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Marcus Thomas LLC, based in Cleveland, has been ranked #6 in Ad Age Best Places to Work 2021, moving up from the 14th spot in 2020. The Ad Age award honors 50 companies that have figured out what works.

The winning workplaces—25 companies with 200 or fewer employees and 25 companies with more than 200 employees—reflect the highest overall numerical scores based on an analysis of two surveys—a company survey and an employee survey. Ad Age broke the rankings into two groups: top companies with 200 or fewer employees, and top companies with more than 200 employees. Employee size is based on what companies listed on the company survey for full-time employees in 2019.

The company survey captured basic information about a company as well as additional detail so we could analyze what factors set apart those that rank highly as a best place to work.

The employee survey was designed to get at what matters to employees in the workplace and how a company rates on the topics that staffers care about.

Ad Age’s scoring system factors in the importance of six key satisfaction areas, an aggregate of each company’s ratings in those key areas and a collective workplace rating to arrive at an overall score.

The six key satisfaction areas are: company culture, company environment, employee benefits, employee development, employee engagement and employee perks.

To be eligible for Ad Age Best Places to Work 2021, a company must have operated in the marketing, media, advertising or ad tech industry for more than one year; have its headquarters in North America or have a North America headquarters or main office if its world headquarters is outside of North America; and have a minimum of 15 full-time employees.