Wrap your tentacles around this: A digital marketing company where employees aren’t required to have marketing degrees. Employees’ parents participate in Take Your Parents to Work Day and find out exactly what their kids do. Ping pong matches. Beer on tap. And a mural of an octopus, Ovative’s mascot, painted by a local artist.

Ovative provides clients – businesses in the retail, health care, education, hospitality and consumer packaged goods sectors with sales ranging from $250 million to $100 billion – with data, technology, analytics and digital media expertise. 

And they’re growing. Company revenue nearly doubled between 2013 and 2015, jumping from $5 million to $9.9 million, and is expected to double again by the end of 2017. Ovative currently has about 80 employees. 

Ovative/group will invest $2.1 million and create 100 high-paying jobs when it expands to a new multi-tenant building in Minneapolis. The company is currently located at 701 Washington Ave. N. in Minneapolis. 

DEED is supporting Ovative’s expansion with a $605,000 grant from the pay-for-performance Job Creation Fund. Ovative will receive the funding after it has met investment and job creation commitments. 

“Ovative/group is growing at a remarkable pace, thanks to high demand for their services that enable businesses to measure and optimize the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts,” said DEED Commissioner Shawntera Hardy. “The company is attracting top talent and has a future that looks very bright.” 

Already the digital marketer has received wide exposure: Ovative ranked 12th on the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s 2016 list of top workplaces and 20th on the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal’s 2016 “Fast 50” list of the fastest-growing private companies in the Twin Cities.

DEED has awarded $33.6 million for 75 business expansion projects in Minnesota since the Job Creation Fund was launched in January 2014. Companies have committed to creating 4,603 full-time jobs and investing $900.4 million to expand.