• USA Today , Monday, August 11, 2008 10:30 AM

The agency that made Hummer a must-have for the ego-obsessed and got actress Kate Walsh to sit in a Cadillac and utter in her sexiest voice, "When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?" doesn't think of itself as a traditional advertising agency. "This business is no longer about just creating things," says Gary Koepke, co-founder of Modernista with Lance Jensen, "It's about conceptualizing ideas -- kind of like a think tank."

Should you ever attend a concert where super-cool British trance DJ Paul Oakenfold is spinning tunes, it's a good bet that those cosmic computer visuals on the big screen are Modernista's. It also oversaw the redesign of BusinessWeek magazine that has resulted in an unexpected sales uptick. And it just won a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gig for the organization's global health initiative, but the effort won't be ads, says agency president Clift Jones.

Such non-traditional stuff is 25% of the firm's business, and it could be 50% within five years, Koepke says. Unlike most ad agencies, which -- like law firms -- tend to be named after their founders, Modernista clearly is not. "It's by far the best of company names that don't involve names of real people," says admirer Jeff Goodby, co-founder of rival agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

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