Tal­ent­ed pros hold­ing media jobs in online adver­tis­ing agen­cies would prob­a­bly agree that the juici­est suc­cess sto­ries come in the form of big steps, like win­ning a mon­ster account or bag­ging a glit­ter­ing raft of awards. But if you were an account man­ag­er or an art direc­tor at the New York agency Anom­aly, you’d beg to differ.

Since its incep­tion, the agency has steered away from head­line-grab­bing pitch­es. Instead, Anom­aly puts the suc­cess of its busi­ness mod­el down to effec­tive­ness. As its found­ing part­ner David Deland explained in a recent inter­view for AdAge, it wants its clients’ busi­ness­es to grow, not glitzy but ephemer­al fea­tures in the news-busi­ness machine.

Steady growth

And you’d have to be a pret­ty cur­mud­geon­ly account man­ag­er not to con­cede that the shop’s suc­cess has been most impres­sive. Its U.S. and glob­al rev­enue expand­ed by 25 per­cent last year, it opened an office in Asia and, over the last three years, it’s grown by a wal­lop­ing 350 percent.

A quick glance at its work shows why: the intense­ly mov­ing ad it did for the Bud­weis­er Super Bowl, which fea­tured a Fleet­wood Mac sound­track back­ing a Clydes­dale com­ing-of-age sto­ry, was the third most-shared Super Bowl spot in his­to­ry and topped last year’s AdMe­ter in USA Today. Bud ranked a some­what under­whelm­ing eighth in the beer adver­tis­ing league tables in 2012. Thanks to Anom­aly, it shot to No 3 in 2013.

Eccen­tric­i­ty works 

As the Anom­aly web­site explains, the name means “Devi­a­tion or depar­ture from the nor­mal or com­mon order, form, or rule. Syn: Abnor­mal­i­ty, devi­a­tion, eccen­tric­i­ty, excep­tion, irreg­u­lar­i­ty, rar­i­ty.” And as a phi­los­o­phy for grow­ing its clients busi­ness, it’s paid off hand­some­ly. It’s longest stand­ing client, Con­verse, evolved from $305m Nike acqui­si­tion to a world­wide mar­keter with brag­ging rights over a 17 per­cent hike in sales last year, not least because of Anomaly’s clever “Shoes are bor­ing. Wear sneak­ers” cam­paign. The agency has also helped Con­verse to become the 9^th largest brand on social media.

Its real pas­sion, how­ev­er, lies in its devo­tion to its own brands and to intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (Eos, for exam­ple, out­sold Chap­Stick last year to become the USA’s best-sell­ing lip balm). It’s also cre­at­ed an Emmy Award-win­ning cook­ing show with Eric Ripert (“Avec Eric”).

Qui­et, steady suc­cess, account man­agers may agree, is a pret­ty good way to go.