Matchstick Social has been named Best Ad Agency in The Post and Courier‘s 2026 Charleston’s Choice Awards. That makes three years in a row that Charleston has handed us a Charleston’s Choice award, and two years running in the advertising category.
We’re not going to pretend to be cool about it. We are PUMPED!
Three years, two categories
The run so far:
- 2024: Best Promotions Company, Charleston’s Choice
- 2025: Best Ad Agency, Charleston’s Choice
- 2026: Best Ad Agency, Charleston’s Choice
The two categories feel especially fitting because Matchstick has never been one thing.
We’re not an ad agency that happens to make content. We’re not a social media agency that can also build a website. Strategy, creative, content, websites, search, social, and paid media all have to work together because that’s how people actually experience a brand.
We’ve also been named Best Marketing Firm by Charleston City Paper’s Best of Charleston three times, named Best of South Carolina regional for digital marketing, and received several AMA Spark Awards over the past 4 years.
A lot has changed. So have we.
The last year has been a big one at Matchstick. We’ve grown our team, expanded our advertising capabilities, and continued pushing further into full digital strategy rather than treating each marketing channel like its own little island. Because the way people find and choose businesses is changing fast.
Search isn’t just Google anymore. People are asking ChatGPT the questions they used to type into a search bar. Social platforms are search engines. A great ad can’t do much if the website it sends people to doesn’t do its job. And more data isn’t particularly helpful if nobody knows what to do with it. So a lot of our work this year has been about connecting those dots.
Sometimes that means telling a client we need to change something that used to work. Sometimes it means questioning our own strategy. Sometimes it means rebuilding something we built a year ago because the internet moved on. That’s the job.
Big thanks to you all!
To everyone who voted for us, thank you. You didn’t have to do that, and it means a lot that you did.
To our clients, thank you for trusting us with your businesses, your budgets, your ideas and, occasionally, the half-formed thought you send us in an email at 10 p.m. Some of you have been with us for more than a decade. We don’t take that lightly.
And to our team, this is yours. You’re the ones behind the strategy, the shoots, the designs, the websites, the campaigns, the reports, the client calls, and the million tiny decisions that make the work better.
What we do
Matchstick Social is a Charleston growth marketing and branding agency. We have been at this for 13-years, and we are owned by partners Amber Ludeman and Rachel Davis.
We handle branding, paid media, organic social, SEO, email, and web, and we shoot our own photo and video. All of it lives under one roof, which is unusual and deliberate. Most businesses that call us are juggling a freelancer running ads, someone else posting to social, a web developer who stopped answering, and an SEO vendor nobody has met. Nothing connects. Nobody is looking at the whole picture.
We replace that with one team, one strategy, and monthly reporting tied to revenue and lead quality instead of impressions. We work with clients across construction, healthcare, ecommerce, real estate, hospitality, retail, and professional services, from downtown out to Mount Pleasant, Summerville, and the islands.
If you are tired of coordinating four vendors who have never spoken to each other, let’s talk. Book a discovery call, and we will tell you honestly whether we are a fit.
The details
Matchstick Social was voted Best Ad Agency in The Post and Courier’s 2026 Charleston’s Choice Awards, its second consecutive win in the category and third straight year winning a Charleston’s Choice award. The agency is located at 1350 Ashley River Road, Suite 500, Charleston, SC 29407, and can be reached at (843) 631-6273.
