Collegiate Times

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Mike Cox, of the Blacksburg advertsing agency Modea, greeted the Collegiate Times wearing a white and black tuxedo.

There's been a mix-up, Cox said. Kent Square houses one of the two Modea offices. You'll find president and co-founder David Catalano in the University Gateway Center on Prices Fork Road.

"A lot of companies have 'casual Fridays,'" Catalano later explained in his office across town. "We have what's called 'not-so-casual Friday.'"

Modea employees usually follow a lax dress code - T-shirts are standard - but some choose to polish up before the weekend.

"The work is what defines you," Catalano said. "Your personal attire or hairstyle or anything like that makes no difference."

Modea's work exists in a progressive realm. The outfit pursues clientele whose dialogue with their customers is primarily through digital means. Fittingly, the name Modea fuses together the words "modern" and "ideas."

Catalano said traditional agencies responsible for mediums like print and broadcast advertising have historically driven companies' communication strategies.

"Web and digital and mobile is always an afterthought," he said.

Modea, though, aligns itself with companies shifting those secondary concerns to the forefront. For such groups, Modea develops and implements strategies to best engage their markets. This manifests products like Web sites, microsites, e-mail campaigns and iPhone applications.

The majority of Modea's clients are scattered across the nation, even the globe. Graco, a popular children's products company founded in Pennsylvania, hired Modea to engage its growing European venue. Modea built Graco what Catalano called "a global platform." In 2008, Modea launched a central Web site that powers 16 websites in 15 languages. With the success of that project, Modea has since done the same for Graco in Asia.

Despite its lengthy reach, Modea has completed work for notable Blacksburg establishments.

It crafted the Web site for Virginia Tech's 2009 Solar Decathlon entry, "Lumenhaus." Joe Wheeler, Lumenhaus lead project coordinator, said his team wanted to be competitive in the Solar Decathlon "communications" contest. The category entails clearly sharing technical and experiential aspects of the house to a vast audience.

"(In) the first meetings that we had with (Modea), there was talk of an interactive Web site," Wheeler said.

Modea shared with the Lumenhaus team its recent endeavor with Lenox, a tool company whose products are sold internationally. Modea conceived an online experience called "Cut Something," where customers activate simulated performances of various Lenox saw blades.

"We felt that was just right down the alley of what we were hoping for," Wheeler said.

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