By Ewan Larkin | July 23, 2026
Christa Carone, LPL Financial’s chief marketing and communication officer, wouldn’t have blamed Zambezi for treating the relationship as a one-off. After all, when she hired the independent shop as the financial firm’s first creative and media agency of record in 2024, LPL had never run an integrated consumer campaign. “They could have looked at us like, ‘Oh, is this just a one and done? This brand has never done anything before,’” Carone said.
But Zambezi has done anything but pump the brakes. When LPL Financial was exploring what became its first official sports partnership—a four-year deal with the PGA of America announced in June—it leaned on the agency to help evaluate the opportunity, drawing on its sports marketing background. “There’s this grittiness to working with them,” Carone said of Zambezi, describing the partnership as a “roll-up-your-sleeves” type of relationship.
“We don’t just take the briefs that are given to us and just do the work,” said Gavin Lester, the agency’s chief creative officer. “We’re thinking on behalf of our clients all the time, and if we see opportunities, even though they’re not asking for them, we will present those opportunities to them.”
