for the moment. We’re always appreciative and excited about where we are. We celebrate and thank one another, because we all work so hard.”
VML also rigorously adheres to the School of Journalism’s renowned Missouri Method learn-by-doing philosophy. “We’re very hands-on in our approach with clients because we never want to lose touch with the texture of our business,” Cook says.
“If you’re at Mizzou, you know to never give up and keep digging,” says Ligibel, who retired in the early 2000s “Learning how to communicate and answer all the questions is the only way to complete a sale.” (He makes a point of noting that he’s wearing a Mizzou sweatshirt as we talk.)
VML was an established leader in the industry when the School of Journalism’s Butcher reached out to Cook in 2016 about a potential collaboration. “Our vision was to introduce students to a globally recognized communication company that also fosters a strong culture of community and human connection,” Butcher says. “We wanted students to see both sides.”
The partnership now leans into VML’s annual Foundation Day, the agency’s companywide day of community service. In the morning, about 25 students from the Novak Institute and the journalism school, along with VML staffers, volunteer in the Kansas City community. Everyone then heads back to the office — located in the former Kansas City Downtown Airport terminal building — for a 360-degree tour, presentations and discussions. A spring visit encompasses a full day of presentations and breakout sessions with VML employees and leadership.
Wade is still raving about the school’s most recent visit. “We took a group photo,” she recalls, “and we were all saying that these were the best-dressed kids we’ve ever had in our offices because they were all in suits.”
VML also struts its stuff as part of Mizzou annual winter internship program. For two weeks in January, a select group of strategic communication students from the School of Journalism heads to NYC to roll up their sleeves inside VML’s offices at 3 World Trade Center, adjacent to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
Divided into teams, they conduct research, work on pitches, and present their strategic and creative recommendations to agency leadership. In 2025, the 21 students helped create a campaign for New Balance sneakers. Wade likens the experience to summer camp. Butcher adds an academic perspective: “They get mentoring and feedback from marketing professionals and learn so many aspects of agency life.”
The relationship is ultimately a win-win, with Mizzou serving as a de facto farm system for the agency. “Mizzou holds a great place in our hearts,” Wade says. “So many of us had great experiences there. And the quality of interns and entry-level employees we get from Mizzou is fantastic. We want people who are motivated, sharp and entrepreneurial, and that’s what we receive with Mizzou graduates.”
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Cook spends much of his time traveling to VML offices and visiting clients around the globe. “Our industry has always been in a perpetual state of evolution,” he says. “These days it feels a bit more like a revolution with the proliferation AI and of mar-tech,” he adds. “That said, we rely on the fundamentals we learned at the J-School every day.”
A brand campaign no longer revolves around a catchy jingle. Now there’s social media and celebrity influencers and digital marketing and personalized ads and, yes, AI. “It’s an amazing career to be in because you’re always learning and there’s no stagnation,” Wade says. “We especially need to understand what 20-somethings are doing so we can figure out how to market our brands in the most relevant way.”
For an example, look again at Wendy’s, which coined the iconic phrase “Where’s the beef?” in the ’80s and longed to make a dent on social media in the ’00s. The agency not only sharpened Wendy’s online attitude, it carried that tone into real cultural moments. “We showed them a new way to tell their stories with sass and a sense of humor,” Wade says.
Cook also points to a recent “Every Coca-Cola Is Welcome” campaign in which local shopkeepers and bodega owners around the world displayed personally designed Coke signs and artwork. “We put the brand in the hands of the people,” he says. “It was the most awarded campaign in the storied history of Coke’s brand.” Creative uses of technology and global reach will continue to be the long-term keys to industry success.
“You have to make decisions on how to find relevance in a consumer’s life,” he says. “Think about the way you scroll through Instagram and do online shopping and entertain yourself online. The best brands find a way to hit those spots at the right moments.”
By staying true to its roots, VML aims to thrive no matter what the future holds. “VML has come a long way since our three founders’ set up shop in a tiny Kansas City office 33 years ago,” Cook says. “Nevertheless, our goal is exactly the same: to earn the trust to be considered each and every client’s most important marketing partner.”
The birth of the sass
In 2012, Wendy’s brought in VML with a simple mandate: Make the brand matter again.
“They were losing relevance, especially with younger audiences,” says VML Global CEO Jon Cook.The early years focused on rebuilding the foundation, sharpening the “Fresh, Never Frozen” promise, refreshing the brand’s look and testing a looser, more playful tone in campaigns including the 2013 “Pretzel Bacon Love Song,” which turned customer comments into music videos.
By late 2016, that groundwork had done its job. Wendy’s began to show a different kind of personality on Twitter (now X). The company began trading corporate courtesy for a voice that cracked jokes, cut through noise and treated the platform like a proving ground. “Fresh, Never Frozen” stayed the anchor, but the attitude around it shifted.
The internet took notice when a user questioned the fresh-beef claim and dragged McDonald’s into the argument. Wendy’s snapped back with the line that set the tone: “You don’t have to bring them into this just because you forgot refrigerators existed for a second there.” A few weeks later, McDonald’s posted a promotional tweet with a broken link, and Wendy’s delivered the jab heard across timelines: “When the tweets are as broken as the ice cream machine.”
From there, the account leaned into the fun. A five-track rap EP tapped fast-food rivalries and artistic beefs. The #NuggsForCarter saga, sparked when a teenager asked what it would take to earn free nuggets, briefly became the most-retweeted post on the platform. Stunts such as the 2024 “Wendy’s Frosty Fix,” which sent Frosty trucks to customers let down by McDonald’s broken ice cream machines, kept the same sharpened voice alive. An ongoing rebrand to “Tendy’s” to hype its chicken tenders has been carrying that sense of play forward.
The following speaks for itself: 3.6 million followers on X, 2 million on TikTok, and one of the most decorated agency–brand collaborations in the industry, capped by a Penta Pencil, an international award recognizing long-term creative excellence between an agency and a brand. “Our work with Wendy’s is some of my favorite work we’ve ever done,” Cook says.
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