Case Study: Saxton Horne Communications achieves a culture of recognition and stronger employee engagement with Kudos

How a Utah advertising agency listened to their employees to build the culture of their dreams

Saxton Horne Communications, a Utah-based advertising agency in the Larry H. Miller Group, wanted to move from an annual Thank You Week to an intentional, always-on culture of recognition and better measurement of employee engagement. To scale that effort and get actionable people analytics, President David Blain selected the Kudos employee engagement, culture, and analytics platform to replace manual, once-a-year recognition with a consistent system that reinforced values and surfaced where attention was needed.

Kudos was rolled out as the agency’s daily recognition engine — integrated with Slack and managed by a cross-department “Culture Club” — bringing peer-to-peer recognition back after a pandemic-era pause that staff protested. The platform restored the conversational, non‑formal culture Saxton Horne wanted, enabled measurable insights (analytics showing frequency of recognition and who might be overlooked), and converted a yearly ritual into ongoing daily connection, particularly valuable while the team worked remotely.

Saxton Horne Communications

David Blain

President