New Client Work



We look at market events as opportunities for catalytic narratives, narratives that our clients can develop a point of view around and participate in market conversations. But we’re increasingly less interested in the primary market events and more interested in the second-order effects. Within these second-order effects the story begins to take shape in different ways.

So, for instance, as the pandemic affected workstyle through decreases in office attendance and increases in work-from-home, we looked beyond that primary event.  We’re interested in Zoom and its impact on work.  But we’re more interested in how the use of video by distributed workers is engendering new familiarity with video across the enterprise and what all that unstructured data is doing to IT departments.

When we met our newest client, Daon, another second-order effect idea struck us.  

With all of us conducting critical tasks through the internet in both work and at home, and on different devices, networks and locations, identity has become a massive issue.  It’s one thing to shop online.  It’s an entirely different thing to conduct a complex financial transaction, like applying for a loan or getting a mortgage online.  Technology and business can empower online interactions, but when the identity of the parties is mission critical, usernames and passwords are insufficient. Daon is a leader in biometric identity assurance solutions and we thought that was becoming a really fascinating space. Given these trends, and Daon’s deep experience in identity assurance, we are very excited to start work with them this past month.

Daon was founded in 2000 by Irish entrepreneur Dermot Desmond and is headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices in Ireland, Australia and Serbia. 104 West will represent and increase awareness of Daon across North America and key countries in Europe, collaborating on market positioning and driving awareness with the company’s key audiences.  

We are working with our partner, Bluestripe, based in London to support the communications efforts in Europe. Further expansion in other countries and continents is under consideration.

New Roles



We have been very fortunate to grow many of our team from new professionals to seasoned ones.  Most of our account staff started as interns with us.  We value the ability to help our teams learn our ideas about how we service clients, and for them to develop good habits and muscle-memory.

One such teammate is Kelli Flores who has been part of 104 West for over 10 years, starting as a junior account person and now, after her promotion this month, is a managing director.  She will continue to lead teams and client work, but now will work closer with the partners on growth opportunities for the agency.  She represents the best of our development practice.  She has become an invaluable part of our shop and a meaningful and insightful counselor to our clients. What more could we ask of our team…

We are so excited for Kelli!

Caroline Traylor is a new addition to our team at the senior account manager level, but she comes to us with a familiar background and years of strategic communications experience. Most recently, she worked at Mood Media where she served as PR and communications director. Prior to Mood, she worked at Porter Novelli overseeing some of the agency’s largest, most influential technology accounts including HP Inc. and SXSW Interactive. We’ve charged Caroline with serving as an account lead providing day-to-day counsel, managing strategic programs and supporting the agency’s growth initiatives. 

We are thrilled to have her!